Interactions between three phonological subsystems of young multilinguals: the influence of language status

• Romana Kopecková ^[2] ; Marta Marecka ^[1] ; Magdalena Wrembel ^[1] ; Ulrike Gut ^[2]
  1. [1] Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

     Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

     Poznań, Polonia

     
  2. [2] University of Münster

     University of Münster

     Kreisfreie Stadt Münster, Alemania

     
• Localización: International journal of multilingualism, ISSN 1479-0718, Vol. 13, Nº. 4, 2016 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Advances in the Investigation of L3 Phonological Acquisition Guest Editors Magalena Wrembel and Jennifer Cabrelli Amaro), págs. 426-443
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This study examines the interactions between three vocalic subsystems of multilingual speakers and explores the role language status might play in explaining variability across them. Eight 14-year-olds raised in Germany, who had learnt English at school for 6 years and Polish for 1 year, participated in the study. They were divided into three groups: children of German parents, children with one Polish-speaking parent but with German as the main home language, and children with two Polish-speaking parents and Polish as their main home language. The young multilinguals read a word list and performed a delayed repetition task in all their languages, with both tasks containing tokens of /i, ɪ, u, ʊ, ϵ, æ/. The results show a great degree of individual variability in the production of the vowels in all three languages and point to language status as one factor shaping the phonological subsystems of these multilinguals. The findings are interpreted within the framework of the Dynamic Systems Theory.