Der Erwerb von Deutsch als Fremdsprache in der frühesten Kindheit

This article appeared in the volume “ Perspektiven Drei. Akten der 3. Tagung Deutsche Sprachwissenschaft in Italien (Rom, 14.-16.2.2008), edited by Di Meola, Claudio / Gaeta, Livio / Hornung, Antonie / Rega, Lorenza., 2009. Frankfurt a.M. u.a.: Lang (= Deutsche Sprachwissenschaft international), 37-55. This study explores the early acquisition of German as a Foreign Language by a group of 3- 5 old italian children in the nursery school. The article consists of four content-oriented parts: the first one esamines the main hypothesis about language acquisition, on whose methodologic principles the author analyzed the results of the study; the second one descrive the context of the study and the followed method; the third one analyzes the results and finally the forth one develops the scientific discussion and esamine the future research perspectives. The scientific principles of the study are the generative Hypothesis of Chomsky, the Processability Hypothesys of Clahsen/Meisel/Pienemann (1983) and Kuhs (1989) about the acquisition of a L2 or Foreign Language (FL), the debate about the critical age in the acquisition (among others Birdsong, 2005 and Nikolov-Djigunovic 2006). Most studies about the acquisition of a L2 don’t include the early exposition to a FL, which is not easy to find in the nursery school, where the children receive their first and unique input. So the articles pays spezial attention to the input analysis, in oder to test whether the Generative Hypothesis Output despite Input is worthy not just for the L1 acquisition, but fort he L2 and the FL as well. According to Buttaroni and her „Foreign Language Growth“ Hypothesys (1988), the input must be appropriate, frequent and authentic in the FL. That allows the development of the acquisition process without the explicit focussing on the language forms. In accordance to several studies about the acquisition of German as L1 some topics appear not immediately in child productions, like V2 and VE: Tracy (2007) defines „turbolences“ these elements and consideres them as natural and termporary steps in the process. Clahsen reports that german children produce right sentences in German at about 36 months, while Tracy and Siebert-Ott, studing immigrant children in Germany, observe that their acquisition process has the same steps as german children but with a delay of almost one year in the language productions. The present study aimes to show whether the finite verb placement is related to the italian or to the german language system in the productions of young italian speakers acquiring German at early age and whether there is trace of a german „Klammer“, which determines the position of non finite verbs in the last position. Furthermore, the purpose is to provide evidences on the acquisition of the name gendre, which is another topic hat appears only in the third stages by german children (Clahsen, 1988). According to Müller (2007) and others, speakers of Romance languages learning German as a second language produce wrong tasks in these three topics. In our study it is very important to consider the status of the language: the examinated young learners can’t generally find elements of German in their familiar or social context, that means that German is 100% a FL. So every result of this study is related to the acquisition of a FL, becouse the organisation of the kindergarten does not contemplate the language immersion (nor partial or total). The german input is anyway authentic, becouse it is offered by german speaking teachers. The children were registrated during interactions, games and activities in the nursery school for one year. The corpus has been divided in two macro-groups: sentences with verb forms in German, sentences without verbs (or with verb forms in Italian). The first group has been further divided in two microsections: sentences with second finite verbs placements or with non finite verb in the last position (german system) at one side and sentences with verbs in German but following the italian structure (SVO) at the other side. In 20% of the observed sentences the verbs is produced in German, but the main sentences are formulaic, repetitions of phrases that children hear often by teachers, whose whole structure has not been changed. We can say that it is an imitative reproduction that shows a correct pragmatic use of the language, while the sentences are produced at the right moments and in the right context, but it shows not a great deal of competence in the natural production. Pienemann (1998) observes that this production corresponds to the first step of the acquisition, named lemmatic phase. Examples of this first group are following: 1) Erz. - Weißt du, was wir jetzt machen? Anna (5 anni) - Ja, Hände waschen – 2) Erz. Du muss die Rosarote Farbe nehmen Marco (5 anni) Was hast du gesagt? Il rosa è rotto? To the second microsection of the first group belongs a small number of sentences, where the children try to produce spontaneous and unexpected verbs in German. One example is following: - Wo ist der silenzio geblieben? If we procede with the syntactic „Felderanalyse“ of the German phrase, we can also see clearly the percentage of that last case (spontaneous production versus formulaic) and their application: 1:3 Vor-Vorfeld Vorfeld V2 Mittelfeld VE a Ja Hände waschen b Was hast du gesagt? c Wo ist der silenzio geblieben? It is anyway relevant that in almost 7 occasions children try to produce alone german sentences without receiving an explicit stimolous by the teachers. In that case we can confirm, according to Vainikka (1994) and Siebert-Ott (2001) that: 1) some children can build a sentence based on the structure SOV after two years of project (all sentences of the second microsection of the first group has been produced by 5 years old children) 2) the finit verb placement appears together with the morphologic congruence However, the sentences of the second group are more (80% of the corpus) and present the same characteristics, that are: 1) the syntactic borrowing from Italian, showed by the last element in the syntactic chains, who reveals the weakest language (German), that occupies the lower placement of the structure: a) Tu hai gli occhi klein b) Oggi sono krank c) Dopo tu sarai froh? d) Sì, ma wenig e) Ich nein cannuccia rot f) Questa è la Gabel g) Non ce l’ho l’Ente (beim Bingo) h) Ieri ho raccolto molti Blumen i) Posso offrire i Teller? 2) the lack of german verbs in any form 3) the lack of connector or chunks Nevertheless it is possible to observe some elemets that surprisingly appear in the child productions also in this group, for example the correct genre of the determinates, although they are express in Italian: l) mi lavi con il Wasser (la –fem – acqua, the water) m) hai la Brille (gli – pl – occhiali, the glasses) and sometimes in German: n) tu hai die occhi blu (gli – pl) The correctness of the genre is that much important as we consider it, as Myer Scotton (2006) does in the bilingual research, one of the early morphemes of the Matrix Language. We can hypothize somehow an influence of the FL, that avows herself in unexpected forms like the early appearing words in the L1 acquisition process. The results of the study can be summarized as follows: a) the early contact with a FL is not an effort for children, that are not overloaded if the metholology is appropriate and the contact comes in one interactive and natural way. On the contrary we can give the children one chance to develop their language faculty and prepare them to the acquisition of languages; b) some children are able to produce elements of the german structure, which are of course not comparable to the production of bilingual children or children that meet German as L2 (like immigrant children in Germany), becouse of the insufficient exposure. Considered that, we can confirm the advantage of the immersion programs, that are sponsored by Wode et al; c) The input quality is a primar factor in order to promote the process of language acquisition, in case of a FL. 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