Factors of variation, maintenance and change in Scandinavian heritage languages

Abstract

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: I investigate variation and change in heritage languages, focusing on descendants of 19th-/early 20th-century North Germanic immigrant languages in America. A battery of predictors (e.g. token frequency, language attitude) are compared against a baseline grammar, something often framed in terms of ‘transfer’, ‘incomplete acquisition’ and ‘attrition’. I examine which particular changes have been attributed to which factors. Design/methodology/approach, data and analysis: I synthesise and draw new conclusions from previous research on heritage Scandinavian. Findings/Conclusions: Relevant factors belong to two main categories: those favouring maintenance and those more likely to trigger change. Factors that support maintenance are structural ones (typically syntax, phonology and morphology), frequency of use and external factors. Factors that contribute to change are articulation, language attitudes and a series of cognitive aspects: incomplete acquisition and attrition, transfer and convergence, processing, memory, complexity and overgeneralisation. Originality: I undertake a comparative synthesis of patterns of change and non-change from baseline varieties. Significance and implications: This opens a door to investigating how factors correlate, what causal connections can be found and what levels of language are affected by what factors.

Linguistic Repertoires: Modeling Variation in Input and Production: A Case Study on American Speakers of Heritage Norwegian

“…Hence, unlike Swedes and Norwegians, Danish immigrants, to a lesser degree, dominated entire communities (cf. Kjaer and Larsen 1972;Johannessen 2018). Norwegian sociologist P. A.…”

Split possession and definiteness marking in American Norwegian

“…If one considers the available corpus metadata given for each of the speakers represented in Table 10, it becomes clear that most of them have a background that stands out compared with other speakers in CANS. Typically, the speakers in the corpus are third or fourth generation immigrants whose ancestors left from rural parts of Norway; the speakers are of a mature age and do not have much experience with formal or urban varieties of Norwegian (Hjelde 2012(Hjelde , 2015Johannessen & Laake 2012b, 2015Johannessen 2018). The speaker fargo_ND_05gk, however, who is represented in Table 10, has taken Norwegian classes (in addition to learning the language from early childhood); although the exact nature of these classes is not clear from the corpus metadata, one can assume that it would involve exposure to formal and written language, in which bare forms are not used.…”

Current Trends and Emerging Methodologies in Charting Heritage Language Bilingual Grammars

“…To date, most studies interested in tapping the nature of HL competence have used offline methods, for example, acceptability judgment tasks, comprehension tasks, production (elicitation tasks and natural corpora) and recognition tasks (e.g., Silva-Corvalán, 2014;Montrul, 2002Montrul, , 2011Montrul, Foote, & Perpiñán, 2008;Pascual y Cabo, 2018;Polinsky 2008Polinsky , 2011Pires & Rothman, 2009;Rothman, 2007;Johannessen, 2018;Hopp, Putnam & Vosburg, 2018;Lloyd-Smith, Gyllstad, Kupisch & Quaglia, 2018;Isurin & Ivanova-Sullivan, 2008;Lohndal & Westergaard, 2016;Bayram et al 2017;Lee-Ellis, 2011;Kim, O'Grady & Schwartz, 2018). By their nature, offline tasks do not offer direct access to one's mental processes as they unfold in real time.…”