Defining an “ideal” heritage speaker: Theoretical and methodological challenges Reply to peer commentaries

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

Fuchs

2018

Self Cite

This paper investigates the morphosyntax of number and gender agreement in English-dominant heritage speakers of Spanish. Our study builds on the experimental paradigm of agreement attraction developed by Fuchs et al. (2015) and elicits responses to agreement failures to diagnose the potentially-independent contributions of number and gender features. By comparing the structuring of these agreement categories in native and heritage Spanish, we document a case of grammatical divergence: heritage speakers restructure their agreement categories, favoring fewer feature values and less structure. The principled nature of this restructuring demonstrates that the loss of agreement in heritage languages is not superficial or accidental, but rather follows from predictable structural changes.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In support of representational economy: Agreement in heritage Spanish

Scontras

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

Fuchs

2018

Self Cite

“…Guided by previous work demonstrating the value of heritage language study to linguistic theory (Benmamoun et al 2013a;2013b;Scontras et al 2015), we then investigated the robustness of the Mandarin prohibition on inverse scope in the context of potential transfer from a dominant English grammar that allows inverse scope. The results of Expt.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These are simultaneous or sequential unbalanced bilinguals, whose home (minority) language is the weaker of the two (cf. Rothman 2009;Benmamoun et al 2013a;b;Kupisch 2013;Scontras et al 2015;Kupisch & Rothman 2016;Montrul 2016). Heritage languages, whose speakers are numerous and widely available, present a unique testbed for issues of acquisition, maintenance/robustness, and transfer within linguistic theory.…”

Section: Heritage Language Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-linguistic scope ambiguity: When two systems meet

Scontras

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

Tsai

et al. 2017

Self Cite

Accurately recognizing and resolving ambiguity is a hallmark of linguistic ability. English is a language with scope ambiguities in doubly-quantified sentences like A shark ate every pirate; this sentence can either describe a scenario with a single shark eating all of the pirates, or a scenario with many sharks-a potentially-different one eating each pirate. In Mandarin Chinese, the corresponding sentence is unambiguous, as it can only describe the single-shark scenario. We present experimental evidence to this effect, comparing native speakers of English with native speakers of Mandarin in their interpretations of doubly-quantified sentences. Having demonstrated the difference between these two languages in their ability for inverse scope interpretations, we then probe the robustness of the grammar of scope by extending our experiments to English-dominant adult heritage speakers of Mandarin. Like native speakers of Mandarin, heritage Mandarin speakers lack inverse scope in Mandarin. Crucially, these speakers also lack inverse scope in English, their dominant language in adulthood. We interpret these results as evidence for the pressure to simplify the grammar of scope, decreasing ambiguity when possible. In other words, when two systems meet-as in the case of heritage speakers-the simpler system prevails.

“…This condition may exclude some heritage speakers, who often lack literacy in their heritage language (Benmamoun, Montrul, & Polinsky, 2013b). Examples of the test sentences appear in the appendix 4 .…”

Section: Participants and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Between syntax and discourse

Laleko

2016

LAB

Self Cite

This article examines the knowledge of topic and subject particles in heritage speakers and L2 learners of Japanese and Korean. We assume that topic marking is mediated at the syntaxinformation structure interface, while subject marking pertains to narrow syntax. In comparing phenomena mediated at different levels of linguistic organization, we provide evidence for the hypothesis that information structure-level phenomena present greater challenges for bilingual speakers than those mediated within syntax. While these results may be interpreted as evidence of generalized interface-related deficits, we show that such a global explanation is not supported.Instead, a more nuanced account is developed, based on the recognition of different types of topic (anaphoric, generic, and contrastive) and different types of subject (descriptive and exhaustive). Under the proposed account, the non-native speakers' deficits follow from three unrelated effects: the status of topic as an interface category, structural complexity, and the memory demands necessary for its interpretation in context. Introduction Interfaces: The integration problem1 This project was supported in part by grants from Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL) at the University of Maryland and from NSF (SMA-1429961) to the second author. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors. We would like to thank Sun-Hee Bae, Miwako Hisagi, Kenneth Mai, Hiroki Nomoto, Aika Taguchi, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on this paper. All errors are our responsibility. 2Heritage language and second language (L2) acquisition represent two distinct pathways to adult bilingualism. They differ along a number of dimensions, including the specific circumstances of language exposure and the nature of competence deficits across different language modules. As early bilinguals, heritage speakers begin the acquisition of a socially non-dominant language in a family setting, and in this respect, their experience with the target language compares to that of early L1 learners, at least at the outset of the language acquisition process. The main difference is that heritage speakers' L1 language acquisition is subsequently interrupted by exposure to another language. Adult L2 learners, on the other hand, are late bilinguals whose exposure to the non-dominant language typically takes place in an instructed setting.Despite these differences in acquisition scenarios, both groups of speakers similarly fall short of exhibiting complete mastery of the target language. Even at the highest levels of proficiency, both populations remain in a state of near-native attainment, deviating from target native grammars represented by the monolingual baseline. In particular, early and late bilinguals (heritage speakers and L2 learners alike) have been reported to display deficits in the domain of inflectional morphology and narrow syntax, and both groups also seem to have difficulties with discourse-level phenome...