Case marking and word order in Greek heritage children

Abstract

This study examined the linguistic and individual-level factors that render case marking a vulnerable domain in English-dominant Greek heritage children. We also investigated whether heritage language (HL) children can use case-marking cues to interpret (non-)canonical sentences in Greek similarly to their monolingual peers. A group of six- to twelve-year-old Greek heritage children in New York City and a control group of age-matched monolingual children living in Greece participated in a production and a picture verification task targeting case marking and (non-)canonical word order in Greek. HL children produced syncretic inflectional errors, also found in preschool monolingual children. In the comprehension task, HL children showed variable performance on the non-canonical OVS but ceiling performance on the SVO conditions, which suggests influence from English. Linguistic factors such as case transparency affected comprehension, whereas child-level factors such as proficiency and degree of (early) use of Greek influenced performance on both modalities.

Comprehension and production of non-canonical word orders in Mandarin-speaking child heritage speakers

“…2.3.1 The acquisition of non-canonical word order and morphosyntactic cues. The difficulties in HSs' comprehension and production of non-canonical word orders have partially been attributed to their reliance on canonical word order over morphosyntactic cues, especially when there is surface overlap between the HL and the ML, (Chondrogianni & Schwartz, 2020;Janssen, 2016;Kim et al, 2018).…”

“…Several empirical studies using single language pairs (e.g., Greek-English or Italian-English; Argyri & Sorace, 2007;Serratrice, Sorace & Paoli, 2004) have reported CLI in production, where CLI emerges when the target language-specific structure is avoided using the structure that overlaps between the two languages. Additionally, CLI has also been reported in comprehension, where bilinguals opt for the shared structure when interpreting the structure not available in the other language (Chondrogianni & Schwartz, 2020;Janssen, 2016;Kim et al, 2018).…”

“…Within the domain of syntax, non-canonical word orders have been reported to cause difficulties for both child heritage speakers (CHSs) (Chondrogianni & Schwartz, 2020) and adult heritage speakers (AHSs) (Polinsky, 2008). These non-canonical structures are often characterised as complex because they involve displacement of constituents from the original position, where sentential arguments are interpreted.…”

“…Many factors have been argued to cause HSs' difficulties with non-canonical word orders. Among other things, these factors may be linguistic, related to the target language itself, such as the presence and absence or the transparency of the morphosyntactic cues within the structures (Chondrogianni & Schwartz, 2020); or, to language contact and cross-linguistic influence from the ML to the HL, normally leading to developmental patterns or rates different from monolingual baseline (Chondrogianni & Schwartz, 2020;Mai, Kwan & Yip, 2018). They may also be child-specific, such as children's chronological age when tested, or how much the HL/ML is used on a daily basis over a period of time (Flores, Santos, Jesus & Marques, 2017).…”

Child Heritage Language Development: An Interplay Between Cross-Linguistic Influence and Language-External Factors

“…We used the term “child HL speakers,” but it should be noted that in previous research, the term “L1 development” in simultaneous or early sequential bilinguals has been used instead [for a detailed discussion on the terminology in HL and child bilingualism research see Kupisch and Rothman (Kupisch and Rothman, 2018 )]. Today, more and more studies use the term “child HL speakers” (e.g., Meir and Armon-Lotem, 2015 ; Cuza and Pérez-Tattam, 2016 ; Daskalaki et al, 2019 , 2020 ; Chondrogianni and Schwartz, 2020 ; Goebel-Mahrle and Shin, 2020 ; Rodina et al, 2020 ; Serratrice, 2020 ; Armon-Lotem et al, 2021 ; Otwinowska et al, 2021 ). Heritage language speakers acquire their HL from birth via naturalistic input, but as adults, they show divergence from the baseline (the language spoken in the country of origin, or the language spoken by the first generation of immigrants who are dominant in this language).…”