Projects

The German plural is a particular challenge for Turkish children acquiring German as a second language (Wegener, 2005). While the Turkish plural is formed regularly, the German plural system is very complex. Previous neurophysiological findings regarding adult foreign language learners show that at first noun and plural ending are stored as a lexical unit, after several months, however, nouns and plural ending are combined according to grammatical rules (Osterhout et al., 2008). In the present study using event-related potentials (ERPs), it will be investigated whether Turkish L2-learners of German between five and eight years of age process the German plural nouns still as a lexical unit or already employ grammatical rules.

• Rinker, Tanja - Project leader

• Department of Linguistics