32.496, Review: General Linguistics: Polinsky (2020)

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Subject: 32.496, Review: General Linguistics: Polinsky (2020)

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Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2021 17:31:55
From: Mitsuyo Sakamoto [mitsuy-s at sophia.ac.jp]
Subject: Heritage Languages and their Speakers

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-1524.html

AUTHOR: Maria  Polinsky
TITLE: Heritage Languages and their Speakers
SERIES TITLE: Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 159
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Mitsuyo Sakamoto, Sophia University

SUMMARY

With increasing globalism and accompanying mobilization, people are constantly
de-rooting and re-rooting in different parts of the world. With that
displacement and replacement, mother tongues of the parents are at times
passed onto the children as their heritage language and at other times they
are lost. As applied linguists, our temptation is to preserve the heritage
language in the generations to come while facilitating second language (L2)
acquisition (Kondo Brown, Sakamoto, & Nishikawa, 2019). In doing so,
investigating and understanding characteristics inherent in heritage language
is the indispensable first step, and Maria Polinsky does exactly that. In this
volume four dimensions of heritage language are explored in great detail:
phonetics and phonology, morphology and morphosyntax, syntax, and semantic and
pragmatics.

DESCRIPTION

The book is comprised of a preface followed by eight chapters and a
conclusion. The preface, along with a rationale for this volume, includes a
personal tale of Polinsky herself, having immigrated to the US from  the then
Soviet Union, witnessing changes undergone by the language brought from the
homeland. The researcher is intrigued by what aspects of language are kept and
what are abandoned by heritage speakers. Over the years, she comes to realize
that, regardless of the language you speak, heritage languages share a number
of recurrent properties.

Chapter 1 is titled, “Who are these speakers, where do they come from, and how
did they get to be the way they are?” Polinsky begins by providing concrete
definitions in describing heritage speakers: “heritage speakers as unbalanced
bilinguals whose heritage (weaker) language is their first language” (p. 4).
Polinsky is interested in discovering linguistic features of heritage
speakers, and therefore notes how her definition should be distinguished from
a broader definition of understanding heritage speakers as those having
family, ethnic, or emotional connections to a particular language but who were
not exposed to it during childhood and who may choose to relearn it later in
life as adults, a definition embraced by language revivalists such as Fishman
(2001). 

Polinsky’s definition of heritage speakers includes sequential and
simultaneous bilinguals, with a caveat that sequential bilinguals are usually
slightly more proficient in the minority language. She also goes on to add how
not all bilinguals are alike, and that their range of proficiency should be
envisioned as a continuum. Given this variation among heritage speakers,
Polinsky further describes three types of speakers: acrolectal speakers whose
high competence resembles those of the baseline (i.e., the language of the
first-generation immigrants; the language of the speakers in the country of
origin is separately referred to as the homeland language), basilectal
speakers whose language knowledge is quite divergent and least like the
baseline, and mesolectal speakers who are in between. Moreover, distinctions
between receptive versus productive bilinguals are explained, referring to
those only having the receptive skills as “overhearers”. She also describes
returnees who return to the homeland upon sojourn in a host country.

After identifying who heritage speakers are, Polinsky moves on to describe
heritage grammar. She notes how there are three possible fates the first
language can go through: transfer, attrition and innovation (or divergent)
attainment. She provides concrete empirical examples to illustrate how
transfer manifests in heritage grammar, syntax and lexis being the domains
where transfer is particularly visible.

Attrition is defined as a temporary or permanent loss of language ability,
which is not only a phenomenon for the aged but also for the young. She
reports how age of onset of bilingualism is inversely related to the extent of
attrition, and that children, especially those younger than 10 or 12, are more
prone to losing their L1 skills compared to those who began L2 learning later
in life. She calls for more longitudinal studies that document and investigate
age-matched first- and second-generation speakers’ attrition.

Polinsky objects to the term “incomplete acquisition”, and instead proposes
the term “divergent attainment”. This is because she deems heritage grammar,
while deviant from the baseline grammar, to be a complete, consistent system
of its own. They are not deficiencies but divergence (or “innovation”), a
systematic, coherent grammar. Divergent attainment is explained as a result of
several driving forces, including quality and quantity of input, incipient
changes in the baseline, and universal principles of language design (p. 28).
These three factors are each explained in further detail.

Chapter 2 titled “Heritage English” provides overall features of heritage
language. While pronunciation is described to be native-like, heritage
speaker’s production includes non-native-like errors. Specifically, heritage
speaker’s production displays features of long pauses, disfluencies,
hesitations caused by lexical access problems, problems with inflectional
morphology, limited complex syntactic structures and poor knowledge of
noncompositional expressions. Lack of literacy is also a typical feature of
heritage speakers.

At the same time, Polinsky is adamant that these features are not to be
misinterpreted as heritage speakers doing everything “wrong”, speaking
“corrupted” language, and sounding “uneducated” or “childish” (p. 74).
Polinsky calls for approaches that conceptualise heritage speakers in more
positive ways. 

Chapter 3 “How to study heritage speakers: Observations on methodologies and
approaches” takes a slightly different stance from the previous two chapters,
as this one focuses on methodology-related issues. She cautions about the
plight heritage speakers are in, having an ostensibly native-like
pronunciation but non-native morphosyntactic features. Because they have been
evaluated from a deficit perspective, heritage speakers can fall in the
“circle of deterioration” (p. 80) in which the individual may become reluctant
to speak their home language for fear of being criticized. Polinsky’s
suggestion is a logical one: she advises that the data be collected by
nonnative L2 speakers of that language. If an L2 speaker cannot be found, to
reduce anxiety, she suggests recruiting those who are close to the heritage
speakers in age. She also suggests meeting several times and changing topics
of discussion as needed to see what engages them, helping to establish mutual
trust and reduce anxiety.

Polinsky goes on to talk about different materials to collect data. One of the
first mentioned is elicited imitation. While it has its limitations, she
emphasises its usefulness. For example, she provides a concrete example of a
French cohort of heritage English speakers to illustrate her point. In the
task, a considerable reworking of the structure was identified that allowed
heritage speakers to avoid using a relative clause. This example is followed
by her own heritage Russian example, in which she also observed difficulties
for the heritage speakers to retain the original form.

The next section explores the use of grammaticality judgment tasks (GJTs).
Polinsky notes how heritage language speakers do particularly poorly on GJTs.
This is attributed to the heritage speaker’s reluctance to reject
ungrammatical materials, which she refers to as the “yes-bias”, a common
feature found in both heritage speakers and L2 learners. Again, her contention
is followed by concrete empirical examples. 

She cautions against simple, explicit tasks because subtle differences between
the native speakers and heritage speakers are often lost. Another caution she
poses is that heritage speaker’s poor performance might not necessarily be
grammatical errors but extragrammatical in nature, such as working-memory
strain. Given the limitations in GJT, Polinsky suggests using
interpretation-based methods such as sentence-picture matching and truth-value
judgment tasks to test a heritage speaker’s comprehension. Ideally, one can
combine several methodologies to investigate heritage speakers. 

Polinsky also reminds us how biographic questionnaires can reveal pertinent
information about the learner, such as the age of language acquisition, amount
of language use and self-assessment pertaining to linguistic performance.
Interestingly, Polinsky notes how heritage speaker’s confidence level is
inversely correlated with their proficiency. This is followed up by evidence
from Polinsky’s own study of heritage Russian speakers that looked at speech
rate, which is representative of fluency. She discovered how the more fluent
the speaker is, the lower they evaluated themselves in comparison with native
speakers. As self-perception is tied to ethnic and cultural identification,
Polinsky cautions how self-assessment may add complications to the data
collected.

Another assessment material Polinsky introduces is Cloze tests and C-tests
(integrative tests of language proficiency; a shorter alternative to cloze
tests). While she acknowledges high reliability, ease and efficiency of test
administration, objectivity in scoring, and integrative language use, she also
warns of the lack of face validity, poor item discrimination and unclear
construct validity. They are also often administered in written form, which
places heritage speakers, whose literacy skills are known to be limited, at a
disadvantage.

Lexical knowledge is described as measurable in several ways. For example,
lexical decision tasks measure the extent and speed of classifying real and
nonce words. However, again Polinsky notes the tendency of concessive yes-bias
among heritage speakers, which could produce inconclusive results. Other
possible tools to use include the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) which
does not rely on literacy, hence appropriate for low-proficient heritage
speakers. 

Chapter 4 deals with the first of the four linguistic aspects taken up in
detail: phonetics and phonology. Polinsky notes how phonetic advantage is a
clear positive trait found across heritage speakers. Polinsky provides
numerous studies which unanimously show heritage speakers’ phonetic advantage
compared to L2 learners. Nevertheless, some studies report on an accent
referred to as a “heritage accent” (p. 122). One explanation for this is that
the dialect spoken by immigrant parents (baseline) may undergo significant
leveling. Other possible explanations include ease in articulation and
overemphasised accent. Polinsky describes how heritage speakers rely on a
“good enough” strategy in which differences between L1 and L2 are downplayed
when they are not sufficiently informative. This effect is described to be
bidirectional, L1 affecting L2 and vice versa. Again, she provides ample
evidence to show this mutuality. 

The conclusion Polinsky reaches pertaining to heritage speaker’s
phonetic/phonological abilities is that heritage speakers have separate sound
systems for each language, and that they do not identify L1 sounds with L2. At
the same time, heritage speakers downplay the similarities across different
languages, adopting what she describes as a “good enough” strategy,
compromising sound production. She further adds how the differences between
heritage speakers and baseline are not merely performative but possibly
conceptual and this needs to be explored further.

Chapter 5 explores heritage speaker’s morphology and morphosyntax. She warns
how morphology is one of the vulnerable areas for attrition. Not surprisingly,
infrequent irregular forms tend to be difficult for heritage speakers, while
frequent irregular forms are not. She attributes this to perceptual salience,
although she cautions that salience alone does not necessarily lead to
retention, and again provides substantial research evidence from various
languages.

Some grammatical features are more prone to attrition than others. Case and
agreement are particularly vulnerable. Again, frequency and saliency are
described to be determinants affecting retention. Low salient items are often
omitted, and a tendency for uniformity and simplicity is evident in heritage
grammar. This tendency is referred to as a “silent problem” (p. 220). 

Chapter 6 is dedicated to syntax. She describes how heritage production can be
characterized by multiple disfluencies, errors in case and agreement, and lack
of complex structures. Despite its incongruencies with the baseline norms,
heritage language is again described as following principled rules. Some
features are said to be the result of transfer, whereas others are a result of
universal principles of language design. Polinsky’s discussions are extensive,
drawing from monolingual aphasic patients and neuroimaging, noting how verbs
induce more brain activity than nouns. Indeed, a similar pattern was observed
in heritage speakers. She further discusses A-dependencies, noting how
heritage speakers do not distinguish unaccusative-unergative forms. Passive
construction was also investigated, and both overmarking and undermarking were
found in heritage production. Difficulties in acquiring the passive is
associated with its infrequency and its association with the written register.
Polinsky also explores A-bar dependencies, including production of relative
clauses and wh-questions. Again, while heritage patterns show divergences, she
emphasises that it is neither deficient nor unpredictable but distinct and
systematic.

In this chapter, “the silent problem” (p. 253) resurfaces, as heritage
speakers have difficulties associating meaning with the absence of form. For
example, null pronouns are described to be vulnerable to attrition, being
replaced by overt pronouns. Polinsky notes how this is the result of
reorganized internal grammar. Binding in heritage grammar is also a distinct
system, but the errors are not the same across different languages. She
concludes that abstract knowledge of binding in heritage speakers is intact
but the errors, like other grammatical features, show particular rearrangement
in heritage grammars. 

Chapter 7 takes up semantics and pragmatics. In the area of semantics,
heritage speakers again show divergent tendencies compared to the baseline,
but not to the extent of L2 speakers. Polinsky describes heritage speakers to
“move boldly” compared to L2 speakers (p. 327), unafraid to create novel
expressions by combining L1 and L2 features in innovative ways. One major
feature of heritage semantics is the reliance on fully compositional
structures. Semantically opaque expressions are avoided and more transparent
semantics are preferred. Of the L1 and L2 systems, the simpler system wins
out, resulting in less complexity. In order to expand research in this area,
Polinsky suggests incorporating various research methodologies, including
corpus analysis and conversational analysis.

Chapter 8 is specifically about endangered language speakers. Here, Polinsky
not only takes up aspects of heritage grammar but also proffers insights in
recruiting and working with endangered language speakers. She describes how
collecting data from this particular cohort is different from soliciting
participants from groups whose languages are still very much alive. In some
cases, the participant represents the baseline speaker and others heritage
speakers. In order to collect their biographical information, details such as
the percentage of language spoken might not be accurate, given that their
frequent L1 use could have happened years ago. Polinsky notes how
self-assessment is also not necessarily reliable, as with other heritage
speakers, she has found an inverse correlation between confidence and
proficiency, where modest individuals tended to be those who were highly
proficient, and the confident ones to be lower in proficiency.

As she did in previous chapters, she explores various facets of heritage
grammar, for example, ergativity in endangered languages. One illustrative
example she offers is that of Arctic Quebec Inuktitut. It was discovered that
the participants avoided producing structures that required ergative
morphology. However, Polinsky notes that this does not mean ergativity is
lost, but rather functionally changed in heritage grammar. Again, Polinsky
attributes the restructuring of grammar largely to the silent problem and to 
perceptual salience. Yes-bias is also operative in endangered language
speakers.

Finally, in the conclusion chapter, Polinsky summarizes her findings. She
characterizes heritage speakers to be reluctant speakers, hesitant in judging
linguistic data, redundant in speech, slow in delivery and unstable in
performance. The book concentrates on describing the mechanics of heritage
language, but she notes how interest in sociolinguistic aspects is also
growing in order  to better understand heritage speakers.

In domains such as lexicon, heritage speakers display  characteristics similar
to those of L2 speakers, but given the different input received and dissimilar
exposure to the target language, heritage speakers and L2 learners have
different needs. On the other hand, in comparison to native speakers, heritage
speakers share similar sound production, allowing heritage speakers to often
sound prima facie native-like. However, when examined closely, heritage
speakers display “good enough” strategies in which the L1 and L2 sound
production is compromised. Other heritage language features include low
tolerance for optionality, preference for one-to-one mapping between form and
function, perceptually salient materials and simpler constructs, and problems
with ambiguities. These features give rise to heritage speakers’ own
innovative restructured linguistic system.

EVALUATION

This volume is thorough, comprehensive, and multifaceted, capturing the
uniqueness, complexities and subtleties that characterize heritage language. A
plethora of concrete research evidence from numerous languages is provided to
illustrate the points made.
Her comprehensiveness however, at times gives an impression that, for example,
heritage speakers can be amalgamated together as one group, when, as she
herself points out, heritage language forms a continuum. Therefore, it should
be emphasised that the examples she provides are for illustrative purposes,
and for finer details, the original study should be consulted.

Her call to describe heritage grammar not as deficient, but rather divergent ,
with innovative, coherent grammar is a welcome shift in perspective. Any
stigma created and attached to heritage speakers has resulted in their
reluctance to speak in fear of strictures from native speakers. Ideological
changes on the part of researchers, educators and policymakers can affect how
and why heritage speakers should be investigated.

Another positive aspect that should be highlighted is Polinsky’s generosity in
sharing research evidence and suggestions with other researchers so that the
field could be expanded further.

While this is a seminal work, those who are less familiar with theoretical
linguistics and psycholinguistics may have a harder time appreciating the
ample research evidence the book offers. Likewise, familiarity with different
languages, especially Russian and Korean, would be helpful to fully appreciate
the many illustrative examples she provides. 

Lastly, innovative, coherent heritage grammar shows trends in what I would
describe as features of translanguaging (Garcia & Li Wei, 2014). Heritage
speakers have at their disposal two (or more) linguistic systems which have
been fused into one, creatively bringing their linguistic resources together.
However, while code switching is briefly mentioned in the book,
translanguaging is not. I believe translanguaging concepts can complement what
Polinsky offers in important ways. 

This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account of heritage
speakers. While their grammar has often been described putatively as
deficient, aberrant and error-prone, Polinsky suggests an alternative
conceptualisation, deeming it a coherent, rational linguistic system, a
welcome and important alternative that questions and challenges the way we
have understood heritage speakers to date.

REFERENCES

Fishman, J. (2001). 300-plus years of heritage language education in the
United States. In J. K. Peyton et al. (Eds), Heritage languages in America:
Preserving a national resource, (pp. 81-98). Delta Systems and Center for
Applied Linguistics.

Garcia, O., & Li Wei. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and
education. Palgrave Pivot.

Kondo Brown, K., Sakamoto, M., & Nishikawa, T. (2019). Oya to ko wo tsunagu
keishogo kyoiku [Heritage language education connecting generations: From the
Japanese perspective]. Kurosio.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Mitsuyo Sakamoto is Professor in the Department of English Studies at Sophia
University in Tokyo, Japan. She is a sociolinguist specializing in
bilingualism, multiculturalism and sociocultural theory, taken up from
critical perspectives.





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