Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Leibniz-Gemeinschaft

Dynamics of Verbal Aspect and (Pro)Nominal Reference in Language Contact (RUEG P10)

RUEG P10 is a subproject of the Research Unit “Emerging Grammars in Language Contact Situations: A Comparative Approach” (in short: “RUEG”), which will be funded by the DFG for further three years. Within the Research Unit, several individual projects investigate the linguistic systems and linguistic resources of bilingual speakers from families with an immigrant history, “heritage speakers”, in both of their languages (heritage and majority language) across formal and informal, written and spoken communicative situations.

The new project of Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Artemis Alexiadou (HU Berlin/ZAS), Prof. Dr. Natalia Gagarina (ZAS/HU Berlin) and Prof. Dr. Luka Szucsich (HU Berlin) investigates the dynamics of verbal aspect and (pro)nominal reference in the main three heritage languages of RUEG, namely heritage-Greek, heritage-Russian and heritage-Turkish in Germany and the U.S., compared to majority-Greek, majority-Russian and majority-Turkish, within the new Joint Ventures of RUEG2. These two empirical domains turned out to be especially promising areas for further investigation during RUEG1, as preliminary findings in our data proved that they are open to new developments in the speakers’ repertoires in all three heritage-languages. The two areas seem particularly interesting for the overall aims of RUEG2, as they involve a reorganization of two linguistic domains which affect, on the one hand, the core grammatical system (internal interface), and, on the other hand, the external interface between morphosyntax and pragmatics (information structure and discourse organisation).

 

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