Cover not available
Part of
Studies in Turkish as a Heritage Language
Edited by Fatih Bayram
[Studies in Bilingualism 60] 2020
► pp. 229–264

Chapter 10
Turkish in Germany

An adult-state twice-told-tale approach to not-entirely-balanced childhood bilingualism

| Adam Mickiewicz University

This is a qualitative case study of Turkish as a heritage language in Germany, viewed in the context of one adult speaker’s bilingualism: Sadık, a young worker and Turkish-German bilingual born and raised in a western German industrial town. The study is empirically based on a language-biographical reminiscence, which surfaces in both languages: first in German, then in Turkish, in a more or less informally elicited narrative. The language-biographical perspective is taken as a starting point for explorations into structural comparison at the discourse and sentence level. The aim is to identify phenomena that have a function in verbalising language-biographical memory and that can at the same time be cross-linguistically compared.

Keywords: Turkish-German bilingualism, diaspora Turkish, twice-told tale, sociolinguistic vitality, bad language syndrome, majority language anxiety, language-biographical memory, complexity, noun phrase modification, complement constructions, vulnerable morphosyntax, narrative density, evaluative stance
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical perspectives: Heritage bilingualism and heritage Turkish
    • 2.1Sociolinguistic vitality
    • 2.2The discourse structure of language-biographical narratives
    • 2.3Morphosyntactic issues
  • 3.Sociolinguistic context of a disinherited bilingual biography
  • 4.The passport: Detailing, condensation and evaluation in discourse
    • 4.1Interjections and exclamations
    • 4.2A chunk of background details about an emotion
    • 4.3Chunks of evaluation inserted into the plot
    • 4.4A chunk of detail to ensure understanding
    • 4.5Plot-advancing, detailing parataxis
    • 4.6Detailing by means of discourse-level finite hypotaxis
  • 5.Vulnerable morphosyntax: Modification and complementation
    • 5.1Noun modification: Details squeezed into an NP
    • 5.2Complement constructions: -ma versus -DIK, and case
  • 6.Conclusion and outlook
  • Notes
  • HIAT conventions
  • References
Published online: 18 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.60.10her
References

References

Aarsen, J.
(1996) Relating events in two languages: Acquisition of cohesive devices by Turkish-Dutch bilingual children at school age. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.Google Scholar
Aarts, R.
(1998) Functional literacy of Turkish children in Turkey and in the Netherlands. In L. Johanson (Ed.) 1998 The Mainz Meeting. Proceedings of the seventh International Conference on Turkish Linguistics (pp. 517–526). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Akıncı, Mehmet-Ali
(2006) Du bilinguisme à la bilittéracie: Comparaison entre élèves bilingues turc-français et élèves monolingues français [From bilingualism to biliteracy: Comparison between Turkish-French bilingual and French monolingual pupils]. Langage et société 116: 93–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Akıncı, Mehmet-Ali & Jisa, Harriet
(2000) Development of Turkish Clause Linkage in the Narrative texts of Turkish-French bilingual children in France. In: Göksel, Aslı & Kerslake, Celia (eds.) Studies on Turkish and Turkic Languages. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 317–324.Google Scholar
(2001) Développement de la narration en langue faible et forte: Le cas des connecteurs [Development of narrative in the week and strong language: The case of connectors]. Acqusition et Interaction en Langue Étrangère (AILE) 14: 87–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Akıncı, Mehmet-Ali & Keskin, Bengi & Küntay, Aylin
(2006) Using Connectives in Written texts in Turkish: A comparison of Turkish-French bilingual and monolingual children and teenagers. Talk presented at the 13th International Conference on Turkish Linguistics, August 16-20 2006, Uppsala, Sweden.Google Scholar
Backus, A.
(2004) Turkish as an immigrant language in Europe. In T. Bhatia & W. Ritchie (Eds.), The Handbook of Bilingualism (pp. 689–724). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Backus, A. & Onar Valk, P.
(2014) Outcomes of Turkish-Dutch contact: Syntactic convergence in subordination structures. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on Heritage/Community Languages, 7–8 March, 2014, University of California, Los Angeles, Panel on Turkish in Northwestern Europe.
Bayram, F.
(2013) Acquisition of Turkish by heritage spakers: A processability approach (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Newcastle University.Google Scholar
Bayram, F., & Wright, C.
(2017) Turkish heritage language acquisition and maintenance in Germany. In P. P. Trifonas & T. Aravossitas (Eds.) Handbook of research and practice in heritage language education (pp. 482–502). Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Benmamoun, E., Montrul, S., & Polinsky, M.
(2013a) Heritage languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistics. Theoretical Linguistics, 39(3–4): 129–181.Google Scholar
(2013b) Defining an “ideal” heritage speaker: Theoretical and methodological challenges. Reply to peer commentaries. Theoretical Linguistics, 39(3–4): 259–294.Google Scholar
Bührig, K., & Rehbein, J.
(2017) Multilingualism and work experience in Germany: On the pragmatic notion of ‘patiency’. In J. Angouri, M. Meredith, & J. Holmes (Eds.), Negotiating boundaries at work: Talking and transitions (pp. 133–154). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Chafe, W.
(1994) Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dirim, İ.
(2015) Umgang mit migrationsbedingter Mehrsprachigkeit in der schulischen Bildung [Dealing with migration-related multilingualism in school education]. In R. Leiprecht & A. Steinbach (Eds.), Schule in der Migrationsgesellschaft: Ein Handbuch. Band 2: Sprache – Rassismus – Professionalität (pp. 25–48). Schwalbach: debus Pädagogik.Google Scholar
Dollnick, M.
(2013) Konnektoren in türkischen und deutschen Texten bilingualer Schüler: Eine vergleichende Langzeituntersuchung zur Entwicklung schriftsprachlicher Kompetenzen [Connectors in Turkish and Geman texts by bilingual pupils: A comparative longitudinal study on the development of written language competence]. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, C. A.
(2000 [1959]) Diglossia. In L. Wei (Ed.), The bilingualism reader (pp. 65–80). London: Routledge. Originally published in Word, 115, 325–340.Google Scholar
Fienemann, J.
(2006) Erzählen in zwei Sprachen: Diskursanalytische Untersuchung von Erzählungen auf Deutsch und Französisch [Narrating in Two Languages: Discourse-analytical Investigation of Narratives in German and French]. Münster.Google Scholar
Fishman, J. A.
(1991) Reversing language shift: Theory and practice of assistance to threatened languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
(2000 [1967]) Bilingualism with and without diglossia: Diglossia with and without bilingualism. In L. Wei (Ed.), The bilingualism reader (pp. 81–88). London: Routledge. Originally published in: Journal of Social Issues, 23(2): 29–38.Google Scholar
Franceschini, R.
(2004) Sprachbiographien: Das Basel-Prag-Projekt (BPP) und einige mögliche Generalisierungen bezüglich Emotion und Spracherwerb. In R. Franceschini & J. Miecznikowski (Eds.), Leben mit mehreren Sprachen/ Vivre avec plusieurs langues – Sprachbiographien/ Biographies langagières (pp. 121–146). Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Franceschini, R., & Miecznikowski, J.
(2004) “Wie bin ich zu meinen verschiedenen Sprachen gekommen?” In R. Franceschini & J. Miecznikowski (Eds.), Leben mit mehreren Sprachen/ Vivre avec plusieurs langues – Sprachbiographien/ Biographies langagières, vii–xxi. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Göksel, A., & Kerslake, C.
(2005) Turkish: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Herkenrath, A.
(2012) Receptive multilingualism in an immigrant constellation: Examples from Turkish-German child language. In J. D. ten Thije, J. Rehbein, & A. Verschik (Eds.), Receptive Multilingualism. Special issue of International Journal of Bilingualism, 16(3), 287–314.Google Scholar
(2014) The acquisition of -DIK and its communicative range in monolingual versus bilingual constellations. In N. Demir, B. Karakoç, & A. Menz (Eds.), Turcology and linguistics. Éva Ágnes Csató Festschrift (pp. 219–236). Ankara: Hacettepe University Publications.Google Scholar
(2018) Speaker deixis, body, and context: The unfolding of language-biographical memory in spoken Turkish. In É. Á. Csató, J. Parslow, E. Türker, & E. Wigen (Eds.), Building bridges to Turkish: Essays in honour of Bernt Brendemoen (pp. 147–173). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
in preparation). HIAT transcriptions from the LiLaC Corpus/ LiLaC Korpüs’ünden HIAT transkripsyonları. LiLaC project (2007–2010): ‘Schreiben zwischen Sprachen und Kulturen: Ressourcen und Hemmnis der Integration/ Literacy between Languages and Cultures: Resources and obstacles for integration/ Diller İle Kültürler Arası Yazışma Projesi’, supervised by L. Hoffmann, U. Quasthoff, & M. Kastner, TU Dortmund, Institut für deutsche Sprache und Literatur und Institut für Psychologie (Unpublished data). Giessen: Justus Liebig University & Poznań: Adam Mickiewicz University.
Herkenrath, A., & Karakoç, B.
(2002) Zum Erwerb von Verfahren der Subordination bei türkisch-deutsch bilingualen Kindern: Transkripte und quantitative Aspekte [On the acquisition of linguistic means of subordination in Turkish-German bilingual children] (Arbeitspapiere zur Mehrsprachigkeit/ Working Papers in Multilingualism, Series B, Nr. 37). Universität Hamburg, Sonderforschungsbereich 538 Mehrsprachigkeit.Google Scholar
(2007) Zur Morphosyntax äußerungsinterner Konnektivität bei mono- und bilingualen türkischen Kindern [On the morphosyntax of utterance-internal connectivity in monolingual and bilingual children]. In H. Boeschoten & H. Stein (Eds.), Einheit und Vielfalt in der türkischen Welt. Beiträge zur 5. Deutschen Turkologenkonferenz (pp. 131–159). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
(2017) Two questionable candidates for subordinatorship: -mIşlIK and -mAzlIK in Turkish. Turkic Languages, 21(1), 46–78.Google Scholar
Herkenrath, Annette & Rehbein, Jochen
(2012) Pragmatic Corpus Analysis, exemplified by Turkish-German bilingual and monolingual data. In: Schmidt, Thomas & Wörner, Kai (eds.) Multilingual Corpora and Multilingual Corpus Analysis. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Hamburg Studies in Multilin-gualism 14), 123–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johanson, L.
(1975) Some remarks on Turkic “Hypotaxis”. In L. Johanson (Ed.), Linguistische Beiträge zur Gesamtturkologie (pp. 210–224). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadió.Google Scholar
(1990) Die “problematischen” türkischen Nebensätze. Türk Kültürü Araştırmaları, 28, 201–209.Google Scholar
(1991) Zur Sprachentwicklung in der “Turcia Germanica”. In I. Baldauf, K. Kreiser, & S. Tezcan (Eds.), Türkische Sprachen und Literaturen (pp. 199–212). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Johanson, Lars
(1996) Kopierte Satzjunktoren im Türkischen. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung (STUF) 49(1): 39–49.Google Scholar
Johanson, L.
(2010) Three kinds of clause junctors. In G. Ziegelmeyer & N. Cyffer (Eds.), Aspects of co- and subordination: Case studies from African, Slavonic and Turkic languages (pp. 9–14). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.Google Scholar
(2013) Selection of subjunctors in Turkic non-finite complement clauses. Bilig, 67, 73–90. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kameyama, S.
(2004) Verständnissicherndes Handeln: Zur reparativen Bearbeitung von Rezeptionsdefiziten in deutschen und japanischen Diskursen. Münster: Waxmann.Google Scholar
Karakoç, B., & Herkenrath, A.
(2016) Clausal complementation in Turkish and Noghay in a semantic perspective. In K. Boye & P. Kehayov (Eds.), Complementizer Semantics in European Languages (pp. 619–664). Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kerslake, C.
(2007) Alternative subordination strategies in Turkish. In J. Rehbein, C. Hohenstein, & L. Pietsch, (Eds.) Connectivity in grammar and discourse (pp. 231–258). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koch, P. & Oesterreicher, W.
(1994) Schriftlichkeit und Sprache. In H. Günther & O. Ludwig (Eds.), Schrift und Schriftlichkeit: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch internationaler Forschung (Vol. 1, pp. 587–604). Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kornfilt, J.
(1997) Turkish. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
(2006) Agreement: The (unique and local) syntactic and morphological licenser of subject Case. In J. Costa (Ed.), Studies on agreement (pp. 141–173). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2007) Verbal and nominalized finite clauses in Turkish. In I. Nikolaeva (Ed.), Finiteness: Theoretical and empirical foundations (pp. 305–334). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, J., & Whitman, J.
(2012b) Afterword: Nominalizations in syntactic theory. In J. Kornfilt & J. Whitman (Eds.), Nominalizations in linguistic theory. Special issue of Lingua, 121(7): 1297–1313.Google Scholar
(2012a) Introduction: Nominalizations in syntactic theory. In J. Kornfilt & J. Whitman (Eds.), Nominalizations in Linguistic Theory. Special issue of Lingua, 121(7): 1160–1163.Google Scholar
Küppers, A., Schroeder, C., & Gülbeyaz, I.
(2014) Turkish in formal education in Germany: Analysis and perspectives. Istanbul: Istanbul Policy Center, Sabancı University, Stiftung Mercator Initiative.Google Scholar
Küppers, A., Şimşek, Y., & Schroeder, C.
(2015) Turkish as a minority language in Germany: Aspects of language development and language instruction. Zeitschrift für Fremdsprachenforschung 26(1), 29–51.Google Scholar
Maas, U.
(2008) Sprache und Sprachen in der Migrationsgesellschaft: Die schriftkulturelle Dimension. Osnabrück: V&R Unipress.Google Scholar
(2010) Literat und orat: Grundbegriffe der Analyse geschriebener und gesprochener Sprache. Grazer Linguistische Studien, 73, 21–150.Google Scholar
Matras, Yaron
(2009) Language Contact. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. A.
(2012) Is the heritage language like a second language? Eurosla Yearbook, 12, 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Onar Valk, P.
(2015) Transformation in Dutch Turkish Subordination? Converging evidence of change regarding finiteness and word order in complex clauses. Tilburg Tilburg University.Google Scholar
Onar, V. P., & Backus, A. M.
(2013) Syntactic change in an immigrant language: From non-finite to finite subordinate clauses in Turkish. Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteasduse ajakiri/ Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, 4(2), 7–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perdue, C.
(Ed.) (1984) Second language acquisition by adult immigrants: A field manual. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Pfaff, C. W.
(1993) Turkish language development in Europe. In G. Extra & L. Verhoeven (Eds.), Immigrant languages in Europe (pp. 119–146). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
(1994) Early bilingual development of Turkish children in Berlin. In G. Extra & L. Verhoeven (Eds.), The cross-linguistic study of bilingual development (pp. 75–97). Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen.Google Scholar
(1999) Changing patterns of language mixing in a bilingual child. In G. Extra & L. Verhoeven (Eds.), Bilingualism and migration (pp. 97–121). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pfaff, C. W., Dollnick, M., & Herkenrath, A.
(2017) Classroom and community support for Turkish in Germany. In O. Kagan, M. Carreira, & C. Chik (Eds.), A handbook on heritage language education: From innovation to program building (pp. 423–437). London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polinsky, M.
(2009) What heritage speakers know… Paper presented at the VI Anniversary conference, Washington, DC, March 20, 2009. [URL]> (2 October 2013).
Rehbein, J.
(1986) Sprachnoterzählungen [Narratives of linguistic distress]. In E. W. B. Hess-Lüttich (Ed.), Integration und Identität: Soziokulturelle und psychopädagogische Probleme im Sprachunterricht mit Ausländern (pp. 63–86). Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
(2007a) Erzählen in zwei Sprachen – auf Anforderung [Narrating in two languages – Upon request]. In K. Meng & J. Rehbein (Eds.), Kinderkommunikation – einsprachig und mehrsprachig. Mit einer erstmals auf Deutsch publizierten Arbeit von Lev. S Vygotskij, Zur Frage nach der Mehrsprachigkeit im kindlichen Alter (pp. 389–453). Münster: Waxmann.Google Scholar
(2007b) Matrix constructions. In J. Rehbein, C. Hohenstein, & L. Pietsch (Eds.), Connectivity in grammar and discourse (pp. 419–447). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009) Rehbein-ENDFAS (Die Entwicklung narrativer Diskursfähig-keiten im Deutschen und Türkischen in Familie und Schule). Universität Hamburg, EXMARaLDA: SFB 538-Korpora: [URL]> (6 June 2020).
(2012) Aspekte koordinierender Konnektivität: Bemerkungen zu ‘aber’, ‘also’ sowie ‘und’. In H. Roll & A. Schilling (Eds.), Mehrsprachiges Handeln im Fokus von Linguistik und Didaktik. Festschrift Wilhelm Grießhaber. Duisburg-Essen: Universitätsverlag Rhein-Ruhr OHG.Google Scholar
Rehbein, J., & Herkenrath, A.
(2015) Converbs in monolingual and bilingual Turkish. In D. Zeyrek, C. S. Şimşek, Çiğdem, A. Ufuk, & J. Rehbein (Eds.) Ankara Papers in Turkish and Turkic Linguistics (pp. 493–513). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rehbein, J., Herkenrath, A., & Karakoç, B.
(2009) Rehbein-SKOBI (Sprachliche Konnektivität bei bilingual türkisch-deutsch aufwachsenden Kindern und Jugendlichen). Universität Hamburg, EXMARaLDA: SFB 538-Korpora: E5. [URL]> (6 June 2020).
Rosenberg, P., & Schroeder, C.
(Eds.) (2016) Mehrsprachigkeit als Ressource [Multilingualism as as Resource]. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Schroeder, C.
(2016) Clause combining in Turkish as a minority language in Germany. In M. Güven, D. Akar, B. Öztürk, & M. Kelepir (Eds.), Exploring the Turkish linguistic landscape: Essays in honor of Eser Erguvanlı-Taylan (pp. 81–101). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Schellhardt, C., & Schroeder, C.
(2015) Nominalphrasen in deutschen und türkischen Texten mehrsprachiger Schüler/innen [Nominal phrases in German and Turkish texts by multlingual pupils]. In K-M. Köpcke & A. Ziegler (Eds.), Deutsche Grammatik im Kontakt in Schule und Unterricht (pp. 241–262). Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sevinç, Y., & Backus, A.
(2017) Anxiety, language use and linguistic competence in an immigrant context: A vicious circle? International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 22(6): 706–724. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Treichel, B.
(2004) Identitätsarbeit, Sprachbiographien und Mehrsprachigkeit: Autobiographisch-narrative Interviews mit Walisern zur sprachlichen Figuration von Identität und Gesellschaft [Identity work, linguistic biographies and multilingualism: Autobiographical-narrative interviews with Welsh people on the linguistic figuration of identity and society]. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Werlen, I.
(2002) Sprachbiographien: Wie italienische Migrantinnen und Migranten der zweiten Generation in der deutschen Schweiz ihr Sprachleben sehen. Bulletin VALS-ASLA (Vereinigung für angewandte Linguistik in der Schweiz), 76, 57–77.Google Scholar