Knowledge of Forms of Address in Polish Heritage Speakers

Abstract

Limited knowledge of formal registers has been deemed one of the common characteristics of heritage speakers (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007). Because their exposure to the heritage language is generally limited to contact with immediate family, the language of heritage speakers may lack the elements normally acquired in formal settings. Polish formal forms of address, i.e., addressing all strangers and non-relative adults as pan “mister” or pani “madam,” as well as all the grammatical rules governing their use, such as third-person verbal morphology and the vocative case, are examples of such elements. The present study investigated receptive knowledge of formal forms of address in Polish heritage speakers in the United States. In this study, nine heritage speakers, four L2 learners, and six native speakers of Polish judged the acceptability of utterances addressed to various persons in various formal situations. The results indicate that heritage speakers exhibit limited knowledge of formal forms of address, both in terms of the grammar involved and the social contexts that call for them – with the latter divergence, in particular, potentially attributable to transfer from English. The responses of heritage speakers differ significantly not only from those of native speakers, but also of L2 learners of Polish, who outperformed heritage speakers in this task. Since the use of formal forms of address and the vocative case in contemporary Polish is limited to formal settings, the limited knowledge of these forms in heritage speakers may result from the insufficient input they receive.