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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 10:4 (2020) ► pp.530–558

Acceleration and delay in bilingual, trilingual and multilingual German-Romance children

Finite verb placement in German

| Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany
| Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany

A production test with 91 bilingual, trilingual and multilingual children (who acquire more than three languages) elicited finite verbs in German. In comparison with monolinguals, the children were accelerated with respect to finite verb placement in main clauses. Following Biberauer & Richards (2006), the EPP feature of T can be satisfied in different ways across languages: If a DP is necessary, which is the case for adult German, it can either be raised from Spec,vP to Spec,TP (in which case the finite verb surfaces in non-clause-final position) or it is pied-piped to Spec,TP. In the latter case, the whole vP is placed in the specifier of TP, giving rise to V-final patterns. The bilingual, trilingual and multilingual children prefer Spec-raising to Spec-pied-piping. We argue that the choice of the means for EPP satisfaction in the German of the multilingual children is influenced by the respective Romance language (French/Spanish).

Keywords: early trilingualism, German finite verb placement, cross-linguistic influence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Finite verb placement in German
  • 3.Previous studies on the acquisition of finite verb placement in German
    • 3.1Main clauses
    • 3.2Subordinate clauses
  • 4.Cross-sectional study
    • 4.1Methodology
      • 4.1.1Participants
      • 4.1.2Receptive vocabulary task PPVT
      • 4.1.3The Crazy-House-Test
    • 4.2Results
    • 4.3A glance at German subordinate clauses
  • 5.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.17081.arn
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