Search Results (6)

Heritage language (HL) research has investigated adults and children, while adolescents have garnered far less attention, despite adolescence being a crucial time in the development of idiolects and identities, and, hence, also for language maintenance. This study describes HL usage among Estonian-Swedish bilingual teenagers. Data were collected from 21 first- and second-generation Estonian heritage speakers (aged 12–17). Non-standard usage occurred in our corpus at low rates but was found across most speakers in certain areas of morphosyntax. We describe which factors drive such non-standard usage based on the example of two structures with more frequent non-standard occurrence: (1) object marking and (2) experiencer constructions with the verb meeldima ‘to like/please’. Around 6% of objects were marked in divergent ways. Speakers employed two strategies for marking non-standard objects: case omission (i.e., using nominative and/or unmarked forms) and substitution (i.e., using non-target-like marking). Non-standard forms occurred in 11% of experiencer constructions. Speakers diverged more with marking the nominative Stimulus than the dative-like Experiencer, although both occurred in standard and non-standard forms. The reported usage patterns can be explained through the combined effect of cross-linguistic influence, simplification, and input frequency. We also tested the relation between non-standard usage and the speaker’s sociolinguistic background, with mixed results. Considering the limited size and scope of the corpus, overall, the reported divergent usage patterns evidence the role of linguistic input and cross-linguistic effects. Full article

This article presents RuPro, a new corpus resource of prosodically annotated speech by Russian heritage speakers in the U.S. and monolingually raised Russian speakers. The corpus contains data elicited in formal and informal communicative situations, by male/female and adolescent/adult speakers. The resource is presented with its architecture and annotation, and it is shown how it is used for the analysis of intonational features of spontaneous mono- and bilingual Russian speech. The analyses investigate the length of intonation phrases, types and number of pitch accents, and boundary tones. It emerges that the speaker groups do not differ in the inventory of pitch accents and boundary tones or in the relative frequency of these tonal events. However, they do differ in the length of intonation phrases (IPs), with heritage speakers showing shorter IPs also in the informal communicative situation. Both groups also differ concerning the number of pitch accents used on content words, with heritage speakers using more pitch accents than monolingually raised speakers. The results are discussed with respect to register differentiation and differences in prosodic density across both speaker groups. Full article

Turkish is a language described as relying predominantly on non-finite subordination in the domain of clause combining. However, there are also strategies of finite subordination, as well as means of syndetic and asyndetic paratactic clause combining, especially in the informal settings. Clause combining is and has been one of the focal points of research on heritage Turkish (h-Turkish). One point is particularly clear: In comparison with the monolingual setting, finite means of clause combining are more frequent in h-Turkish in Germany, the U.S., and the Netherlands, while non-finite means of clause combining are less frequent. Overall, our results confirm the findings of earlier studies: heritage speakers in Germany and the U.S. prefer paratactic means of clause combining using connectors, as opposed to monolingual speakers. Our results also reveal that age (adolescents vs. adults) and register (informal vs. formal) significantly modulate the use of connectors. Moreover, we find that the shift in preferences in means of clause combining triggers an expansion in the system of connectors and leads to the development of new narrative connectors, such as o zaman and derken. The system of syndetic paratactic clause combining is expanding in heritage Turkish. This expansion calls for multifaceted modeling of change in heritage languages, which integrates language-internal factors (register), dynamics of convergence with the contact languages, and extra-linguistic factors (age and language use). Full article

Research on child heritage speakers (HSs) has shown successful language acquisition, comparable to monolinguals, whereas research on adult HSs often claims incomplete acquisition. This seems to be an evident contradiction in the current state of research, which may be explained by a possible language shift during adolescence or adulthood, but which does not necessarily have to be equated with a lack of competence. In an overview of the existing studies on child and adult HSs of French in Germany, we show that HSs are not incomplete acquirers of French and we suggest theoretical and practical implications following these findings. Our aim is to show, first, that HSs of French in Germany are not unanimously disadvantaged compared with French speakers in countries where French is a majority language, and second, that complete acquisition is independent of language dominance, a notion that has received particular attention in studies on multilingual and HL acquisition. Full article

This paper investigates gender agreement mismatches between nominal expressions and the targets of agreement they control in two groups (adults and adolescents) of Heritage Greek speakers in the USA. On the basis of language production data elicited via a narration task, we show that USA Greek Heritage speakers, unlike monolingual controls, show mismatches in gender agreement. We will show that the mismatches observed differ with respect to the agreement target between groups, i.e., noun phrase internal agreement seems more affected in the adolescent group, while personal pronouns appear equally affected. We will argue that these patterns suggest retreat to default gender, namely neuter in Greek. Neuter emerges as default when no agreement pattern can be established. As adult speakers show less mismatches, we will explore the reasons why speakers improve across the life span. Full article

This exploratory study investigates the knowledge of word order in intransitive sentences by heritage speakers of Spanish of different age groups: 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds and adults. In doing so, we aim to fill a gap in the heritage language literature, which, to date, has mainly focused on adult heritage speakers and preschool bilingual children. The results from a judgment task reveal that child- and adolescent heritage speakers do not entirely resemble monolingual age-matched children in the acquisition of subjects in Spanish, nor do they assimilate adult heritage speakers. The data suggest that several different processes can occur simultaneously in the acquisition of word order in heritage speakers: monolingual-like acquisition, delayed acquisition, and attrition. An analysis of the influence of extraneous variables suggests that most of these effects are likely to be the consequence of quantitatively reduced input in the heritage language and increased input in the majority language. Full article