How Flexible Are Grammars Past Puberty? The Case of Relative Clauses in Turkish‐American Returnees.
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| Title: | How Flexible Are Grammars Past Puberty? The Case of Relative Clauses in Turkish‐American Returnees. |
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| Authors: | Coşkun Kunduz, Aylin1,2 (AUTHOR) aylin.coskun-kunduz@uni-konstanz.de, Montrul, Silvina1 (AUTHOR) |
| Source: | Language Learning. Jun2026, Vol. 76 Issue 2, p391-424. 34p. |
| Subject Terms: | *Bilingualism, *Language acquisition, Relative clauses, Puberty, Heritage language speakers, Turkish language, Morphosyntax |
| Geographic Terms: | Türkiye |
| Abstract: | How flexible are grammars after puberty? To answer this, we test returnees: heritage speakers (HS) born in an immigration context who returned to their homeland in later years. If returnees are targetlike, then language is still malleable after puberty; in contrast, if maturational effects are in play, postpuberty returnees will show variability. Thirty‐two Turkish‐American returnees, 30 Turkish HS in the United States, and 30 monolinguals completed an acceptability judgment task and a sentence repetition task on a vulnerable structure in Turkish HS, namely relative clauses. Results showed that (a) returnees patterned with monolinguals, who significantly outperformed HS in both tasks; and (b) age of return to Turkey, length of residence, and contact with English upon return were not significant predictors of returnees' performance. This suggests that complex morphosyntax is malleable after puberty. These findings provide a unique angle on the roles of age and input variables in bilingual language acquisition and maintenance. A one‐page Accessible Summary of this article in nontechnical language is freely available in the Supporting Information online and at https://oasis‐database.org [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| Database: | Education Research Complete |
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