79 Nevertheless, Spellerberg’s participants reported that they barely used English actively outside of the school context (apart from a small number of students that indicated a regular use outside of school) (2016: 26), although English in Denmark was illustrated as having a status of a second language. Based on this, we expect the participants of the current study to also be users of English whose experience and contact with English is mainly limited to the English language classroom. Other possible contexts where students could get into contact with English would be via television or, currently even importantly, the internet and social media (Siemund et al. 2012: 245).
Irrespective of the exact status in Germany (as this discussion would beyond the scope of this study and would not contribute significantly to its outcome), English has without any doubt a special and important role in education. This now links back to the beginning of this study (Chapter 1 and 2), where we explained that both monolingual and bilingual students acquire the foreign language English side-by-side in one classroom. Hence, we find learners of English for whom it is their first foreign language and for others for whom it is their second or additional foreign language. The next and final section of Chapter 3 will now merge this observation with research of cross-linguistic influence in third or additional language acquisition and the types of bilingual speakers that were described previously.
80 in focus, of (i) balanced bilinguals, i.e. bilinguals who have (nearly) equal proficiency in both of their native languages, of (ii) L2 foreign languages learners who grew up with one language, acquired their first foreign language during adolescence as a foreign language in a school setting, and are now, as young adults, acquiring their third language, or differently put their second foreign language, again in an instructed context, and of (iii) bilingual heritage speakers who are unbalanced bilinguals with previous knowledge of a majority language and a heritage language and who are currently acquiring their first foreign language.
Especially the latter group (iii) is of interest hereafter, because these make up a large group in our current, modern, western societies, and they are increasingly in focus in language acquisition research. As was explained, most heritage speakers are immigrants, or the offspring of immigrants, and their language learning biographies differ considerably from other bilingual speakers (Montrul 2016: 2-3). This was given as one reason why studies investigating cross-linguistic influence, metacross-linguistic awareness, or bilingual advantages, need to control for the type of learner. There are still numerous inconsistencies in the aforementioned areas and their status for bilingual heritage speakers. The role of the heritage language and the majority language in foreign language acquisition remains yet unclear. The same applies to the exact nature of advantages relating to metalinguistic awareness as well as linguistic advantages.
Therefore, we will investigate foreign language acquisition of bilingual heritage speakers in Germany and compare these findings to monolingual peers who study English as their first foreign language.
Furthermore, some of the former studies analyzed (young) adult L3 learners, and others investigated child L3 learners. Here as well, we need to make a distinction and cannot make a general claim that is valid for all adult and child learners of a third language as one group of L3 learners. These are two distinct groups that need to be examined independently and may show different patterns concerning cross-linguistic influence. The following study will only be able to make claims about young, school-aged learners of English.
A further variable that was identified to matter involves the proficiency level of the L3.
We expect different CLI patterns depending on whether we analyze initial learner or more advanced learners of a third language. Clearly, we need to separate these groups, as we may otherwise overlook developmental patterns. A developmental perspective would be desirable;
hence, longitudinal studies would be ideal, or at least studies that include different learners, i.e.
initial, intermediate, and advanced. The current study includes two sets of learners, a younger cohort, i.e. initial learners of English, and an older cohort, i.e. intermediate learners of English.
81 Two sections, Chapter 3.5 and Chapter 3.6, dealt with metalinguistic awareness and bilingual advantages. Research to date remains unclear as to how exactly metalinguistic awareness fosters further language acquisition and if this heightened metalinguistic awareness that is said to be a characteristic of bi- and multilingual people results in an advantage over monolingual learners of a foreign language. Several studies found strikingly different results, some arguing for better performance of bilinguals, yet others could not identify such advantages. In the remainder of this study, we will therefore analyze how unbalanced bilingual heritage speakers perform in the area of tense and aspect in comparison to their monolingual peers. We wish to investigate if bilingual heritage speakers have a linguistic advantage in further language acquisition.
Before we can continue with the analysis of the learner corpus, we first need to discuss the linguistic background in Chapter 4. The grammatical categories of tense and aspect will be explained, first on a general, and then on a language specific level.
82 4. Tense and aspect
This chapter provides the grammatical background for the current study. The grammatical categories tense and aspect are the basis for the comparison and the point of reference when searching for differences between monolingual and bilingual learners of English. The languages under discussion differ systematically in how location in time and aspectual information are represented.
First, in the overview section, we briefly introduce the concepts of tense, aspect, and aktionsart before we discuss the respective languages of this study individually, i.e. English, German, Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese. In addition, other means of expressing temporal and aspectual relations will be briefly touched upon in each section, depending on the relevance for the respective language. English will be analyzed in most detail, because all participants of this study are language learners that acquire English as an additional language. Second, German will also be thoroughly described, though in less detail than English. We mainly explore tense and aspect in German in comparison to what has been said about English. This step is necessary, because German is the majority language of the bilingual participants and they share this language with the monolingual German participants. Due to the dominance status of German for all bilinguals and the monolingual German participants, we mainly expect cross-linguistic influence from this language and thus, we focus exhaustively on German.
The remaining languages Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese will also be discussed, yet, to a lesser extent than English and German. For the bilingual speakers, these languages are their heritage language, which means that these are one of the two languages they naturally acquired during childhood. Therefore, we may also observe cross-linguistic influence from these heritage languages. Furthermore, they represent the native languages of the monolingual Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese control groups. This means that for each language group, the respective L1 is the only language they may transfer from when acquiring the additional language English. Hence, we also need to look at these languages and their ways of expressing tense distinctions and aspect. Moreover, in the sections discussing German, Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese, we will again draw some comparisons to English.
As a necessary consequence, it is not possible to cover every detail of tense and aspect of five languages in this study – this is clearly not the aim and it would without any doubt go beyond the scope here. As will be noticed when we move from section to section, tense and aspect are by no means simple concepts and we cannot claim to give a complete account of
83 what is possible in the languages under discussion. We can only give a rough overview.
Therefore, whenever advisable, further readings are suggested.
Following these five sub-chapters, there is a section that discusses the Aspect Hypothesis, a highly controversial yet potentially relevant theory in (non-native) language acquisition which developed from generative linguistics but is still relevant in recent linguistics studies. The subsequent part looks at the relevant languages from a comparative perspective and introduces contrastive analysis. Similarities and differences concerning tense and aspect will be revisited and summarized in Chapter 4.8.1, combining all languages that are of importance for the following analysis. Then, there is a section that reports on previous studies that investigated the acquisition of tense and aspect in English by non-native learners in general, and in the second part also specifically for L2 learners with a German, Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese background (Chapter 4.8.2). Finally, Chapter 4 finishes with a concise conclusion and reflects upon the main arguments put forward in this chapter.