Phraseological Competence in Second-Generation Heritage Speakers: The Case of Czech with German as the Dominant Language

The topic of this article is the phraseological competence of second-generation heritage speakers of Czech with German as their dominant language. The respondents of the survey are university students. The phraseological material analyzed in this study consists primarily of Czech strongly idiomatic phraseological comparisons, weakly idiomatic collocations, phrasemes with numbers, proverbs, and iconic movie quotes. Using data obtained from cloze tests, a translation task, exercises on phraseology meaning, and interviews, the study examined which types of Czech phrasemes heritage speakers retain in their mental lexicon and, where applicable, how firmly. A central question was which strategies they employ when their phraseological competence in the heritage language is required for the reception or production of phrasemes. The initial results showed, among other things, that the dominant language (German) plays a significant role and that the strategies used are individual, but also differ for the same person when the experiment is repeated later.