Crosslinguistic syntactic priming effects in heritage speakers: The case of Turkish (L1)-German (L2)

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the cross-linguistic interaction of the bilingual subjects of Turkish heritage speakers with the German dominant language in terms of L1 and L2 language production and comprehension processes. By using the free word order of Turkish and German as an advantage, and investigating the syntactic priming effect between L1 Turkish and L2 German it is revealed whether the syntax is shared or separate across the languages. In this framework, the persistence of syntactic priming between languages, the lexical boost effect in syntactic priming, the inverse preference effect, and the interface of syntactic priming between language production and comprehension are investigated. This study used an eye-tracking experiment and a sentence-recall task elucidating the cross-linguistic priming effect in language production and comprehension. The results of the study indicate that cross-linguistic syntactic priming effects are valid both in L1-L2 and L2-L1 directions, with the lexical boost effect in both directions and inverse preference effect only in the L1-L2 (German-Turkish) direction. The results of this study, furthermore, add to the body of data indicating syntax is not separate but shared between languages by providing evidence that shared-syntax argument is also valid for Turkish-German bilinguals.