The influence of Hunsrückisch on reading in Standard German

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The Hunsrückisch, a spoken German immigration language from Southern Brazil, described by Altenhofen (1996), has been a frequent subject of investigations. This language is distinct from the Standard German, but it is similar and has a historic relation. Due to similarities with the Standard German, studies have found that the knowledge of Hunsrückisch can assist the speakers on learning Standard German (MESSA, 2009; STEFFEN, 2009). However, there is no neurolinguistic studies on the relationship between these two languages. These studies could corroborate or complement the behavioral studies. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of the Hunsrückisch on the processing of the Standard German reading. Participants of this study will be early multilingual speakers of Hunsrückisch, Portuguese and Standard German and late multilingual speaker of Portuguese, Standard German and other languages. Both groups will perform reading experiments at the word and sentence-level during a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. We compare the results of these groups to the performance of German speakers as first language; this group will also validate the instruments in Germany. Through the comparison between groups, we investigate how that the procedural knowledge of the Hunsrückisch can influence the processing of reading a similar language.

Start of project: 04.04.2015
End of project: 31.12.2017

Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg
Limberger B, Ferstl EC

Actual Research Report

• CAPES/DAAD, Stiftung