The Corpus of American Norwegian Speech (CANS)

This paper contains a description of the Corpus of American Norwegian Speech, a new tool for heritage language research. We present the background for its existence, the linguistic contents and its main technical features. The demonstration will show the corpus in use, focussing on problems that are specific to heritage language research, and how the corpus can be searched to provide relevant data

Grammatical Gender in American Norwegian Heritage Language: Stability or Attrition?

This Document is Protected by copyright and was first published by Frontiers. All rights reserved. it is reproduced with permissionThis paper investigates possible attrition/change in the gender system of Norwegian heritage language spoken in America. Based on data from 50 speakers in the Corpus of American Norwegian Speech (CANS), we show that the three-gender system is to some extent retained, although considerable overgeneralization of the masculine (the most frequent gender) is attested. This affects both feminine and neuter gender forms, while declension class markers such as the definite suffix remain unaffected. We argue that the gender category is vulnerable due to the lack of transparency of gender assignment in Norwegian. Furthermore, unlike incomplete acquisition, which may result in a somewhat different or reduced gender system, attrition is more likely to lead to general erosion, eventually leading to complete loss of gender

Mismatches at the syntax-semantics interface: The case of non-finite complementation in American Norwegian

Non-finite complementation strategies found in American Norwegian (AmNo) (made available by the Corpus of American Nordic Speech (CANS)) reveal unique and diverging patterns when compared to both standard and dialectal Norwegian and English. We argue in this paper that the majority of these divergent structures are the result of overextension (Rinke & Flores, 2014; Rinke et al., 2018; Putnam & Hoffman, 2021; Kupisch, 2014), where heritage language speakers produce structures that differ from both grammars in an attempt to generate forms that are distinct from the more dominant language. Our treatment of these nuanced structures in AmNo shows that this heritage grammar significantly restricts bare (or naked) TPs (Situations) serving as non-finite complements. To avoid bare TP-complements, AmNo has developed two distinct, yet related strategies, (1) reducing non-finite complements to vPs (Events), or (2) incorporating an additional element, a preposition, to ensure that the non-finite complement functions as the object of a preposition. We analyze this latter strategy as an instance of the emergence of structural salience (Polinsky, 2018) in the syntax of AmNo and suggest that this variation is best understood as a syntax–semantics interface phenomenon.publishedVersio

Stability and Change in the C-Domain in American Swedish

This article introduces American Swedish (AmSw) into the discussion of the C-domain in heritage Scandinavian. The study is based on spontaneous speech data from the Swedish part of the Corpus of American Nordic Speech (CANS), compared to a baseline of homeland Swedish dialect speakers. We show that the C-domain in AmSw is primarily characterized by stability; this is evidenced by a relatively robust V2 syntax and left dislocation patterns that resemble the homeland baseline. However, we also show that AmSw diverges in some respects: there are some V2 violations and a stronger preference for SV clauses (subject-initial main clauses) at the expense of XVS clauses (non-subject-initial main clauses). These results are similar to previous findings from American Norwegian. We argue that the diverging patterns exhibited by AmSw speakers are not indicative of any fundamental change in their Swedish grammar. The occasional V2 violations are attributed to parallel activation of English and Swedish, and speakers sometimes failing to inhibit English, which is their dominant language. The increase of SV clauses is analyzed as a preference for the canonical word order of the dominant language, but within the limits of what the heritage grammar permits. The patterns in AmSw can be described as cases of attrition and cross-linguistic influence; however, we argue for a nuanced use of these terms.publishedVersio

Variation in Infinitive Markers in American Norwegian

The topic for this article is infinitive markers in American Norwegian. In the Corpus of American Nordic Speech, 'te' is found to be an alternative infinitive marker in addition to standard Norwegian 'å'. The present study explores three possible reasons behind this: 'te' could be an influence from English 'to', and/or an inherited dialect feature from homeland rural Norwegian, and/or it can be connected with (reanalysis of) the frequent combination 'til å' (preposition + infinitive marker) in all types of Norwegian. Relevant aspects are both language contact and dialect contact, including comparisons with other Germanic contact varieties. Among other approaches, the authors analyze their findings theoretically in light of Polinsky's (2018) notion of structural salience.publishedVersio

Pronominal demonstratives in homeland and heritage Scandinavian

This paper discusses pronominal demonstratives (PDs) in homeland and heritage (American) Norwegian and Swedish. We establish a baseline approximating the language of the early emigrants, based on 19th/20th century Norwegian dialect recordings and Swedish texts. Baseline Norwegian had a fully established PD expressing psychological distance (see Johannessen 2008a). In Swedish, however, PDs do not quite behave like (distal) demonstratives: they can combine with a definite determiner or a regular demonstrative, and they do not fully have the pragmatic functions that demonstratives have. We propose that the Swedish PD is a pronoun rather than a demonstrative, without the full set of regular pronominal features, but with logophoric features that activate knowledge shared between the speaker and addressee. Data from AmNo show that PDs are preserved in this heritage language, across several generations. On the assumption that PDs are indexical and that speech act participants are represented in narrow syntax, it comes as no surprise that they are retained (Polinsky 2018:63–65), although this may, on the face of it, appear to be at odds with the Interface Hypothesis (e.g. Sorace & Filiaci 2006, Sorace 2011).publishedVersio

Variation across individuals and domains in Norwegian heritage language

This paper investigates spontaneous production from 50 speakers of Norwegian heritage language in the Corpus of American Nordic Speech and studies the interplay between four linguistic properties: possessives and double definiteness, verb second word order, grammatical gender, and the amount of language mixing. It is shown that speakers cluster in the sense that some speakers produce more Norwegian-like structures across properties, whereas others produce more English-like structures across the same properties. Implications for the study of heritage grammars are also addressed

Verb Second Word Order in Norwegian Heritage Language: Syntax and Pragmatics

Posted with permission of Georgetown University Press.In this paper, we investigate verb second (V2) word order in Norwegian heritage language spoken in the United States, i.e., in a situation where the heritage speakers have English as their dominant language. We show that not only the syntax of V2 may be affected in a heritage language situation, but that the number of contexts for this word order may also be severely reduced (i.e., non-subject-initial declaratives). V2 languages typically have a high proportion of non-subject-initial declaratives in spontaneous speech, while English declaratives are mainly subject-initial. The reduction of non-subject-initial declaratives (the context for V2) is thus argued to be the result of cross-linguistic influence from English. We also show that this correlates with non-target-consistent word order, in that the fewer contexts for V2 that speakers produce, the more non-target-consistent non-V2 word order appear in their data. We also discuss to what extent there is a causal relationship between the two phenomena

Linguistic Repertoires: Modeling Variation in Input and Production: A case study on American Speakers of Heritage Norwegian

Heritage Norwegian in the American Midwest is documented through a corpus of recordings collected and compiled over a time span of 80 years, from Einar Haugen’s recordings in the 1940s via the CANS corpus up to the present-day in the authors’ own recordings. This gives an unprecedented opportunity to study how a minority language changes in a language contact situation, over several generations and under gradually changing circumstances. Since we also have thorough historical knowledge of the institutions and societal texture of these communities, this privileged situation allows us to trace the various sources of input available to the heritage speakers in these communities in different relevant time slots. We investigate how the quality and quantity of input at different times are reflected in the syntactic production of heritage speakers of the corresponding generational cohorts, focusing on relative ratios of specific word orders (topicalization and verb second, prenominal and postnominal possessive noun phrases) and productive morphosyntactic paradigms (tense suffixes of loan verbs). Utilizing a model of relations between input and output, receptive and productive competence, to show how input–output effects will accumulate throughout the cohorts, we explain the observed linguistic change in individuals and society.publishedVersio

V3 in Germanic: A comparison of urban vernaculars and heritage languages

Source at https://buske.de/zeitschriften-bei-sonderhefte/linguistische-berichte-sonderhefte/non-canonical-verb-positioning-in-main-clauses.html.It is well known that varieties of Germanic do not display a strict V2 system whereby the finite verb is in the second position in main clauses. In this paper, we compare the Germanic heritage language American Norwegian with the Germanic urban vernacular Kiezdeutsch. We focus on declarative V3 structures and compare V3 properties in Kiezdeutsch with data from American Norwegian across several decades. Despite several surface similarities involving initial adjunct constituents followed by pronominal subjects, we argue that the two varieties differ in terms of how V3 structures emerge