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Linguistic Foundations of Heritage Language Development from the Perspective of Romance Languages in Germany

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Handbook of Research and Practice in Heritage Language Education

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of different factors determining the linguistic competence of heritage speakers (HSs) based on examples from speakers who speak a Romance language (French, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish) as heritage language (HL) and German as the environmental language. Since the relative amount of contact with the HL and the environmental language may vary during the acquisition process, the role of language dominance (in terms of relative language proficiency) is of particular interest for HL development. In addition to dominance (and related to it), cross-linguistic influence (CLI) may have an influence on the outcome of HL acquisition. Finally, quality and quantity of input also determine HL acquisition and will be discussed in connection with heritage language education.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departmento de Estudos Germanísticos e Eslavos (DEGE), Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Cristina Flores

  2. Universität Konstanz and the Arctic University of Norway, Constance, Germany

    Tanja Kupisch

  3. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany

    Esther Rinke

Authors
  1. Cristina Flores
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  2. Tanja Kupisch
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  3. Esther Rinke
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Correspondence to Cristina Flores .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. OISE/University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Peter Pericles Trifonas

  2. CERES/University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Themistoklis Aravossitas

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Flores, C., Kupisch, T., Rinke, E. (2018). Linguistic Foundations of Heritage Language Development from the Perspective of Romance Languages in Germany. In: Trifonas, P., Aravossitas, T. (eds) Handbook of Research and Practice in Heritage Language Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44694-3_12

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