This paper integrates research on child simultaneous bilingual acquisition more directly into the heritage language acquisition literature. The child simultaneous bilingual literature mostly focuses on development in childhood, whereas heritage speakers are often tested at an endstate in adulthood. However, insights from child simultaneous bilingual acquisition must be considered in heritage language acquisition theorizing precisely because many heritage speakers demonstrate the adult outcomes of child simultaneous bilingual acquisition. Data from child simultaneous bilingual acquisition raises serious questions for the construct of incomplete acquisition, a term broadly used in heritage language acquisition studies to describe almost any difference heritage speakers display from baseline controls (usually monolinguals). We offer an epistemological discussion related to incomplete acquisition, highlighting the descriptive and theoretical inaccuracy of the term. We focus our discussion on two of several possible causal factors that contribute to variable competence outcomes in adult heritage speakers: input and formal instruction in the heritage language. We conclude by offering alternative terminology for heritage speaker outcomes.

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This paper is concerned with gender marking in adult French. Four groups of subjects are compared: German-French simultaneous bilinguals (2L1ers) who grew up in France, German-French 2L1ers who grew up in Germany, advanced second language learners (L2ers) who are resident either in France or in Germany at the time of testing. The major goal of the study is to investigate whether differences in input conditions (acquisition in a minority vs. a majority language context) and differences in age of onset affect gender assignment and gender agreement in the same way or differently. Furthermore, we investigate whether successful acquisition of gender is dependent on influence from German. Two experiments, an acceptability judgment task and an elicited production task, are carried out. Results show successful acquisition of agreement in all groups. By contrast, gender assignment may be mildly affected if French is acquired in a minority language context or as an L2.

In this paper, we consider elicited production data (real and nonce words tasks) from five different studies on the acquisition of grammatical gender in Heritage Russian, comparing children growing up in Germany, Israel, Norway, Latvia, and the United Kingdom. The children grow up in diverse heritage language backgrounds, ranging from small groups (in Norway) to large communities (in Latvia). Furthermore, the children vary with respect to family background (one or two Russian-speaking parents) as well as the intensity of instruction in the heritage language through complementary schools. Russian has a three-gender system (masculine, feminine, and neuter) with gender cues varying in their transparency, predictability and frequency. The majority languages that these children speak differ widely with respect to the linguistic property studied: While English has no grammatical gender, Latvian and Hebrew both have twogender systems (feminine and masculine), as well as the Oslo and Tromsø dialects of Norwegian (masculine and neuter), while German has a three-gender system, with a feminine-masculine-neuter distinction, like Russian. However, the transparency of gender assignment varies greatly, with Hebrew and Latvian having predictable gender based on the shape of the noun, like Russian, while gender assignment in Norwegian is generally arbitrary and German is semi-transparent, with gender assignment tendencies rather than rules. The focus in the paper is on language-internal and language-external factors that may be (non-)facilitative for the acquisition of gender in Russian, i.e., possible cross-linguistic influence from the majority language and the importance of background factors, such as family situation, age at start of kindergarten, size of the Russian-speaking community, current exposure to Heritage Russian instruction, and the main language of instruction. Our results show no significant differences across groups with respect to the majority language, but clear effects of background variables, with family type, age, and current exposure to Heritage Russian instruction as the most important ones.

Cross-linguistic influence (CLI) has been claimed to occur under the conditions of structural overlap, interfacing, syntactic complexity and language dominance. This study tested adjective placement in the Italian of 19 adult German–Italian simultaneous bilinguals, comparing naturalistic and experimental data. The results show no CLI from German, although the conditions for CLI are given. Instead, bilingual adults tend to overuse a structure that is unique to Italian, unlike bilingual children in previous studies. However, they do so only in the experimental data. In order to account for this, I introduce the concept of cross-linguistic overcorrection in contrast to cross-linguistic influence.

Herein, we contextualize, problematize, and offer some insights for moving beyond the problem of monolingual comparative normativity in (psycho) linguistic research on bilingualism. We argue that, in the vast majority of cases, juxtaposing (functional) monolinguals to bilinguals fails to offer what the comparison is supposedly intended to do: meet the standards of empirical control in line with the scientific method. Instead, the default nature of monolingual comparative normativity has historically contributed to inequalities in many facets of bilingualism research and continues to impede progress on multiple levels. Beyond framing our views on the matter, we offer some epistemological considerations and methodological alternatives to this standard practice that improve empirical rigor while fostering increased diversity, inclusivity, and equity in our field.

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The present study is concerned with global foreign accent (FA) in heritage speakers (HS). Specifically, we investigate whether (i) HS acquire a native accent in both languages and (ii) whether age of onset (AoO) is relevant. FA was examined in 21 adult HS of Turkish in Germany (AoO in German 0-9 years). FA was assessed for both languages with 15 monolingual raters judging speech samples of 10 seconds. Speakers were divided into two groups: Simultaneous bilinguals (2L1ers) with AoO in German before age 3 vs. early second language learners (eL2ers) with AoO in German after age 4. Our analysis revealed that most speakers had a native accent in one language and a foreign accent in the other, independently of AoO.