Age, input quantity and their effect on linguistic performance in the home and societal language among Russian-German and Russian-Hebrew preschool children

This chapter investigates bilingual acquisition in language minority childrenfrom Russian-speaking backgrounds in Israel and Germany and the effects ofselected background factors on bilingual knowledge of lexicon and morpho-syntax. Background factors are divided into external factors (e.g., parenteducation and occupation, birth order and family size), those that the child bringsto the language learning effort, and internal factors (age of onset and length of
exposure to the second language), which reect the child’s language experience.
The aim of the chapter is to trace the effects of age, length of exposureand the amount of language use, i.e. input quantity, on the acquisition of bothlanguages in a bilingual context. To that end, a comprehensive treatment ofthe linguistic performance in two languages and comparison of development/attrition in the home /L1 and societal languages/L2 are provided.