The Effects of Incomplete Acquisition on Grammatical Gender Agreement in Heritage Speakers

The Effects of Incomplete Acquisition on Grammatical Gender Agreement in Heritage Speakers PDF Author: Timmy Paul
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3346579794
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 33

Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: 2,0, Technical University of Braunschweig (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: The following paper compares and contrasts three different studies in order to investigate, whether grammatical gender agreement in heritage speakers involves incomplete acquisition, and if so, how gender agreement is affected by this and other factors like age of onset and context of acquisition. The papers by Montrul, Foote, & Perpiñán (2008) and Alarcón (2011) analyse Spanish heritage speakers, whereas the study by Polinsky (2008) focuses on American Russian heritage speakers. In this paper, all three studies are analysed in order to compare the participants, the procedure and the specific results concerning grammatical gender under incomplete acquisition across different languages. The analysis of the papers is followed by a general discussion of their main outcome. In the end, I will conclude the overall results and provide an outlook.

The Acquisition of Heritage Languages

The Acquisition of Heritage Languages PDF Author: Silvina Montrul
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107007240
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 381

Book Description
An authoritative overview of research into heritage language acquisition, covering key terminological and empirical issues, theoretical approaches, and research methodologies.

The Cambridge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition

The Cambridge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition PDF Author: Julia Herschensohn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108733748
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 839

Book Description
What is language and how can we investigate its acquisition by children or adults? What perspectives exist from which to view acquisition? What internal constraints and external factors shape acquisition? What are the properties of interlanguage systems? This comprehensive 31-chapter handbook is an authoritative survey of second language acquisition (SLA). Its multi-perspective synopsis on recent developments in SLA research provides significant contributions by established experts and widely recognized younger talent. It covers cutting edge and emerging areas of enquiry not treated elsewhere in a single handbook, including third language acquisition, electronic communication, incomplete first language acquisition, alphabetic literacy and SLA, affect and the brain, discourse and identity. Written to be accessible to newcomers as well as experienced scholars of SLA, the Handbook is organised into six thematic sections, each with an editor-written introduction.

Gender Acquisition in Spanish

Gender Acquisition in Spanish PDF Author: Jessica Diebowski
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110703122
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
The comparative investigation of the acquisition of gender in Spanish by early and late bilinguals of different language combinations is highly debated and crucial as the phenomenon of gender involves grammatical features that differ in all three languages under investigation. Against this background, both early and late bilinguals face an arduous learning task which differs in complexity. Couched within a generative framework, the empirical study focuses on 257 participants with different levels of proficiency in Spanish ranging from low to advanced, and through a series of tests aims to discover which extra-linguistic and intra-linguistic factors act as triggers for non-native outcomes in adult heritage speakers and L2 learners. The observed morphological variability is argued not to stem from a representational (i.e. syntactic) deficit, but rather from a mapping problem in L2 learners and heritage speakers. Successful attainment in terms of gender is possible but dependent on the interplay between various extralinguistic and linguistic factors.

Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism

Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism PDF Author: Silvina A. Montrul
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027290415
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Age effects have played a particularly prominent role in some theoretical perspectives on second language acquisition. This book takes an entirely new perspective on this issue by re-examining these theories in light of the existence of apparently similar non-native outcomes in adult heritage speakers who, unlike adult second language learners, acquired two or more languages in childhood. Despite having been exposed to their family language early in life, many of these speakers never fully acquire, or later lose, aspects of their first language sometime in childhood. The book examines the structural characteristics of "incomplete" grammatical states and highlights how age of acquisition is related to the type of linguistic knowledge and behavior that emerges in L1 and L2 acquisition under different environmental circumstances. By underscoring age of acquisition as a unifying factor in the study of L2 acquisition and L1 attrition, it is claimed that just as there are age effects in L2 acquisition, there are also age effects, or even perhaps a critical period, in L1 attrition. The book covers adult L2 acquisition, attrition in adults and in children, and includes a comparison of adult heritage language speakers and second language learners.

North American Icelandic

North American Icelandic PDF Author: Birna Arnbjornsdottir
Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press
ISBN: 0887553494
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
North American Icelandic evolved mainly in Icelandic settlements in Manitoba and North Dakota and is the only version of Icelandic that is not spoken in Iceland. But North American Icelandic is a dying language with few left who speak it.North American Icelandic is the only book about the nature and development of this variety of Icelandic. It details the social and linguistic constraints of one specific feature of North American Icelandic phonology undergoing change, namely Flámæli, which is the merger of two sets of front vowels. Although Flámæli was once a part of traditional Icelandic, it was considered too confusing and was systematically eradicated from the language. But in North America, Flámæli use spread unchecked, allowing the rare opportunity of viewing the evolution of a dialect from its birth to its impending demise.

Lost in Transmission

Lost in Transmission PDF Author: Bernhard Brehmer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027261350
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
Heritage speakers are a fascinating group of bilinguals with a unique profile. Living abroad as immigrants of the second generation, they speak the language of their own speech community (the heritage language) at home, and the societally dominant language in most other domains. What exactly they know about their heritage language continues to fascinate the research community as well as teachers and other practitioners working with this group. The different contributions cover a large variety of studies into heritage languages spoken in Europe and North America (including Chinese, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish and Turkish). The volume makes a key contribution to the description and explanation of variability in the outcomes of heritage language acquisition, taking into account a wide range of factors which impact on language acquisition. As comparisons are frequently made with monolinguals and foreign language learners, the volume is also highly relevant for researchers working in monolingual language acquisition and foreign language learning and teaching.

Fossilized Second Language Grammars

Fossilized Second Language Grammars PDF Author: Florencia Franceschina
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027293988
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description
This monograph is a theoretical and empirical investigation into the mechanisms and causes of successful and unsuccessful adult second language acquisition.Couched within a generative framework, the study explores how a learner’s first language and the age at which they acquire their second language may contribute to the L2 knowledge that they can ultimately attain. The empirical study focuses on a group of very advanced L2 speakers, and through a series of tests aims to discover what underpins their near mastery of grammatical gender and other grammatical properties.The book explores an account of persistent selective divergence based on the idea that child and adult learners are fundamentally similar, except that in adults the L1 plays the role of a fairly rigid filter of the linguistic input. The impossibility of representing the new target language other than by using the building blocks of the previously established L1 is argued to be the main reason why near but not totally native like language representations are formed and become established in adult L2 learners.

Heritage Languages and Their Speakers

Heritage Languages and Their Speakers PDF Author: Maria Polinsky
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107047641
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
A pioneering study of heritage languages, from a leading scholar in this area of study world-wide.

The Acquisition of Gender

The Acquisition of Gender PDF Author: Dalila Ayoun
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027258392
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
Gender as a morphosyntactic feature is arguably “an endlessly fascinating linguistic category” (Corbett 2014: 1). One may even say it is among “the most puzzling of the grammatical categories” (Corbett 1991: 1) that has raised probing questions from various theoretical and applied perspectives. Most languages display semantic and/or formal gender systems with various degrees of opacity and complexity, and even closely related languages present distinct differences, creating difficulties for second language learners. The first three chapters of this volume present critical reviews in three different areas – gender assignment in mixed noun phrases, subtle gentle biases and the gender acquisition in child and adult heritage speakers of Spanish – while the next six chapters present new empirical evidence in the acquisition of gender by bilingual children, adult L2/L3 learners and heritage speakers of various languages such as Italian, German, Dutch or Mandarin-Italian.