A Portrait of Lexical Knowledge among Adult Hebrew Heritage Speakers Dominant in American English: Evidence from Naming and Narrative Tasks

Abstract

While the field of heritage language (HL) bilingualism has grown substantially in recent years, no studies have considered heritage Hebrew speakers dominant in American English. Expanding HL studies to new language pairs is crucial to understand the generalizability of prior findings across diverse linguistic contexts. In the current study, we assess 40 adult participants (16 M, 24 F) and present an overview of their lexical abilities, as derived from a quantitative and qualitative analysis of performance on the Multilingual Naming Test (MINT) and a narrative elicitation task. We consider target accuracy, types of non-target responses, and cross-linguistic influence in the form of code-switching and calquing. Participants’ non-target responses indicated a strong grasp of Hebrew root-pattern word formation and creativity in the face of lexical gaps. Code-switching and calquing patterns in the narratives suggest that the dominant English is the clear framing language, from which speakers draw resources directly or indirectly. Although this linguistic blending leads to innovative lexical formations that would not be found in standard monolingual speech, the speakers’ overall message is still understandable. We conclude that heritage Hebrew speakers are able to clearly communicate complex thoughts in their HL while relying on their dominant language to fill lexical gaps.

Modeling lexical abilities of heritage language and L2 speakers of Hebrew and English in Israel and the United States: a network approach

“…Data for the present study were compiled from the lexical proficiency and background data collected as part of three recently published and submitted studies ( Bar On and Meir, 2022 ; Livni and Meir, 2022 ; Fridman and Meir, 2023a ). A total of 185 adult participants were surveyed, making up five groups (see Table 1 for grouping definitions): 50 Israelis with L1-Hebrew who learned English in school as an L2 (L2-ENG-IL), 27 Americans with L1-English who learned Hebrew, in school or throughout extracurricular programs, as an L2 (L2-HEB-US), 20 Americans who learned Hebrew as an L2 and then moved to Israel (L2-HEB-IL), 48 Israeli heritage speakers of English, who were born in Israel or moved prior to age 4 and who came from English-speaking homes (HL-ENG-IL), and 40 American heritage speakers of Hebrew, who were born in the US or moved prior to age 4 and who came from Hebrew-speaking homes (HL-HEB-US).…”

“…For the HL-HEB-US group, Hebrew and English levels were derived from self-ratings from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest proficiency. Hebrew narrative performance was coded as the number of unique target tokens (in Hebrew) produced in a narrative (see Fridman and Meir, 2023a for an overview of the task). Parental and participant education level was measured in years.…”

“…A recent meta-analysis of 130 studies found evidence for the bilingual “lexical deficit” ( Bylund et al, 2023 , p. 898) only among sequential bilinguals who learned their L2 later in life, and only in the L2, and not for simultaneous bilinguals or for sequential bilinguals in their L1 ( Bylund et al, 2023 ). Meanwhile, while HL speakers (who can be either simultaneous or early sequential bilinguals) score fairly consistently higher on vocabulary assessments in their dominant SL, usually their L2, than in their HL, their lexical proficiency has been shown to be highly variable (see, for example, Fridman and Meir, 2023a , findings that HL-Hebrew speakers in the US ranged from 15 to 82% accuracy on an HL vocabulary assessment). Generalizing beyond vocabulary size, studies have shown that knowledge of one language can affect the bilingual’s knowledge of another ( Prior and van Hell, 2021 ), for example in cases of code-switching, co-activation, cross-linguistic influence, or other blending of features between languages at every linguistic level.…”

“…In the USA context, Israeli immigrants are considered a highly-assimilated and successful migrant group, although they are known to maintain close ties with their home country and are active in local expat communities ( Fridman and Meir, 2023a ). Notably, Israeli expats and their children are not the only speakers of Hebrew in the United States.…”

“…Thus, the present study will shed light on the interconnectedness of lexical proficiency in English and Hebrew with other measures of language use, as a function of linguistic context. The present study combines data collected from three previous studies ( Bar On and Meir, 2022 ; Livni and Meir, 2022 ; Fridman and Meir, 2023a ), each using a unique background questionnaire. Therefore, in addition to juxtaposing proficiency scores and building network models, we will discuss the methodological implications and challenges of integrating cross-study data (see Nicklin and Plonsky, 2020 ; Bialystok et al, 2022 for previous examples of secondary data analysis).…”