Heritage Language Speakers Research Articles

Why Do Heritage Language Speakers Opt Out of Their Own Heritage Language? A Survey-based Study of Heritage Language Learners at Community Colleges

This study analyzes the choices that heritage language (HL) learners make when enrolling in language courses at community colleges. Data from the Students and Instructors of Languages at Community Colleges (SILCC) Surveys, a nationwide survey with 1,756 students taking language courses at 101 community colleges across 33 states in the U.S., show that as many as 42.2% of community college students in modern language classrooms are identified as HL speakers. Surprisingly, more than half of these HL speakers are studying a language other than their own HL despite their prior linguistic knowledge, cultural familiarity, and familial ties with their HL. This paper evaluates a few possible explanations why a large proportion of HL speakers are opting to learn a new, third language. Building upon prior research and current data, we discuss differences in linguistic backgrounds, demographics, motivational attributes, and academic goals between HL learners studying their own HL and those studying a new language.

Language exposure in early bilingual and trilingual acquisition

ABSTRACTThe present study contributes to the field of bilingual and trilingual language acquisition by analysing four multilingual families. In each family, at least one parent is bilingual. Following research questions will be addressed: (A) How relevant are the (amount of) input and the (kind of) parental language strategies for language maintenance? (B) Which language choice can we observe in bilingual parents? (C) Is there a uniform definition for multilingual acquisition of immigrant languages? (D) Which language-external factors are possibly relevant for language transmission? The results reveal that exposure in some languages is lower than 20%, a level regarded as possibly crucial for becoming a productive multilingual speaker (Quay [2008]. Dinner conversations with a trilingual two-year-old: Language socialisation in a multilingual context. First Language, 28(1), 5–33). Some bilingual parents use the minority, others the majority language. Independently of the acquisition context, we claim it is unnecessary to label second- and third-generation children heritage language speakers. Taking the family language policy approach, we believe language practices in families with at least one bilingual parent are largely understudied and should be analysed more carefully.

Challenges and opportunities for heritage language learners in interpreting courses in the U.S. context

Recent studies indicate that heritage language speakers have professional opportunities in translation and interpreting (e.g., Carreira, 2014a) because of their unique linguistic and cultural background. In addition, heritage language speakers’ unique background and previous experiences as language brokers or non-professional interpreters or translators have also been suggested as an advantage in the context of translation and interpreting pedagogy (e.g., Valdes, 2003). The field of interpreting pedagogy, initially modeled and taught by professionals in the field based on their experience, has favored a more research-based interpreting pedagogy that draws on empirically-grounded studies focusing on interpreting competence and instructional strategies (e.g., Colina & Angelelli, 2015a). Despite the recent growth in research-based pedagogy, there is limited reflection on the challenges and opportunities heritage language speakers face in interpreting courses. Research has shown that heritage language and second language speakers exhibit a number of differences that have a direct impact on heritage language education (e.g., Potowski & Lynch, 2014; Carreira, 2016b); however, these differences have not been fully explored in the context of interpreter education. The present article contributes to this gap and encourages further work in this area by investigating the underexplored relationships among language for specific purposes, heritage language education, and translation and interpreting. In doing so, this work aims to understand the role and profile of heritage language learners in interpreting courses and how existing skillsets may be better exploited to guide interpreter education. First, the literature on heritage language learners and education is reviewed in conjunction with interpreting pedagogy. Then, challenges and opportunities for this subpopulation of students are discussed while identifying potential avenues for additional investigation.

“The right to lead”: Navajo language, dis‐citizenship, and Diné presidential politics

AbstractThis article examines the 2014 Navajo Nation presidential primary election and language debate as a window into the politics of Navajo heritage language and identity. Using Facebook posts written in response to a videotaped hearing testing the fluency of one of the candidates that subsequently went viral, we analyse social citizenship and stigmatized language identities through the lens of critical Diné (Navajo) language consciousness. Focusing on generational differences between speaker groups that undergirded this debate, we analyse (a) the fluency test itself and (b) online and ethnographic responses to the fluency test. Using discourse analysis of Facebook posts of both heritage language and new Navajo speakers, we show how new speakers in particular express investment in their language and Diné cultural continuity and, through their emphasis on the heterogeneity of contemporary Diné communicative practices, offer an alternative template for ways to move forward in Diné language reclamation efforts.

“No” versus “Aniyo”: Back vowel diphthongization in heritage Korean

The effects of a second language on a speaker’s first language phonology are well documented (e.g., Chang, 2013), and much has been done work specifically for heritage language speakers (Polinsky and Kagan, 2007; Montrul, 2010, 2015), who may be bilingual to some degree but are dominant in the majority language. Bilingualism research has identified “separate but nonautonomous phonological systems” (Paradis, 2001) in bilingual children, but few studies address heritage speakers’ phonological systems in relation to ongoing sound change (Konopka and Pierrehumbert, 2010). The current study examines F1 and F2 of the back vowels /o/ and /u/ in samples of read Korean speech from a population of Korean American Californians who identified as natively bilingual and/or heritage speakers of Korean. Forty speakers read short conversational passages in Korean during a bilingual interview. Preliminary results indicate that the heritage speakers’ /u/ vowel shows influence from California English, with greater F2 on average than their central /a/ vowel. The /o/ vowel also has a much lower F1 than expected given Korean’s canonical five-vowel system. Ongoing analysis examines the trajectory of both vowels to determine the influence of California English diphthongized back vowels on Korean monophthongs, and accent perception of the speakers’ Korean.The effects of a second language on a speaker’s first language phonology are well documented (e.g., Chang, 2013), and much has been done work specifically for heritage language speakers (Polinsky and Kagan, 2007; Montrul, 2010, 2015), who may be bilingual to some degree but are dominant in the majority language. Bilingualism research has identified “separate but nonautonomous phonological systems” (Paradis, 2001) in bilingual children, but few studies address heritage speakers’ phonological systems in relation to ongoing sound change (Konopka and Pierrehumbert, 2010). The current study examines F1 and F2 of the back vowels /o/ and /u/ in samples of read Korean speech from a population of Korean American Californians who identified as natively bilingual and/or heritage speakers of Korean. Forty speakers read short conversational passages in Korean during a bilingual interview. Preliminary results indicate that the heritage speakers’ /u/ vowel shows influence from California English, with greater F2 on aver...

Resolving Indeterminacy in Gender Agreement: Comparing Heritage Speakers and L2 Learners of Russian

Cross-linguistically, both heritage language (HL) speakers and second language (L2) learners have been shown to experience difficulty in producing and interpreting linguistic structures characterized by indeterminacy, or lack of an invariable and transparent relationship between meaning and form. This article compares two populations of Russian-English bilinguals on their strategies of resolving ambiguity within the system of grammatical gender in Russian, with a particular focus on indeterminacy in gender agreement with animate nouns. As a result of complex interactions among lexical, morpho-phonological, and discourse-level gender categorization cues, the agreement behavior of animate nouns in Russian is not fully uniform. The results of a scaled acceptability ratings study demonstrate that gender agreement in transparent and non-ambiguous contexts is largely unproblematic for both bilingual groups; however, contexts that require conflict resolution between different types of cues and those characterized by underspecification represent two areas where HL speakers and L2 learners diverge from monolingual Russian-speaking controls. Across all experimental conditions, bilingual speakers demonstrate a higher reliance on morpho-phonological gender categorization cues and assign less weight to lexical and referential factors in gender assignment than monolinguals. The results further show that the two populations of bilinguals are not fully alike with respect to dealing with different types of indeterminacy. In particular, HL speakers exhibit an advantage over L2 learners in conflict resolution; however, both bilingual groups struggle with constructions that give rise to referential ambiguity due to underspecification. These results expand our understanding of the problem of indeterminacy in bilingual acquisition of gender and offer implications for theories of language acquisition and language instruction.

Restructuring in heritage grammars

AbstractThis study investigates restructuring in heritage language (HL) grammars with a special focus on the driving forces behind changes in the underlying grammar. We evaluate the effect of Age of Onset of bilingualism (AoO) on possible grammatical restructuring. Relatedly, we assess whether HL grammar divergence from the baseline can be attributed to the Age of Acquisition of a particular linguistic phenomenon and/or to the structural properties of the dominant language, under transfer.With these general questions in mind, we conducted an auditory acceptability judgement task evaluating sensitivity to form (mis)matches in adjective-noun and numeral-noun expressions in adult Russian-Hebrew speakers: HL-speakers with AoO before age 5, HL-speakers with AoO between 5–13, and the Russian-dominant bilinguals.The results demonstrate a robust effect of AoO: HL speakers with earlier AoO are less accurate in detecting ungrammaticalities across the board. We argue that similarities in the structures in the heritage and dominant language allow HL speakers to maintain properties of monolingual grammars; dissimilarities, on the other hand, may lead to reanalysis in the HL grammar. However, the newly-built representations in the HL do not match those of the dominant language, suggesting that changed representations do not result from direct transfer.

The Study of Heritage Language Development From a Bilingualism and Social Justice Perspective

AbstractUsing the lenses of bilingualism and social justice, I reflect on relevant conceptual and methodological issues encountered in the study of the linguistic development of heritage language speakers. Themes examined include the early but varying timing of heritage language learning; the surrounding linguistic environment, including the link between parental input and linguistic outcomes and heritage language speakers’ bilingualism, multilingualism, and multilectalism; the framing of literacy in the minority language; and the unique and language‐shaping experience of minoritization, often an outcome of immigration. I argue that bilingualism is gradient and that better measurement of relevant variables—particularly those related to timing, input/exposure, and literacy—can invigorate the study of heritage language development and make new and more robust insights possible. I propose that heritage speakers and their languages must be understood as connected to minoritized communities and to the experience of inequitable multilingualism.

Correlations between linguistic change and linguistic performance among heritage speakers of Danish in Argentina

Abstract The article addresses the issue of an assumed correlation between heritage language speakers’ linguistic system and their fluency. Previous research has shown that heritage language speakers who have grammatical patterns that are divergent from the language spoken in the homeland also have lexical retrieval problems and speak with a slower speech rate. We approach the issue by examining two linguistic features and 11 different fluency features (‘structural’ and ‘performance features’) of 10 speakers of Argentine Heritage Danish. A factor analysis shows that the 11 performance features can be reduced to 2 factors that characterize the speakers ‘lexical retrieval’ and ‘fluency’. A correlation analysis with the two structural features, weakening of a phonological contrast between /oː/ and /ɔː/ and simplification of the gender system, shows that there are no correlations at all between these two measures of the speakers’ language production, in contrast to what previous research has found.

Russian Heritage Language Speakers in the U.S.: A Profile

Russian Heritage Language Speakers in the U.S.: A Profile

Motion Lexicalization in Chinese among Heritage Language Children in Canada

Heritage language speaking children often show signs of attrition, particularly as they get older and are educated in the majority language of the society where they live. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that simplification is one process of attrition for heritage language speakers. We tested this hypothesis on the expression of motion events among children who are first language speakers of Mandarin Chinese and early second language speakers of English, the majority language in this community. We compared their motion expressions to those of monolingual Mandarin-speaking children living in mainland China. Two age groups were included: younger children (4-6 years, not yet in school) and older children (8-10 years; in school for two to five years). The children watched a cartoon and recounted the story. We coded the motion expressions used in their retellings. The results showed that the older bilingual children showed clear signs of attrition, particularly simplification, but also some signs of cross-linguistic influence from English. These results suggest that attrition in a heritage language can quickly follow the onset of schooling in the majority language.

The Predicament of Language and Culture: Advocacy, Anthropology, and Dormant Language Communities

A growing literature in linguistic anthropology critically examines the rhetoric of endangered language advocacy. A number of themes remain underexplored, however, including the invocation of “culture” to justify language preservation, the interests of communities without fluent heritage language speakers, and anthropology's contribution to potentially problematic advocacy tropes. Discourses like “language is the core of culture” and “when a language dies, a culture dies” are widespread in language activism even though they undermine communities’ efforts to maintain distinctive cultural identities in the wake of language shift and put dormant language communities in a double bind. While Boasian anthropology contains anti‐essentialist and counter‐nationalist perspectives on language, culture, and race, some Herderian advocacy tropes are borrowed from the (also Boasian) tradition of linguistic relativity in its popular Whorfian iteration. Drawing on my research on Chiwere language politics, I identify two forms of agency available to endangered and dormant language communities: one form of agency resists language loss but accepts dominant ideologies of national difference that make heritage languages essential to indigenous cultural identities, while another form of agency accepts language loss but resists Herderian nationalist expectations that authentic indigenous communities speak their traditional languages. [advocacy rhetoric, dormant language communities, language and culture ideologies, agency, Chiwere]

When Bilingualism is the Common Factor: Switch Reference at the Junction of Competence and Performance in Both Second Language and Heritage Language Performance

In this paper we take a closer look at the oft-touted divide between heritage language speakers and adult second language (L2) learners. Here, we explore whether some properties of language may display general effects across different populations of bilinguals, explaining, at least partially, why these two groups show some common differences when compared with monolinguals. To test this hypothesis, we adduce data from two unique populations of bilinguals: a moribund variety of heritage German spoken in southwestern Kansas (Moundridge Schweitzer German) and L2 adult learners of Spanish. Empirically, we investigate whether the confound of switch reference adds an additional cognitive burden to these bilinguals in licensing object control predicates in the former and referential subject pronouns in the latter. Our preliminary findings support the view that overarching concepts such as incomplete acquisition cannot capture the variability observed in these populations, thus further supporting approaches that interpret findings such as these to be the result of specific variables.

You Take the Low Road and I’ll Take the High Road: Variation in Agreement Structure in Wisconsin Heritage German

This article presents on interviews with 10 bilingual speakers of American English and Wisconsin Heritage German (WHG), with respect to their licensing of high (NP1) versus low (NP2) agreement. In terms of linguistic typology, English copular constructions license only NP1 agreement, in which the verb agrees in person and number with the first—or syntactically high—nominal element in the clause; Standard German copular constructions license NP2 agreement with the lower nominal element in the clause (though subsequent topicalization of this element is also licit). As a second variable, a subset (7) of these speakers license complementizer agreement (C-agr) in WHG, which obtains from a second, syntactically high agreement structure in the complementizer field, in addition to the canonical German NP2 structure. These data were compared to a control group of the remaining three WHG speakers who did not license C-agr. Data presented here suggest a bi-directional transfer of both NP1 and NP2 agreement structures for both groups of heritage language (HL) speakers. The control group produced a majority of forms consistent with both English and German language-specific grammars. Evidence of NP2 structures in the control group’s English, however, suggests that these speakers are HL-dominant—since NP2 is categorically prohibited in English. WHG speakers with C-agr, in contrast to the control group, produced a majority of NP1 forms in both languages, with the presence of C-agr being a predicting factor in the presence of NP1 agreement in the English of WHG speakers. It is here argued that the presence of C-agr in the HL is similar to the canonical NP1 structures of Standard English, allowing for overlapping licit NP1 structures in both varieties. Data from Assumed Identify Constructions (AICs) suggests that canonical NP2 agreement in C-agr WHG may have been weakened as a result. This research suggests that even superficially English-like grammar may obtain not from a direct transfer from the L2 into the HL, but rather from the interaction of English grammar with the autochthonous grammatical structures of non-standard HLs.

Bilingual Processing of Comparative Structures in Spanish

Previous studies have focused on the access of content words to investigate the cognitive strategies used in bilingual processing (e.g., Fernández 2003), but less is known about functional words. In this study, I assess (i) whether three groups of bilingual speakers of Spanish (native, heritage, and second language (L2) speakers) access the lexically-encoded information of the quantifier más ‘more’ to activate a comparative structure interpretation, and (ii) what processing strategies are used to resolve a temporary semantic ambiguity that surfaces upon accessing that interpretation. Using a self-paced reading task, three groups of Spanish speakers living in the United States read comparative sentences, which allowed for two possible continuations at the subordinate clause: a subject continuation (e.g., El cantante obtiene más premios que el pianista en el festival ‘The singer gets more awards than the pianist at the festival’) or an object continuation (e.g., El cantante obtiene más premios que críticas en el festival ‘The singer gets more awards than criticism at the festival’). Results revealed longer reading times for the subject comparison compared to the object comparison structures, and no significant differences between the three groups, suggesting that participants in all groups followed similar processing strategies and preferences in the reading of comparative structures.

The category of animacy and its acquisition in the grammars of Russian and Spanish

The category of animacy is the expression in grammar of the opposition between animate and inanimate beings. This category does not grammaticalize in every language and, even if it does, it almost never grammaticalizes in the same way. To show this, I will analyze here the animacy effects in two languages, which seem to grammaticalize in similar ways (Spanish and Russian). In these two languages, animacy mainly affects differential object marking (the so-called DOM). Unlike other European languages, both Russian and Spanish make use of DOM for animate objects (Veo a mi amigo / Я вижу своего друга), but there are independent factors that distinguish the Russian and the Spanish patterns. Having in mind the difficulties that learners of Russian and Spanish must face, I will offer a brief comparative of the acquisition of the DOM in these two languages by different types of speakers (speakers of L1, heritage language speakers and speakers of L2).

Examining the Validity of GOLD® With 4-Year-Old Dual Language Learners

ABSTRACTResearch Findings: This study builds on prior work related to the assessment of young dual language learners (DLLs). The purposes of the study were to (a) determine whether latent subgroups of preschool DLLs would replicate those found previously and (b) examine the validity of GOLD® by Teaching Strategies with empirically derived subgroups. Latent class analysis confirmed previous findings of 3 distinct latent subgroups of DLLs (bilingual children, emergent bilingual children, and heritage language speakers). Results of differential item functioning analysis showed that with few exceptions, GOLD items functioned similarly, which indicates that groups matched on ability were similar in their item scores. The item pertaining to using conventional grammar consistently favored non-DLLs over heritage language speakers. The item pertaining to name writing consistently favored DLLs as a single group, emergent bilingual children, and heritage language speakers. Practice or Policy: Study results provide further support for the heterogeneity of DLLs and the use of GOLD with DLL subgroups. This provides the field with an opportunity to better understand this special population of children and enables teachers to plan with greater precision experiences that contribute to their development and learning.

What is Difficult about Grammatical Gender? Evidence from Heritage Russian

The paper examines the role of lexical, morphological, and discourse-referential factors in gender assignment with animate nouns in heritage Russian in order to explore the extent to which these different interfaces are challenging in heritage language acquisition. The analysis of concordant and discordant agreement patterns with nouns representing each type of gender categorization mechanism points to unequal difficulty associated with different types of gender allocation strategies. In particular, heritage speakers converge with baseline speakers in rating possible and impossible agreement combinations in the presence of fixed and transparent lexical and morphological gender categorization cues; however, they display non-target-like judgments of unmarked and underspecified forms characterized by variable agreement behavior (i.e., hybrid nouns and common gender nouns). Problems with forms whose gender reference is disambiguated at the level of discourse point to the syntax-discourse interface as a locus of systematic difficulty for heritage language speakers.

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

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

Morphological Bottleneck: The Case of Russian Heritage Speakers

The Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova, 2008) assumes functional morphology to be a particular challenge in second language (L2) acquisition whereas acquisition of syntax and semantics to be unproblematic. I propose, following Polinsky (2011), that functional morphology can be seen as an acquisitional bottleneck for heritage language (hl) speakers as well. Russian verbal aspect is known to be problematic in bilingual Russian children (Anstatt, 2008; Gupol, 2009), in adult foreign language learners (Slabakova, 2005, Nossalik, 2009) and in Russian heritage speakers of low (Polinsky, 2008) and even near-native fluency (Laleko, 2010). This comprehension study tested fluent and literate English dominant hl speakers of Russian on their interpretation of lexical and grammatical aspect. The findings suggest that the semantics and syntax of aspect were unproblematic, but aspectual morphology played both a facilitative and a hindering role in the comprehension of aspectual distinctions. In the untimed Semantic Entailments task, where participants chose the most logical continuation of an utterance, the morphological complexity of secondary imperfectives coupled with their semantic complexity, hindered hl interpretations. In contrast, in the Stop-Making-Sense self-paced reading task, in which participants read sentences one word at a time, the idiosyncratic morphology marking lexical aspect hindered hl processing, while the regular mechanism of marking grammatical aspect facilitated it.