Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages

Rothman, Jason

doi:10.1177/1367006909339814

Cited by 358 publications

(207 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…These are simultaneous or sequential unbalanced bilinguals, whose home (minority) language is the weaker of the two (cf. Rothman 2009;Benmamoun et al 2013a;b;Kupisch 2013;Scontras et al 2015;Kupisch & Rothman 2016;Montrul 2016). Heritage languages, whose speakers are numerous and widely available, present a unique testbed for issues of acquisition, maintenance/robustness, and transfer within linguistic theory.…”

Section: Heritage Language Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-linguistic scope ambiguity: When two systems meet

Scontras

Polinsky

Tsai

et al. 2017

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Accurately recognizing and resolving ambiguity is a hallmark of linguistic ability. English is a language with scope ambiguities in doubly-quantified sentences like A shark ate every pirate; this sentence can either describe a scenario with a single shark eating all of the pirates, or a scenario with many sharks-a potentially-different one eating each pirate. In Mandarin Chinese, the corresponding sentence is unambiguous, as it can only describe the single-shark scenario. We present experimental evidence to this effect, comparing native speakers of English with native speakers of Mandarin in their interpretations of doubly-quantified sentences. Having demonstrated the difference between these two languages in their ability for inverse scope interpretations, we then probe the robustness of the grammar of scope by extending our experiments to English-dominant adult heritage speakers of Mandarin. Like native speakers of Mandarin, heritage Mandarin speakers lack inverse scope in Mandarin. Crucially, these speakers also lack inverse scope in English, their dominant language in adulthood. We interpret these results as evidence for the pressure to simplify the grammar of scope, decreasing ambiguity when possible. In other words, when two systems meet-as in the case of heritage speakers-the simpler system prevails.

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Section: Heritage Language Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-linguistic scope ambiguity: When two systems meet

Scontras

Polinsky

Tsai

et al. 2017

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…In the former subsection, I also include a brief introduction to how gender, number, and definiteness are typically realized in a Norwegian structure. 12 Please recall…”

Section: Diachronic Changementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the former subsection, I also include a brief introduction to how gender, number, and definiteness are typically realized in a Norwegian structure. 12 Please recall that when referring to specific examples, data from Haugen [6] are accompanied by the page number where the examples can be found, and data from CANS [7] by the informant code.…”

Section: Diachronic Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Language Mixing and Diachronic Change: American Norwegian Noun Phrases Then and Now

Riksem¹

2017

Languages

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This article investigates the diachronic development of language mixing within noun phrases in the heritage language American Norwegian. By comparing data collected in the 1930s and 1940s with recently collected data, I present and discuss patterns showing systematic changes, specifically concerning the categories number and definiteness. Moreover, I propose two potential analyses of these patterns based on an exoskeletal approach to grammar. This theoretical framework crucially separates the abstract syntactic structure from its phonological exponents, and the analyses that are discussed consider both the structure and the exponents as the origins of the change.

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“…We have in mind heritage speakers: (relatively) unbalanced bilinguals who shifted from their first language (their heritage language) to their dominant language early in childhood. 1 According to most definitions, heritage speakers are individuals who were raised in homes where a language other than the dominant community language was spoken, resulting in some degree of bilingualism in both the heritage language and the dominant language (Valdés 2000;Rothman 2009;Benmamoun et al 2013a;Scontras et al 2015;Montrul 2016). This relatively unconstrained definition makes it almost impossible to give a concrete model for a heritage speaker, but this is by design: heritage language proficiency falls along a continuum.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In support of representational economy: Agreement in heritage Spanish

Scontras

Polinsky

Fuchs

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper investigates the morphosyntax of number and gender agreement in English-dominant heritage speakers of Spanish. Our study builds on the experimental paradigm of agreement attraction developed by Fuchs et al. (2015) and elicits responses to agreement failures to diagnose the potentially-independent contributions of number and gender features. By comparing the structuring of these agreement categories in native and heritage Spanish, we document a case of grammatical divergence: heritage speakers restructure their agreement categories, favoring fewer feature values and less structure. The principled nature of this restructuring demonstrates that the loss of agreement in heritage languages is not superficial or accidental, but rather follows from predictable structural changes.

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Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages

Cited by 358 publications

References 15 publications

Cross-linguistic scope ambiguity: When two systems meet

Cross-linguistic scope ambiguity: When two systems meet

Language Mixing and Diachronic Change: American Norwegian Noun Phrases Then and Now

In support of representational economy: Agreement in heritage Spanish

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