HUNGARIAN KIDS AND CROATIAN LANGUAGE: BILINGUISM DISAPPEARING

1. HUNGARIAN KIDS AND CROATIAN LANGUAGE: BILINGUISM DISAPPEARING Jelena Kuvač Laboratory for Psycholinguistic Research University of Zagreb labpolin@erf.hr Lidija Cvikić Department of Croatian language and literature University of Zagreb

2. Hungarian minority in Croatia • 16.596 Hungarian people im Croatia • 12.650 speak Hungarian as a mother-tongue • Baranja; ES Zmajevac (Vörosmarty) and ES Lug  east of Croatia

3. Some previous research • The teachers estimated how children learn Croatian (Vodopija, 2002.): 1st grade: listen 2nd grade: comprehension 3th grade: start to speak 4th grade: either speak or don`t  they will never speak • The 60% Hungarian children in Baranja in everyday communication use only Hungarian language (Kuvač, 2002.) • The attitudes towards Croatian language are negative (Kuvač, 2002.) • The number of language errors does not decrease with age (the influence of inappropriates educational demands) (Cvikić, Kuvač, 2003.)

4. General goal:To observe how children who speak Croatian as L2 or foreign language acquire/learn Croatian language and how they satisfy educational demands SAMPLE 12 children  1st grade elementary school Zmajevac and Kotlina ? To get insight into lexical knowledge How they apply morphological rules?

5. Vocabulary Test Comprehension Production Morphological Test Noun morphology Verb morphology Language tasks – nonstandardized, working materials

6. Comprehension Meat 91,6% Star 91,6% Hand 83,3% Bird 83,3% Fruit 83,3% Bridge 75,0% Knife 66,6% Picture 66,7% Wind 66,6% Lake 41,6% 75% Production Cat 91,6% House 66,6% ? Eye 25,0% ? Window 25,0% ? Tooth 16,6% ? Stone 25,0% ? Ear 16,6% ? Thief 8,3% ? Rope 0% ? River 0% ? 27,5% RESULTS: VOCABULARY TEST

7. RESULTS: MORPHOLOGY TEST • Noun morphology masculina 19 different paradigmatics patterns voice changes sibilarization (vojnik-vojnici), palatalization (junak-junače), inconstant –a (pas-psi), changes of final -o in –l (anđeo-anđela), collective nouns (cvijet-cvijeća), short (konj-konji) and long (vlak-vlakovi) plural

8. Overview of correct answers The same tendency in the acquisition of noun morphology as in Croatian children Nom Sing  lexical problem Gen Sing  repeat Nom Sing (češalj) or they do not apply voice changes (češalja) Nom Plu  repeat Nom Sing (jastuk); produce new forms but morphological incorrect (jastuke), they do not apply voice changes (jastuki) Gen Plu  repeat Nom Sing (pas); produce new forms but morphological incorrect (pasevi), they do not apply voice changes (pas)

9. Verb morphology • Some previous research have shown following factors that influence the acquisition of morphology: • frequency of verb types (Larsen-Frieeman, 1976; • frequency of particular verb Ellis, 1996; and others) • transparency of verb types (Dressler, 1998) • complex morphology  Croatian grammar – 7 different verb types • 3 different verbs types according to the ralation between infinitive and present forms (the frequency criterium) čitati – čitAM raditi – radIM plakati - plačEM

10. Results • Singular • AM  prototypical; • EM  complex morphology but very frequent words (errors: pišem *pisam) • IM  the lowest results – the lowest frequency of verbs (errors: letim  *letem) • Plural • more incorrect answers than in singular Reason: • one more morphological rule IM  i-e (radi-rade) (errors: rade *radiju) EM  e – u (piše-pišu) (errors: pišu *pisaju)

11. CONCLUSION • Word comprehension is better than production  psycholinguistic rule (Barrett, 1995, Taylor, 1990) • Results of words production too low for communication demands • Problems with noun and verb morphology  lexicon is base for morphology acquisition (Bates, 1997.)