First Language Attrition as a Function of Age at Onset of Bilingualism: First Language Attainment of Turkish–English Bilinguals in the United Kingdom

This investigation aimed to provide insights into the controversial debate on the role that age at onset of bilingualism plays in human language capacity with a focus on what it entails for first language (L1) attrition. L1 performance of Turkish immigrants (n = 57) in the United Kingdom with age at onset ranging between 7 and 34 years was compared to that of Turkish monolingual controls (n = 29) across two linguistic properties: structural complexity and accent. Findings generally showed that although the immigrants achieved nativelike proficiency with respect to the overall structural complexity of their L1, this was not the case for accent as those with an earlier age of onset were less likely to sound like native Turkish speakers. We discuss these findings in relation to two competing theoretical models of age effects and suggest that attrition data need to be better accommodated within these models. Open Practices: This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. All materials are publicly accessible via the IRIS Repository at https://www.iris-database.org. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki

Syntactic change in an immigrant language: From non-finite to finite subordinate clauses in Turkish

While Turkish immigrants in Western Europe orient themselves to the norms of Standard Turkish, their Turkish is constantly being influenced by the European language they also speak. As a result of language contact, slowly but surely, new varieties of Turkish seem to be evolving, exhibiting loss of certain features and/or borrowing of words and structures taken from European languages. In this article, the focus is on Immigrant Turkish in the Netherlands, particularly on how it forms subordinate clauses. We compare data from the Netherlands and Turkey, with the data coming from two sources: spontaneous conversation and a sentence recall task. The main finding that both data sources converge on is that Dutch Turkish speakers clearly prefer to use finite subordinate clauses, especially in reported speech structures, and that this is a clear influence from Dutch. In Turkey, subordination is predominantly non-finite. The findings are interpreted in a usage-based perspective on contact-induced change

Explaining individual differences in executive functions performance in multilinguals: the impact of code-switching and alternating between multicultural identity styles

This study sheds new light on the relative impact of language context, bilingual language use (code-switching) and culture on Executive Functions (EFs) in bilinguals. Several studies have suggested that bilingualism has a measurable impact on executive functioning, presumably due to bilinguals’ constant practice in dealing with two languages, or two cultures. Yet, the evidence on the relative contribution of culture and bilingual language use to executive functions (EFs) is not well understood, because disentangling language, culture and immigration status is very difficult. The novelty of our approach was to keep the language pair and immigration status constant, whilst the cultural identity of participants was systematically varied, and measured at the individual level (not just at group level). Two groups of Turkish-English bilinguals, all adult immigrants to the UK, took part in the study, but one group (n = 29) originated from mainland Turkey and the other (n=28) from Cyprus. We found that the bilinguals experienced smaller Conflict Effects on a Flanker task measuring inhibition, by comparison with monolingual British participants (n= 30). The key variable explaining EF performance variance at the individual level turned out to be bilinguals’ Multicultural Identity Style. In particular those who indicated that they attempted to alternate between different British and Turkish (Cypriot) identity styles were found to have shorter RTs on incongruent trials of the Flanker task. The two multicultural identity variables, Alternating and Hybrid Identity Styles, together explained 32% (overall explained variance 49%). Thus, the data provide strong evidence for the impact of culture on EFs. We suggest that, as a result of their daily practice in recognising cultural cues which highlight the need to switch to a different cultural frame, multicultural bilinguals develop a heightened context-sensitivity, and this gives them an advantage over monolinguals in a Flankers task. Our approach, which draws on models from cross-cultural psychology, bilingualism and executive functioning, illustrates the importance of theory building in which sociolinguistic and cultural variables are integrated into models of EFs

Heritage Languages:A language contact approach

Heritage languages, such as the Turkish varieties spoken in Berlin or the Spanish used in Los Angeles, are non-dominant languages, often with little prestige. Their speakers also speak the dominant language of the country they live in. Often heritage languages undergo changes due to their special status. They have received a lot of scholarly attention and provide a link between academic concerns and educational issues. This book takes a language contact perspective: we consider heritage languages from the perspective of their history, their structural properties, and their interaction with other surrounding languages