Preservation and Adaptation in Turkish as a Heritage Language (PATH) - A Natural Language Laboratory in a Small Dutch Town

Información del proyecto

PATH

Identificador del acuerdo de subvención: 843131

DOI

10.3030/843131

Proyecto cerrado

Fecha de la firma de la CE 12 Abril 2019

Fecha de inicio 1 Septiembre 2019

Fecha de finalización 28 Julio 2022

Financiado con arreglo a

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Coste total

€ 214 158,72

Aportación de la UE

€ 214 158,72

Coordinado por

UNIVERSITETET I TROMSOE - NORGES ARKTISKE UNIVERSITET
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PATH (Preservation and Adaptation in Turkish as a Heritage Language (PATH) - A Natural Language Laboratory in a Small Dutch Town)

Período documentado: 2019-09-01 hasta 2021-08-31

Resumen del contexto y de los objetivos generales del proyecto

The European experience cannot be fully described without any reference to bilingualism. New language pairs continue to emerge as a result of migration both within the EU and from outside into the EU. Differences in individual experiences as well as societal, national and regional practices result in massive variation in bilingual outcomes, making it difficult to test the degree to which any potential factor causes such variation. PATH aims to reduce some of this variation by controlling for the regional dialect factor. Accordingly, it looks at aspects of the bilingual grammar of Turkish-Dutch speakers who migrated from a particular region of Turkey where a unique micro-dialect of Turkish is spoken. Speakers of this language variety moved to a small town in The Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s to work at a nearby steel factory. This close-knit community of Turkish speakers makes a unique natural laboratory, and thus, provides the researcher with an opportunity to test variation across generations as Turkish and Dutch languages interact on a daily basis by keeping factors related to dialectal variation as well as certain social background variables constant.

Trabajo realizado desde el comienzo del proyecto hasta el final del período abarcado por el informe y los principales resultados hasta la fecha

The findings of PATH so far support the view that bilingual speakers, who are proficient in both languages and use both of them on a daily basis, have unique skills in using both languages at the same time, even within the same sentence. Known as code-switching, such mixing of two languages is not practiced randomly but is instead rule-governed by systems just as monolingual language use is subject to grammar rules. PATH shows that heritage speakers, bilingual speakers who acquire a home language in infancy and a societal language typically in the first year at school, are no exception to this observation. They are not only proficient in two languages but also extremely efficient in mixing them as they speak. PATH has found support for the view that heritage speakers have substantial differences from those who acquire the societal language in later stages in life.

Avances que van más allá del estado de la técnica e impacto potencial esperado (incluida la repercusión socioeconómica y las implicaciones sociales más amplias del proyecto hasta la fecha)

PATH shows that better knowledge of the societal language as well as the heritage language makes heritage speakers more capable of keeping the two grammars apart even by speakers who code-switch on a daily basis. While these two languages combine in unique ways during code-switching, it does not necessarily mean that syntactic properties of the societal language easily leak into the heritage language grammar. On the contrary, at least in the case of argument structure properties, better knowledge of Dutch and Turkish makes heritage speakers better keep the two grammars apart. PATH has direct implications to European language policy and strategies.

A village in the eastern Black Sea coast of Turkey, where a unique Turkish micro-dialect is spoken.