Stable and vulnerable domains in Germanic heritage languages

Marit Westergaard,Tanja Kupisch

doi:10.5617/osla.8515

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of Germanic languages as heritage languages, i.e. languages acquired naturalistically by children in parts of the world where these languages are not the majority language. Summarizing research on different types of heritage speakers of Danish, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish, we identify certain stable and vulnerable domains. We focus on the so far best studied areas, word order and grammatical gender, adding evidence from other lesser studied domains, such as definiteness and phonology. We propose that in addition to the linguistic make-up of the phenomena in question, the size of the heritage community and, relatedly, opportunities to use the language need to be taken into account. The latter may explain, for example, why moribund varieties of German and the Scandinavian languages in North America appear to be less stable than the language of second-generation heritage speakers in Europe.

Highlights

This paper provides an overview of empirical studies on minority or heritage speakers ( HSs) of a Germanic language, Danish, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish, which are the languages that have been most extensively studied so far
Outside of Northern Europe, the Scandinavian languages are spoken by small minorities in Central Europe (e.g. Danish in Germany), Eastern Europe (e.g. Swedish in Estonia), Canada and the US, as well as in South America (e.g. Danish in Argentina)
We note that research on bilingualism tends to focus on linguistic phenomena that “stick out” because speakers produce them in a way that is different from what one would expect in the non-heritage variety of the language

Summary

Introduction

This paper provides an overview of empirical studies on minority or heritage speakers ( HSs) of a Germanic language, Danish, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish, which are the languages that have been most extensively studied so far. We provide data on a number of properties of Germanic languages in HL contexts, focusing on word order, grammatical gender, definiteness and other DP phenomena, and phonological properties.

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Conclusion