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Contains fulltext : 252720.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Bilingual development is characterized by systematic variability, so called profile effects. This paper investigates dominance in exposure and linguistic distance as potential sources of bilingual profile effects by comparing the lexical and narrative profiles of Greek-German bilinguals to those of Dutch-German bilinguals. Both bilingual groups, aged 10–11 years, were recruited from bilingual schoolcontexts in Germany. The Greek-German bilinguals (N=15) constitute a classic heritage language population with a fairly distantly related language combination, the Dutch- German bilinguals (N=15) constitute an under-researched group of bilingual speakers with a very closely related language combination. Participants were asked about their language exposure and underwent a productive vocabulary task and a narrative production task in both languages. Findings indicate that dominance in exposure did not directly translate into dominance in lexical proficiency, which might be related to a cognate facilitation effect in the lexical tasks for the Dutch-German bilinguals. The narrative analysis indicates that, on grouplevel, dominance in exposure translated into dominance in narrative performance. A correlational analysis showed that dominance affected narrative measures differently and correlated differently with narrative measures depending on the group and, thus, language combination. However, it could not be affirmed that the linguistic proximity of Dutch and German balanced out dominance effects in general, since dominance in that group of bilinguals was too stark. It is concluded from this that dominance in exposure and linguistic distance interact in bilingual development, but that this relationship is also dependent on the magnitude of dominance and the type of task and linguistic domain under investigation. 20 p.

There are multiple ways in which language learners’ multilingual repertoire can be put to use in foreign language learning and teaching. One such use is receptive multilingualism (RM, cf. Blees & Ten Thije 2017). Despite the fact that RM has been found to be an effective means of communication between adult speakers of typologically related languages, like Dutch and German (see Beerkens, 2010; Van Mulken & Hendriks, 2015; Ribbert & Ten Thije, 2007), there is hardly any research investigating its use and effectiveness in younger learners in school settings (Ten Thije, Gulikers & Schoutsen, 2020). In this contribution, we present the results of a pilot study in which we investigate whether German secondary-school students make use of their multilingual repertoire by employing receptive multilingual strategies when decoding an unknown, but typologically related language (Dutch) and whether they can transfer these skills when decoding a less typologically related, unknown language (Maltese).

This study investigates reference management of two groups of 8–12 year old Greek–German bilinguals, resident in Greece (Bilinguals_GR N = 38) and in Germany (Bilinguals_GE N = 39). We analyze the bilinguals’ retellings in each language and compare them with data from two monolingual control groups of Greek and German children (Monolinguals_GR and Monolinguals_GE, N = 20 respectively). We seek to establish how the use of referential forms in character introduction, maintenance and reintroduction in the bilinguals’ narrative retellings is affected by language dominance and whether proficiency in each language patterns similarly with respect to dominance in input. Our results indicate that differences in choice of referential form can be attributed to language dominance. Bilingual production of referential expressions differed from that of monolinguals when exposure to one language outweighed the other, as in the case of Bilinguals_GE. Similarly, proficiency in terms of vocabulary, verb diversity and syntactic complexity was affected in the weaker language for this group, which showed a strong dominance in German input. When exposure was more balanced (Bilinguals_GR), proficiency measures in both languages were affected, but to a lesser degree.

Using Agrobacterium rhizogenes, roots were induced on explants of 24 different Solanaceae species and established as in vitro cultures. Some of the root clones produced tropane alkaloids at levels similar to roots of the corresponding intact plants and maintained these levels over several passages.