Terminology matters! Why difference is not incompleteness and how early child bilinguals are heritage speakers

This paper integrates research on child simultaneous bilingual (2L1) acquisition more directly into the heritage language (HL) acquisition literature. The 2L1 literature mostly focuses on development in childhood, whereas heritage speakers (HSs) are often tested at an endstate in adulthood. However, insights from child 2L1 acquisition must be considered in HL acquisition theorizing precisely because many HSs are the adult outcomes of child 2L1 acquisition. Data from 2L1 acquisition raises serious questions for the construct of incomplete acquisition, a term broadly used in HL acquisition studies to describe almost any difference HSs display from baseline controls (usually monolinguals). We offer an epistemological discussion related to incomplete acquisition, highlighting the descriptive and theoretical inaccuracy of the term. We focus our discussion on two of several possible causal factors that contribute to variable competence outcomes in adult HSs, input (e.g., Sorace, 2004; Rothman, 2007; Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012) and formal instruction (e.g., Kupisch, 2013; Kupisch et al., 2014) in the HL. We conclude by offering alternative terminology for HS outcomes

Language history on fast forward: Innovations in heritage languages and diachronic change

There has been a substantial amount of research on heritage language acquisition and diachronic change. Although recent work has increasingly pointed to parallels between those two areas, it remains unclear how systematic these are. In this paper, we provide a bird's eye view, illustrating how patterns of diachronic change are mirrored in heritage language grammars. In doing so, we focus on one of the best-described grammaticalization processes – namely, the formation of articles from demonstratives and numerals, reviewing studies on heritage varieties which mirror those processes. Based on this review, we make two main points: that change in heritage language can be predicted based on established diachronic scenarios, and that heritage languages often amplify incipient changes in the baseline. After discussing a number of attested changes in a bilingual context, we identify directions for future research in the domain of determiners in heritage languages

Methodological challenges in working with Indigenous communities

n their epistemological article, Grenoble and Osipov (2023, henceforth G&O) touch on some of the practical and ideological difficulties in working with Indigenous communities, in particular in relation to their work with the Even communities in northeastern Russia. They mention low speaker numbers and the associated challenge of obtaining sufficient data, the practical difficulties of reaching these communities (both physically and digitally), the existing skepticism in Indigenous communities towards western notions of measurement, and the need to acknowledge the difficult histories that Indigenous people have faced since being colonized. Based on our own work with the Indigenous Sámi populations in northern Norway and Sweden, we fully endorse their experiences and views, despite some differences pointed out below. We also wish to add another aspect, namely the attitudes, values and existing power struggles in our own scientific community, which not only make it hard to do research on small populations in the first place but, ultimately, prevent this research from getting the visibility it deserves

Terminology matters II!: early bilinguals show cross-linguistic influence but they are not attriters

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Acquisition des déterminants et des clitiques objets chez des enfants bilingues (français-allemand)

Cet article étudie l’omission des déterminants et l’usage des pronoms clitiques objets chez des enfants bilingues français-allemands en français. Nous avons observé que l’acquisition des déterminants et des pronoms clitiques objets sont liés de la façon suivante : au moment où les déterminants cessent d’être omis, les pronoms clitiques objets commencent à être réalisés. Nous supposerons que l’omission de l’article s’arrête quand les enfants ont appris à épeler morpho­logiquement la présupposition. L’épellation du trait [+ présup­positionnel] dans le domaine DP représente une condition préalable de son marquage morphologique au niveau de la phrase, ce dernier type de marquage étant complexe pour la dérivation computationnelle puisque le trait en question est inséré au cours de la dérivation par la composante de la pragmatique. C’est ce type d’interaction entre la syntaxe et la pragmatique qui explique le retard des pronoms clitiques objets dans la production langagière des enfants bilingues par comparaison avec des enfants français monolingues.The present article investigates article omissions and object clitic realizations in bilingual French-German children and argues for an interaction between the two phenomena : when children cease to omit determiners, they start to use object clitics. We consider both articles and object clitics to be grammatical phenomena at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Special focus will be on French. The main hypothesis is that determiners cease to be dropped when the children have acquired the distinction between definite and indefinite DPs. The acquisition of definiteness in the D-domain is also a prerequisite for the morphological marking of presupposition at the sentence level. Overt marking of presupposition at the sentence level is computationally complex since pragmatics interacts with syntax in a non-trivial way. The complexity of this kind of interaction explains the delay of object clitics in bilingual children in terms of age and in terms of MLU if compared with monolingual children

Acquisition des déterminants et des clitiques objets chez des enfants bilingues (français-allemand)

Cet article étudie l’omission des déterminants et l’usage des pronoms clitiques objets chez des enfants bilingues français-allemands en français. Nous avons observé que l’acquisition des déterminants et des pronoms clitiques objets sont liés de la façon suivante : au moment où les déterminants cessent d’être omis, les pronoms clitiques objets commencent à être réalisés. Nous supposerons que l’omission de l’article s’arrête quand les enfants ont appris à épeler morpho­logiquement la présupposition. L’épellation du trait [+ présup­positionnel] dans le domaine DP représente une condition préalable de son marquage morphologique au niveau de la phrase, ce dernier type de marquage étant complexe pour la dérivation computationnelle puisque le trait en question est inséré au cours de la dérivation par la composante de la pragmatique. C’est ce type d’interaction entre la syntaxe et la pragmatique qui explique le retard des pronoms clitiques objets dans la production langagière des enfants bilingues par comparaison avec des enfants français monolingues.The present article investigates article omissions and object clitic realizations in bilingual French-German children and argues for an interaction between the two phenomena : when children cease to omit determiners, they start to use object clitics. We consider both articles and object clitics to be grammatical phenomena at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Special focus will be on French. The main hypothesis is that determiners cease to be dropped when the children have acquired the distinction between definite and indefinite DPs. The acquisition of definiteness in the D-domain is also a prerequisite for the morphological marking of presupposition at the sentence level. Overt marking of presupposition at the sentence level is computationally complex since pragmatics interacts with syntax in a non-trivial way. The complexity of this kind of interaction explains the delay of object clitics in bilingual children in terms of age and in terms of MLU if compared with monolingual children

Italienisch als Herkunftssprache im Fremdsprachen-unterricht: Die Rolle der Dialektkompetenz

Unser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit italienischen Herkunftssprecher/innen im Fremdsprachenunterricht Italienisch in Baden-Württemberg, wobei wir drei Perspektiven einnehmen: (i) die Mikro-Perspektive der Herkunftssprecher/innen, die in der Regel flüssig Italienisch sprechen, aber oft bidialektal mit einer Varietät des Italienischen sind, (ii) die Meso-Perspektive der Lehrenden, die diese angemessen in ihren Unterricht integrieren müssen, (iii) die Makro-Perspektive der Schulpolitik des Landes, die den Rahmen für den Italienischunterricht vorgibt. Die Mikro- und Meso-Perspektiven werden anhand von Survey-Studien mit ehemaligen Schüler/inne/n bzw. Lehrkräften dargestellt; die Makroperspektive anhand einer Analyse sprachpolitisch relevanter Dokumente. Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass die Ausbildung der Lehrkräfte mit Hinblick auf Herkunftssprecher/innen und ihre Varietäten noch ausbaufähig ist

Rhetorical question comprehension by Italian–German bilingual children

This study investigates for the first time the comprehension of rhetorical questions (RhQs) in bilingual children. RhQs are non-canonical questions, as they are not used to request information, but to express the speaker’s belief that the answer is already obvious. This special pragmatic meaning often arises by means of specific prosodic and lexical-syntactic cues. Being childhood learners, children have to acquire the concept of rhetoricity, but being bilinguals, they further need to acquire the different cues marking RhQs in their two languages. We tested 85 bilingual children (aged 6–9 years) with Italian as heritage language (HL) and German as majority language (ML) in both of their languages, using a forced-choice comprehension task. Our results show that RhQ comprehension improves with age in both languages. Bilingual children are able to exploit prosodic and syntactic cues to comprehend RhQs in their ML and HL with a slight advantage in the ML. This advantage could be either an effect of the cues used in the experiments in the two languages or of a higher proficiency in the ML. In addition, our results point to a later acquisition of prosodic rhetorical cues, which has implications for bilingual acquisition of non-canonicity in general

Can policies improve language vitality? The Sámi languages in Sweden and Norway

Introduction: Language policies are often aimed at changing language behaviours, yet it is notoriously difficult to assess their effects. This study investigates language use and competence in the Indigenous Sámi populations of Norway and Sweden in light of the national-level policies the two countries have adopted. Methods: We provide a cross-country comparison of relevant educational, linguistic and budgetary policies in Sweden and Norway. Next, we present novel data from a survey with 5,416 Sámi and non-Sámi participants in 20 northern municipalities, examining Sámi language use and proficiencies across generations and contexts. Lexical proficiency in North Sámi was tested in a small subset of participants. Results: Sámi language use has dropped considerably over the past three generations. Only a small proportion of Sámi are highly fluent and use a Sámi language with their children (around 4% in Sweden and 11% in Norway). One fifth of Sámi adults use a Sámi language at least ‘occasionally’, and use is most common in the home context. Sámi language knowledge remains negligible in the majority population. Discussion: The higher levels of language use and proficiency in Norway seem at least in part to reflect the more favourable policies adopted there. In both countries, more work is needed to increase speaker numbers, also in the majority population