Case Marking Variation in Heritage Slavic Languages in Toronto: Not So Different

Abstract

We examined case‐marking variation in heritage Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian. Comparing heritage to homeland Polish and Ukrainian speakers, we found only a few types and a few tokens of systematic distinction between heritage and homeland varieties. A total of 6,291 instances of nouns and pronouns were extracted from transcribed conversations with 62 speakers. Comparing normative forms to observed forms in logistic regression analyses showed that the form of the nominal and the case selector have significant effects on the rate of match between normative and observed forms, while declension does not. Most mismatches in the heritage data were replaced by the nominative, a pattern which is also occasionally found in homeland speech. The second most frequent pattern is genitive–accusative mismatch in specific contexts, in both heritage and homeland speech. Importantly, no significant differences between homeland and heritage speakers emerged, with 8% mismatch attested in the heritage and 2% in homeland data.

The Roles of Age, Attitude, and Use in First Language Development and Attrition of Turkish–English Bilinguals

“…An interesting observation was the fact that there was comparatively little variability among all the outcome variables we measured among the later bilinguals (see Figures 1a, 1b, and 1c above), but a wide spread of scores among the earlier ones. This suggests that the early bilinguals/heritage speakers under observation in the present study are not, as has sometimes been suggested (e.g., Kupisch & Rothman, ), acquiring an attrited contact variety from the parental generation (i.e., converging perfectly on the variety of the language that they are exposed to), but have failed to fully master the more complex aspects of Turkish grammar despite having been exposed to a variety of Turkish that closely resembles that spoken in the country of origin (see also the findings reported by Łyskawa and Nagy, , on Slavic languages in Toronto).…”

Case marking and word order in Greek heritage children

“…Given though, however, that these children were tested in their minority L1 (Russian or Polish) spoken primarily in the home in the context of a societal, majority L2 (Dutch or Hebrew), we believe that these children fit the definition of 'HSs' as per Kupisch & Rothman (2016) and are, therefore, reviewed here. simply as a system with a higher degree of variation but similar to what is also found in monolingual systems (Łyskawa & Nagy, 2019).…”

Redefining Language Death: Evidence From Moribund Grammars

“…A common argument levied by those supporting some version of severe attrition (or language death) is the high rate of errors in nominal morphology among heritage speakers. In the following paragraphs, we outline a number of methodological problems stemming from the notion of a (performance) error in a HL grammar, specifically: an unjustifiable assumption that the standard form is the target output; and the idealized notion that any grammatical change over time constitutes language decay in a HL (see also e.g., Łyskawa & Nagy, ).…”

“…A common argument levied by those supporting some version of severe attrition (or language death) is the high rate of errors in nominal morphology among heritage speakers. In the following paragraphs, we outline a number of methodological problems stemming from the notion of a (performance) error in a HL grammar, specifically: an unjustifiable assumption that the standard form is the target output; and the idealized notion that any grammatical change over time constitutes language decay in a HL (see also e.g., Łyskawa & Nagy, 2019). Benmamoun et al (2013) notes a number of studies across a variety of heritage languages that exhibit nontarget realization of nominal case in situations of language attrition, especially with languages that have both concatenate (suffixation) and nonconcatenate (word-internal modification, including vowel mutation) morphology.…”