Early Child Trilingualism: German - French - Spanish in Germany

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Natascha Müller
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2013 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 232285006

The few existing studies on the simultaneous acquisition of three languages from birth suggest that this acquisition type can be successful, even if, until today, there are a lot of reservations against it in society. A systematic study which focusses on the language trio German - French - Spanish will support this finding and will specify the circumstances which have a positive effect on early child trilingualism. First, the planned research project will show for the language constellation which has a positive effect in bilingual children that performance can be increased in trilingual children although they acquire three languages simultaneously. In the case of such a profitable language constellation, trilingual children should exhibit a performance in grammatical domains which is as good as in bilingual and even better than in monolingual children. Second, the research project will show that a non-profitable language constellation which has disadvantages in early child bilingualism can be transformed into a profitable language constellation in early child trilingualism if the third language has specific linguistic properties. Under these circumstances, trilingual children outperform bilingual children in particular grammatical domains although they acquire three languages simultaneously. The core idea of the planned research project is that a language which has generalized a more complex derivation functions rather as a steppingstone than a banana skin. The research project will contribute to our understanding of early child multilingualism and help reduce prejudices related to multilingual acquisition.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants