Die Rolle des Inputs bei der Produktion stimmloser Plosive bei russisch-deutschen und polnisch-deutschen bilingualen Jugendlichen
The Impact of Input on the Production of Voiceless Stops in Russian and Polish as Heritage Languages in Germany

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the impact of heritage language input on the production of voiceless stops in Russian and Polish by second-generation speakers in Germany. On the basis of data collected from 39 families, we investigate the realization of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Russian and Polish by both school-age bilingual children and their parents. Our main findings show that there are significant differences between children who receive input only or mainly in their heritage language and children who get mainly input in German: The children who receive only or mainly input in their heritage language realize the stops with the lowest VOT values, which are also the closest to the values of the first generation. In contrast, the children with more input in German realize the stops with longer VOT and show a stronger convergence towards German VOT measures.

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