The acquisition of reference in a bilingual child (German - Polish). A longitudinal study on the interaction pragmatic conditions and morpho-syntactic factors

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Christine Dimroth
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397567447

The aim of this research project is the identification of control mechanisms involved in the construction of reference systems in two simultaneously acquired first languages (German and Polish) and the weighting of these factors in terms of their importance. On the basis of regular video recordings, with an initial focus on the use of generic pronouns (das, da), we examine the acquisition of the referential system in bilingual German and Polish children up to the age of four. The investigation then focuses on article and pronoun uses, word order, and additional linguistic properties that are especially relevant to Polish, such as aspect and case alternation. Furthermore, the children"s linguistic output is compared with the input data. The repertoire of forms acquired by the children is checked against and categorized in terms of the following four dimensions. a. The child-oriented dimension, i.e. the child"s communicative intention. We will check if an object is merely named or if an individual referent is newly introduced into the discourse or is more narrowly specified.b. The hearer-oriented dimension: This term covers the prior knowledge of the addressee. We seek to determine if the child distinguishes between given vs. new information and if the hearer"s perspective is reflected in the child"s language production, such as the presence vs. absence of the referent in the communicative situation, or knowledge shared vs. not shared with the child.c. The context-oriented dimension, i.e. the situational context. On this descriptive level, we distinguish between differing narrative situations and types, such as e.g. the oblivious playing of children, or dialogical and monological narrative contexts.d. The referent-oriented dimension: This dimension relates to inherent semantic features of the referential object such as animacy, clearly delineated shape, individuated referent, proper name.The above-mentioned dimensions manifest themselves to different language-specific degrees in the structural properties of German and Polish. While German is characterized by a fully articulated article system, Polish, a language with no articles, does not have at its disposal a grammaticalized distinction between definite and indefinite NPs. There are however grammatical means in Polish, such as aspect opposition and word order, that suggest a certain interpretation for referring expressions. Overt pronouns are used only under specific information-structural conditions.Finally, we aim to determine whether in certain developmental phases the children"s referential systems are aligned. This alignment may occur when certain functional distinctions are acquired simultaneously (e.g. the implementation of the feature [+familiar] in both languages, but they can also lead to a transfer of formal markers. In order to elucidate this issue, the data of a bilingual child will be compared with those of monolingual learners.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Klaus-Michael Köpcke