Influential factors in incomplete acquisition and attrition of young heritage speakers’ vocabulary knowledge

Gharibi, Khadijeh; Boers, Frank

doi:10.1080/10489223.2016.1187613

Cited by 19 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…The narratives were then analyzed for ‘lexical richness’, a shorthand term in this article for both lexical diversity and sophistication. The way lexical competence was gauged in the present study it therefore different from what was done in Gharibi & Boers (2017), where ‘controlled’, decontextualized vocabulary tests served as the instruments. While these may be suitable for measuring declarative knowledge, they may not be as suitable for tapping procedural knowledge, that is, the knowledge speakers rely on when they engage in real-time, message-focused communication.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…The two groups of young participants (and their parents) were the same as in Gharibi & Boers (2017). One group included 30 Persian-English bilinguals (14 boys and 16 girls; age range 6–18; mean age: 10.3) who have been living in New Zealand for different lengths of time (mean: 6.9 years).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An attempt at gauging the influence of the aforementioned factors on young heritage speakers’ L1 vocabulary knowledge was made in Gharibi & Boers (2017). In that study, young heritage speakers’ ( n = 30) vocabulary knowledge was explored through a 48-item auditory picture–word matching test and through a verbal lexical fluency test that prompted participants to supply as many words related to two lexical fields (fruit and animals) as they could in a specific time.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Influential factors in lexical richness of young heritage speakers’ family language: Iranians in New Zealand

Gharibi

Boers

2017

International Journal of Bilingualism

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Aims and objectives: This study investigates the extent to which young heritage speakers’ oral narratives in their first language (L1) differ from monolinguals’ narratives with regard to lexical richness (lexical diversity and lexical sophistication). It also explores which demographic factors (age, age at emigration and length of emigration) and/or socio-linguistic factors (frequency of heritage language use and parental attitudes toward heritage language maintenance) account for the differences. Data and analysis: The participants were a group of 25 young speakers of Persian as a heritage language, who were either born in or emigrated to New Zealand, and a group of 25 monolingual counterparts in Iran. Demographic information about the heritage speakers as well as information about parental attitude and practices regarding heritage language acquisition and maintenance were collected through semi-structured interviews with their parents. A film-retelling task was used to elicit the oral narratives, and these were analyzed for lexical diversity (by means of the Measure of Textual Lexical Diversity) and for lexical sophistication (by counting the incidence of low-frequency words). Findings and conclusion: As expected, the monolinguals’ narratives tended to manifest greater lexical richness than the heritage speakers’, especially according to the measure of lexical sophistication. Against expectation, frequency of heritage language use and parental attitude toward heritage language acquisition and maintenance were not found to be significant predictors of the young heritage speakers’ results. For the heritage speakers who were born in New Zealand, the results were predicted best by their age, while for those who arrived in New Zealand at a later age, the best predictors were both their age and how old they were at the time of emigration. This suggests that the demographic factors overrode the potential influence of the socio-linguistic variables examined. Originality: This study sheds light on (factors that contribute to) young heritage speakers’ L1 lexical competence, a topic that has hitherto been under-investigated. Significance and implications: A major implication of this study is showing the association of age and heritage speakers’ lexical richness. Although the statistical analyses did not show the effect of socio-linguistic variables, this finding indirectly supports the effect of parental input on heritage language proficiency in young bilinguals. Limitations: Limitations of the study include the relatively small number of participants, the use of only one task to elicit speech samples and the reliance on parents’ self-reported family language habits.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 78%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Influential factors in lexical richness of young heritage speakers’ family language: Iranians in New Zealand

Gharibi

Boers

2017

International Journal of Bilingualism

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“…In a similar vein, Gharibi and Boers (2017) that Turkish-English bilinguals' overall performance was degraded in comparison to their monolingual peers in all proficiency measures (lexical access, morphosyntactic complexity, and formal accuracy). In an attempt to account for the variation within the bilingual group, Schmid and Karayayla (2019) looked at the interaction between the proficiency measures and language background data.…”

Section: Variation Correlation and Complex Statistical Modellingmentioning

confidence: 75%

Current Trends and Emerging Methodologies in Charting Heritage Language Bilingual Grammars

Bayram¹,

Rothman²,

G³

et al. 2020

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This chapter contextualizes the methodological landscape of formal linguistic heritage language studies, with a special emphasis on emerging, innovative trends. The chapter is divided in three parts. Part 1 reviews methodological challenges related to testing heritage speaker knowledge (e.g., modality of testing, issues pertaining to baselines) as well as the history of offline behavioral experimentation that typically compares heritage speakers to monolingual baselines (Montrul 2008, 2016; Polinsky, 2018). We will seek to take stock of what has been robustly studied to date versus where there is welcomed room for further investigation in the near future (e.g. the imbalance between heritage speaker developmental studies in young and older aged children and adolescents versus the highly studied case of competence outcomes in (young) adult ultimate attainment, e.g. Kupisch & Rothman, 2016). Part 2 considers recent trends in heritage language empirical studies adopting online methods (e.g., Villegas, 2014; Kim, Montrul & Yoon, 2015; Jacob, Şafak, Demir, Kırkıcı, 2018), contributing both complementary evidence to the considerably larger behavioral data base that dominates the field as well as some challenges for claims made on this basis of behavioral data alone. Part 3 unpacks the emerging trend focusing on the continuum of differences within heritage speakers themselves, attempting to quantify, reveal and understand correlations of individual experiences (using regression statistical analyses) with access to and engagement with input as well as opportunities for converting input to intake that might shed light on how and why individual grammars take the developmental path and end state they do (Bayram et al., 2017; Lloyd-Smith et al., under review).

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“…However, recent studies that include more nuanced methodology have revealed more ambiguous observations on the impact of language attitudes held by parents. Most recently, Gharibi and Boers (2017a) investigated lexical fluency (using productive/receptive vocabulary tests) among 30 heritage Persian speakers (both simultaneous and sequential) living in New Zealand, comparing them with matched monolingual counterparts in Iran. The parents of each heritage participant in the study were interviewed about their language attitudes towards Persian.…”

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confidence: 99%

Heritage-language speakers: Theoretical and empirical challenges on sociolinguistic attitudes and prestige

Kasstan

Auer

Salmons

2018

International Journal of Bilingualism

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Migration brings people into situations where languages other than their native tongues are dominant. Their mother tongues often therewith become minority varieties, for young people and later generations what are now called 'heritage languages'. This particular kind of multilingual setting appears to correlate with consistent (but variable) processes of change. In the last few years, heritage-language research has been developing rapidly across subdisciplines as varied as heritage language education (Trifonas & Aravossitas 2015; Kagan et al. 2017), language attrition (Köpke et al. 2007; Schmid 2011), and structural linguistics (see notably Benmamoun et al., 2010; 2013). While these research areas provide broadly detailed and comprehensive overviews on grammatical knowledge and grammatical change in the heritage-language context, less attention has to date been dedicated to sociolinguistic approaches and the role that specific external-linguistic factors play. In this special issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism, we foreground the role of external factors in heritage-language variation and change. More precisely, we are concerned with the questions of (a) what effect the prestige of related minority languages/language varieties has in the heritage-language context, and (b) how heritage-language speakers view and evaluate their own linguistic practices, notably also in relation to other languages/language varieties. Relatedly, the following considerations 1 also frame the collection of articles presented herein: 1 These considerations reflect current debates in the field, see e.g. Polinsky & Kagan (2007); Potowski (2013); Polinsky (forthcoming).

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Influential factors in incomplete acquisition and attrition of young heritage speakers’ vocabulary knowledge

Cited by 19 publications

References 51 publications

Influential factors in lexical richness of young heritage speakers’ family language: Iranians in New Zealand

Influential factors in lexical richness of young heritage speakers’ family language: Iranians in New Zealand

Current Trends and Emerging Methodologies in Charting Heritage Language Bilingual Grammars

Heritage-language speakers: Theoretical and empirical challenges on sociolinguistic attitudes and prestige

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