Cross-linguistic similarities and differences in bilingual acquisition and attrition: Possessives and double definiteness in Norwegian heritage language

Abstract

This study investigates possessives and modified definite DPs in a corpus of heritage Norwegian spoken in the US. Both constructions involve variation in Norwegian – two word orders for possessives (pre- and postnominal) and two exponents of definiteness (a prenominal determiner and a suffix) – while English only has one of these options. The findings show that a large majority of the heritage speakers overuse the structures that are maximally different from English structures, i.e., postnominal possessors and single suffixal definiteness marking. We argue that their production pattern is the result of cross-linguistic overcorrection (CLO). In addition, a small group of the heritage speakers show signs of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) and overuse the English-like structures in both constructions. These speakers also have a slightly lower proficiency in the heritage language. Our findings are discussed in terms of previous research on monolingual and Norwegian–English bilingual children.

Stability and attrition in American Norwegian nominals: a view from predicate nouns

“…The relative stability of bare predicate nouns, despite the intense contact with English, is interesting; as mentioned, it contrasts with certain other aspects of AmNo syntax (Taranrød 2011;Larsson and Johannessen 2015;Anderssen et al 2018;van Baal 2018), and it raises the question of why bare nouns are apparently less prone to change. Among the factors that might have contributed are economy principles and age of acquisition.…”

“…In the nominal domain, the stability of bare predicate nouns differs from the pattern of so-called double definiteness (den grønne boka, lit. 'the green bookthe'), which appears to be more vulnerable; many AmNo speakers tend to drop the pre-adjectival determiner (Anderssen et al 2018;van Baal 2018van Baal , 2020.…”

“…This question is discussed in the context of a distinction between divergent attainment and attrition, and in the framework of a recent version of parametric theory (Biberauer et al 2014;Biberauer 2017;Biberauer and Roberts 2017;Roberts 2019). I show that most speakers of AmNo use bare nouns like in EurNo; there is thus a high degree of stability, which contrasts with certain other aspects of AmNo syntax-notably, word order in subordinate clauses (Taranrød 2011;Larsson and Johannessen 2015) and double definiteness (Anderssen et al 2018;van Baal 2018van Baal , 2020. At the same time, although it is not very frequent, the indefinite article occurs to a non-negligible extent.…”

The Development of Subject Position in Dutch-Dominant Heritage Speakers of Spanish: From Age 9 to Adulthood

“…In heritage Turkish, for example, Felser and Arslan (2019) have looked at semantic constraints on the use of the definite article; Kupisch et al (2017) investigated definiteness effects in existential constructions, and Dogruöz and Backus (2009) focused on the relation between definiteness and phrasal word order among other things. Morphological constraints on definiteness have been investigated in heritage Norwegian (Anderssen et al 2018), Swedish (Håkansson 1995) and Hungarian (Bolonyai 2007).…”

Introduction from our guest editors

“…The effects of frequency and complexity have been studied for other syntactic phenomena as well, such as subject and object placement . Further, the effects of frequency and complexity have been studied in different groups of speakers, such as L2 learners and heritage speakers of Norwegian, e.g., Anderssen et al (2018b); Westergaard and Anderssen (2015). By studying these groups in parallel, we can now start to model the interaction between factors like linguistic complexity, current and previous input frequencies, cross-linguistic influence/transfer and age of onset.…”