<div dir="ltr">Hi Alex,<div><br></div><div>I have used three tasks to compare people who identify as speakers of the Mawng language or 'hearers' of the language - i.e. able to understand the language well but not speak it.</div><div><br></div><div>Mawng is a small Indigenous Australian language from west Arnhem land, an area where most Indigenous people are multilingual and can 'hear' some languages in addition to those they speak.</div><div><br></div><div>I use these three tasks:</div><div>A picture naming task</div><div>A picture description task designed to elicit sentences with transitive and intransitive verbs</div><div>A grammatical judgement task where participants listen to recorded sentences and judge them to be grammatical or ungrammatical. Half of the sentences have errors in grammatical gender agreement. Grammatical gender is not that predictable in Mawng, and different to neighbouring languages, so this can be difficult for people who do not identify as speakers of Mawng.</div><div><br></div><div>The research is still ongoing, so I don't have any publications on the study yet,</div><div><br></div><div>Ruth</div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, 22 Oct 2026 at 09:56, Heaton, Raina via Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class="msg8931976274658264817">
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Hi Alex, </div>
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The HALA test might be useful to you from the psycholinguistic literature. Basically reaction time on basic body part vocab provides information about language dominance, designed for situations where individuals are highly bilingual. I tried it informally
with some Kaqchikel speakers in Guatemala and it was instructive, particularly for younger speakers. Using real photos worked better than the line drawings in other types of tasks. </div>
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<span style="font-family:Aptos,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:11pt;color:rgb(111,11,19)"><b>Raina Heaton, Ph.D.</b></span></p>
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<div id="m_8931976274658264817divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> on behalf of Alexander Rice via Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, October 21, 2026 12:05 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> LINGTYP <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Lingtyp] Approaches to measuring langauge proficiency/dominance in minority/low resource languages</font>
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Dear typologists I apologize in advance if this question is outside the scope of linguistic typology. However, given that many of us work with minority/low resource language communities, I think this could be a good forum for finding some perspectives. </div>
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<div>Dear typologists</div>
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<div>I apologize in advance if this question is outside the scope of linguistic typology. However, given that many of us work with minority/low resource language communities, I think this could be a good forum for finding some perspectives.</div>
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<div>I'm looking for opinions on methods for establishing metrics for language proficiency in bilingual communities in which one of the languages is a minority/endangered/low resource language and many of the participants are non-literate.
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<div>Previously, I have used the <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://blp.coerll.utexas.edu/__;!!GNU8KkXDZlD12Q!-k0jXtO1k17uoFjfj-06LzQOoSBcEa-4UZFoXj-_zPBIv-oFHf7nbscqw0G8kQRSX84q5WA5RLvurUoh9LzPNfw0z7r1$" target="_blank">
BLP</a> when doing fieldwork in bilingual communities in South America, but I have found that survey-style "rate your ability to speak/understand X language on a scale from 1-6" are not always useful. </div>
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<div>Likewise, there can be issues with other tests like the MINT or other picture-naming tests, depending on how interpretable the line drawings are or whether loan words are commonly used for the objects represented therein. </div>
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<div>Overall, I'm curious if anyone here has experiences they'd like to share or refer to about attempting to measure language proficiency in these kinds of situations.</div>
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<div>best,</div>
Alex
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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font size="1"><span style="color:black;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif">Alexander Rice, PhD</span></font></p>
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<p style="font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;margin:0px"><font size="1"><span style="color:black;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif">Postdoctoral Scholar</span></font></p>
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<p style="font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;margin:0px"><font size="1"><span style="color:black;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif">Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics</span></font></p>
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<p style="font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;margin:0px"><font size="1"><span style="color:black;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif">Native American and Indigenous Studies Center</span></font></p>
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<p style="font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;margin:0px"><font size="1"><span style="font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif;color:black;background-color:white">Florida State University</span></font></p>
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