TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rinker, Tanja
A1  - Bloder, Theresa Sophie
A1  - Plötner, Kathleen
T1  - Italian and German lexical development in Italian heritage speakers in kindergarten and elementary school settings
JF  - Lingue e linguaggio / Dipartimento di Lingue
N2  - Language development in children with a heritage language background is often characterized by a shift towards the majority language once children enter formal educational contexts. 
In Germany, educational programs that target heritage languages are scarce. 
It is therefore of interest whether children with a heritage language background can benefit from a bilingual program targeting their heritage language. 
In this paper, we report data on the lexical skills of Italian heritage children in two educational contexts, bilingual Italian-German kindergartens and a bilingual Italian-German elementary school. 
We examine (1) developmental trajectories of children's lexical skills in German and Italian, (2) differences between noun and verb development, (3) differences between lexical production and comprehenand Italian, kindergarteners showed balanced receptive vocabulary skills. 
By contrast, elementary school-children had a larger German than Italian vocabulary. Both groups demonstrated a clear dominance of nouns over verbs. 
While school children already performed at ceiling in German at the end of first grade, across the school years, their Italian vocabulary increased, nouns in particular.
KW  - Italian heritage language
KW  - lexical development
KW  - bilingual Italian-German education
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1418/104449
SN  - 1720-9331
VL  - 21
IS  - 1
SP  - 53
EP  - 72
PB  - Società editrice il Mulino
CY  - Bologna
ER  -