32.1927, Review: Language Acquisition; Linguistic Theories: Brehmer, Treffers-Daller (2020)

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Subject: 32.1927, Review: Language Acquisition; Linguistic Theories: Brehmer, Treffers-Daller (2020)

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Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2021 13:57:24
From: Eric ALVAREZ [eric.alvarez.perez at gmail.com]
Subject: Lost in Transmission

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-2019.html

EDITOR: Bernhard  Brehmer
EDITOR: Jeanine  Treffers-Daller
TITLE: Lost in Transmission
SUBTITLE: The role of attrition and input in heritage language development
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Bilingualism 59
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Eric ALVAREZ, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

SUMMARY

Bernhard Brehmer and Jeanine Treffers-Daller have edited a stimulating volume
“Lost in Transmission: The role of attrition and input in heritage language
development”. This volume includes ten articles addressing the heritage
language development of second-generation speakers. These bilinguals are a
heterogenous group. Often, as Grosjean (2015) has suggested, their minority
language is restricted to the home, while their dominant language spreads
across all other public domains.  The present collection brings together
contributions from many experts in the field of bilingualism. In particular,
insights come from acquisition and attrition of heritage speakers’ language
development, two distinct, but interrelated fields in bilingualism. Moreover,
this volume frames the studies within a context of immigration. Heritage
language development in Europe and North America are examined. Languages
include Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Norwegian, Chinese, German, and Albanian.
Thus, the variety of heritage languages studied makes this collection unique
as it attempts to better describe and understand the variable endpoints of
heritage bilingualism, including the factors that engender variability. Each
of the articles examines present-day findings, bringing to light how language
maintenance and change may impact heritage language acquisition in subsequent
generations. Finally, since monolingual, bilingual, and foreign language
learners are used as controls in many of these studies, the book is pertinent
not only for first language acquisition researchers but also for researchers
interested in foreign language learning and teaching.

The editors introduce the volume by highlighting that “only very recently”
(Brehman & Treffers-Daller, 2020) have scholars undertaken empirical
investigations into heritage language development. They then discuss the
notion of language attrition, citing Köpke & Schmid (2004:5), and define it as
“the non-pathological decrease in a language that had previously been acquired
by an individual”. By decrease, the editors mean either temporary or permanent
loss of aspects of one’s first language resulting from a change in linguistic
environment and thus in heritage bilinguals’ linguistic behavior. In short,
reduced input conditions lead both to  reduced heritage language output and to
bilingual co-activation. Furthermore, reduced input conditions impact heritage
languages phonologically, morphosyntactically, lexically, semantically,
pragmatically, etc. The authors also make clear that the term attrition is
controversial since effects of an L2 on an L1 lie along a continuum and are
thus impossible to pinpoint. Therefore, they follow Schmid and Köpke and
suggest that every bilingual speaker is essentially an L1 attritter. To that
end, heritage speakers are described. 

While various definitions of heritage speakers exist, not surprisingly, the
editors follow well-known specialists in the field. Indeed, “a heritage
speaker is an early bilingual who grew up hearing (and speaking) the heritage
language (L1) and the majority language (L2) either simultaneously or
sequentially in early childhood” (Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky, 2013: 133).
Next, the focus of heritage language research is described, as well as the
fact that heritage bilinguals generally do not receive academic support, and
that their heritage languages differ from that of monolinguals. They also
highlight the crucial fact that heritage language input is often provided by
parents who are heritage bilinguals themselves.  It is suggested that the
variability in heritage language output in subsequent generations can be the
result of input that has gone through attrition, has been impacted
cross-linguistically, or has gone through the natural process of diachronic
change. Thus, the authors present the “input quality approach” (Rothman 2007;
Pires & Rothman 2009; Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012). This approach calls for
the examination of data from first-generation immigrants in order to establish
the type of input when analyzing heritage speakers’ variable output. At the
end of the introduction, a three-part overview of the book is presented.

The volume is organized into three sections. The first part begins with three
chapters that compare the structural features of first-generation speakers and
heritage speakers. The second part is the largest one. Given that structure
frequency is a critical topic in this collection, it includes a set of five
chapters. Finally, the third part closes with two chapters that focus on
aspects of L1 attrition and its effects on minority language acquisition by
subsequent generations.

In chapter 1 Aalberse, Andringa, Faber & Lippe delve into the issue of overt
marking of definiteness on nouns that refer to previously mentioned referents.
Their study is titled “Definiteness in Wenzhounese Chinese in the Netherlands
and in China: Evidence for generational change in two locations”. This study
considers two generations of speakers of Wenzhounese Chinese. One group of
parents (first-generation) and children (second-generation) are from China and
the other group are from the Netherlands. The results suggest that
demonstrative constructions have increased in use, particularly among
second-generation speakers, both in China and in the Netherlands. Moreover,
the authors attribute the overuse of definiteness markers to be the result not
of a location effect, but rather a generational one. In this sense, the
linguistic phenomena cannot be the strict result of contact with Dutch. In
other words, the overuse of demonstrative constructions may reflect language
change that is internally motivated and thus accelerated in the heritage
setting. Finally, it may appear as though Wenzhounese Chinese is spoken to a
lesser extent in China. This leads the authors to consider the idea of a
heritage scenario within the Mainland. Indeed, second-generation heritage
speakers, whether in China or the Netherlands, receive reduced input. This
factor could in turn affect how definiteness marking is encoded in both
locations and therefore pave a parallel path to linguistic change in both
countries.

Chapter 2, by Tugba Karayayla, is titled “Effects of first language attrition
on heritage language input and ultimate attainment: Two generations of Turkish
immigrants in the UK”. This cross-generational study considers evidentiality
marking in Turkish. It uses data from monolingual Turkish speakers as a
control, and compares it to data from adult heritage speakers as well as
first-generation Turkish immigrants in the U.K. The results suggest that in
terms of evidentials, the first-generation input is not different from the
monolingual input. Nevertheless, heritage speakers’ use of indirect evidential
structures does differ from that of monolinguals. Furthermore, contrary to
late bilinguals and monolingual controls, when considering non-witnessed
contexts, heritage bilinguals extend the use of direct evidentials. This
suggests that qualitatively different input cannot be attributed to the output
of the heritage speakers. Thus, the effect of long-term heritage language
input reductions on heritage speakers’ accuracy of indirect evidential
structures in Turkish is considered. The findings suggest that less frequent
L1 input before the age of five, coupled with a richer L2 environment, has led
to lower accuracy in evidentials. Karayayla concludes by suggesting that
sufficient L1 input and experience in early childhood is essential for the
acquisition and sustained maintenance of evidentials in heritage Turkish.     
              

The work in the first two chapters considers data from both the country of
origin of the heritage language as well as its development in the host
country. David Giancaspro in chapter 3 takes a different approach. His study,
“Not in the mood: Frequency effect in heritage speakers’ subjunctive
knowledge”, compares U.S. heritage Spanish speakers to “Spanish-dominant
controls”. The control group includes native speakers of Spanish, or late
bilinguals who came to the U.S. after the age of 13. His control group
includes data from first-generation immigrants rather than a monolingual
control group. Moreover, the study builds on previous research centered around
subjunctive mood production by heritage Spanish speakers. Indeed, as compared
to late bilinguals and/or monolinguals, the literature suggests that heritage
Spanish speakers produce fewer subjunctive mood forms. Thus, through two
experiments, Giancaspro argues that lexical gaps rather than morphosyntactic
knowledge engender the replacement of lexically selected mood morphology with
indicative forms. His results show that even though heritage bilinguals use
the subjunctive mood rather accurately, they are nevertheless significantly
less accurate than the control group. Finally, these results are used as
evidence for the importance of lexical frequency of verbs that serve to
trigger the subjunctive mood. In other words, the claim is that  if heritage
speakers fail to use the subjunctive mood, then this is due to the lower
frequency of triggering verbs in their input.       

The second section explores structure frequency. This is a critical topic in
the volume and considers the factors that contribute to the acquisition of
heritage languages as related to the input.n chapter 4, “Word order variation
in heritage languages: Subject shift and object shift in Norwegian”, Anderssen
& Westergaard study the way subjects and objects are positioned in relation to
negation markers by heritage Norwegian speakers in the U.S. After describing
how subjects and objects generally occur in Norwegian, as well their
structural constraints, two factors that influence frequency of subject and
object shift in heritage Norwegian are investigated. These include 1)
structural similarity and 2) frequency of occurrence. To do so, Anderssen &
Westergaard use the Corpus of American-Norwegian Speech and compare it to
corpora of monolingual speakers. Their results show that despite differences
in frequency in monolingual Norwegian, both subject and object shift are
affected by restructuring in heritage Norwegian. In other words, with regard
to maintenance of these structures, frequency does not play a critical part.
On the other hand, structural similarity between heritage Norwegian and
English does engender changes in the heritage language. For example, the
authors argue that complete structural overlap does pave the path to
cross-linguistic influence despite heritage language proficiency. 

Chapter 5, by Jessica Diebowski and titled “Language contact: Gender agreement
in Spanish L2 learners and heritage speakers”,  considers heritage language
use, a crucial factor in heritage language acquisition. Through the
investigation of the amount of use of heritage Spanish, the author focuses on
gender assignment and agreement accuracy. She compares data on simultaneous
adult heritage Spanish speakers who live in the U.S. to that of advanced
English-speaking Spanish language learners. The results show that in terms of
both oral and written gender accuracy, heritage Spanish speakers perform at
ceiling regardless of how frequently they use heritage Spanish. Furthermore,
Diebowski notes that this finding diverges from what was found for adult L2
Spanish language learners. For the L2 group, both exposure and use of Spanish
were critical factors that determined target gender acquisition. Finally, the
author observes that perhaps the fact that all participants were enrolled in
Spanish-language classes, though not heritage language classes, may have
played a role in the overall high accuracy of gender assignment and agreement.

“Vocabulary development in the heritage languages Russian and Turkish between
ages 6 and 10: How do parental input and socio-economic status account for
differences within and between cohorts?” is the title of Chapter 6. In this
study, Montanari, Abel, Tschudinovski & Graβer consider how lexical
proficiency in heritage Russian and Turkish children is impacted by a series
of variables. In particular, the authors take into account the quantity of
input and output of the heritage language, parental socio-economic status and
education level, and language dominance when investigating both expressive and
receptive vocabulary development. Using a standardized picture naming task and
with the aim of comparing heritage Russian and Turkish speakers, 211 children
between the ages of six and 10 were tested. In terms of receptive vocabulary
knowledge, the results showed a good level of the test items, although
expressive command was limited. Moreover, when comparing different age groups,
both groups showed a moderate development in lexical proficiency. Montanari,
Abel, Tschudinovski & Graβer also pointed to systematic differences between
the heritage Russian and Turkish speakers when considering social and
pragmatic factors. While some of the background factors showed the same
effects for both of the groups, other factors showed a different impact on
vocabulary knowledge. Thus, the authors argue that social factors, including
the degree of established networks, may engender the variable outcomes of
vocabulary acquisition among the two groups of heritage speaking children.    
 

 In chapter 7, “Heritage and non-heritage bilinguals: The role of biliteracy
and bilingual education”, Andreou, Dosi, Papadopoulo & Tsimpli  discuss the
role of literacy as a critical source of input for heritage language
acquisition. Focusing on grammar and vocabulary development, the authors study
heritage Albanian in contact with Greek, both in Greece and in Albania.
Through a Sentence Repetition Task (SRT), three sets of children between 8 and
12 were studied. The first group are heritage Albanian speakers living in
Greece and their heritage language is not academically supported. Thus, this
group is literate only in Greek. The second group also lives in Greece and are
heritage Albanian speakers. However, because they benefit from extracurricular
support in Albanian, they are literate in both languages. The third group
consists of Greek-born children born to Albanian families who subsequently
moved back to Albania. Since these children benefited from formal education in
Greece, they are also biliterate and are thus the control group. Data were
also collected on their language use and literacy acquisition. Moreover,
through other tasks, verbal and non-verbal working memory, non-verbal
intelligence, as well as knowledge of expressive vocabulary were considered.
The most significant finding was that the children’s performance in the SRT
could not be determined based on their working memory. This finding also
highlights the appropriateness of the SRT when understanding bilinguals’
linguistic proficiency. When comparing the three groups’ grammaticality
results in Albanian, the study showed no difference. Nevertheless, with regard
to SRT accuracy the Albanian-Greek bilingual children did better than the two
heritage Albanian groups. Thus, literacy in Albanian significantly influenced
the results of both the verbal memory task as well as the grammaticality
scores in Greek. Finally, Andreou, Dosi, Papadopoulo & Tsimpliuse these
findings to argue for Cummins (2001) Interdependence Hypothesis,which states
that bilingual children who benefit from bilingual academic support reap both
linguistic and cognitive advantages. 

In Chapter 8 Elif Krause tackles Sorace & Serratrice (2009) and Sorace’s
(2011) Interface Hypothesis in her study “High sensitivity to conceptual cues
in Turkish heritage speakers with dominant German L2”. With regard to
bilingual processing, it is suggested that single-level structures are not as
difficult to process as structures between cognitive domains. In particular,
the author studied optional verb marking in heritage Turkish speakers in
Germany. She implemented two different tasks aimed at studying the outcomes of
both the semantics-morphosyntax as well as the pragmatics-morphosyntax
interfaces. How verbal plural markers are used in Turkish is also briefly
described. Krause shows that they depend on semantic and pragmatic properties
of subject references. To implement her grammaticality judgment tests, data
were collected using the Magnitude Estimation method. Her results indicated
that for heritage Turkish speakers, as well as for monolingual controls
matched for age and education, awareness to animacy (semantic) and givenness
(pragmatic) constraints is different when choosing overt plural verb marking.
Compared to monolinguals, heritage bilinguals, when considering overt plural
verb marking, are more analytical. The results also showed that the pragmatic
factor displayed the same trends. Here too, heritage bilinguals applied more
precise analysis between the givenness levels as compared to their monolingual
controls. To conclude, Krause suggests that when considering the plural
subjects of single semantic and pragmatic properties that constrain the use of
overt plural verb marking, heritage bilinguals are hyper-sensitive” compared
to monolinguals. Lastly, in situations where overt plural marking was not
possible in monolingual Turkish, heritage bilinguals were as accurate as the
monolingual controls.   

While the second section explored structure frequency, the third and final
section in this volume considers how L1 attrition can impact heritage language
acquisition by future generations. In Chapter 9, Esther de Leeuw’s study “The
Frequency Code and gendered attrition and acquisition in the German-English
heritage language community in Vancouver, Canada” investigates a group of
German L1 speakers who have lived in Vancouver for around 40 years. She
focuses on the attrition of prosody. In particular, the author considers
German and English pitch level and span. She compares ten German-English late
sequential bilinguals to two monolingual controls: a German and a Canadian
English control. When compared to both of the control groups, the results
showed on average a higher pitch level as well as a wider pitch span across
languages for the German L1 speakers. Significantly, lowered pitch levels is
expected in the German of these bilinguals as a result of English influence,
especially since pitch level in male monolingual German is higher than in
English. The author attributed these findings to theories suggesting that high
pitch is equated to friendliness while the opposite is true for low pitch.
Thus, social stigmatization of German immigrants in Canada has engendered
pitch level raising in an attempt to move away from negative stereotypes. As a
result, this has led to non-target linguistic behavior in both German and
English. Also, the German L1 women in the study, when compared to the German
controls, attested to higher pitch level and wider pitch span, but converged
with Canadian English norms. Finally, the author highlights that
socio-political implications not only impact how a host language is learned,
but also how extralinguistic factors may engender L1 attrition.          

Chapter 10, by Shi Zhang, is the last study in the volume. The pilot
investigation is titled “Does extensive L2 exposure trigger L1 attrition of
perfective and durative aspect marking in Mandarin Chinese?”. To answer this
question the author studies literate Mandarin speaking adult immigrants living
in the U.K. for seven or more years. Through an acceptability judgment task of
the perfective marker ‘le’ and the dative marker ‘zhe’, lexical and
grammatical aspect interaction in Mandarin is investigated. The results based
on 14 Mandarin-Chinese bilinguals as well as 23 Mainland Chinese monolinguals
showed that the bilingual speakers were not going through L1 attrition with
regard to perfective and durative aspect marking. Moreover, when considering
the results with Sorace’s (2011) Interface Hypothesis, the author suggests
that aspect marking for these bilingual speakers may not be too challenging.
since only syntactic and lexical interaction  (internal interfaces) are
involved in Mandarin Chinese as opposed to interaction between syntax and
other cognitive domains (external interfaces).

EVALUATION

“Lost in Transmission” is an inspiring volume on heritage bilingualism. The
collection of chapters not only brings together international researchers in
the field of bilingualism, it is also methodologically rigorous in its study
of a variety of language pairs. The papers are all well written. Overall, the
authors have achieved the goal of presenting “the role of attrition and input
in heritage development”, especially in second-generation heritage speakers,
as well as late sequential bilinguals. However, the title of the book “Lost in
Transmission” might lead the reader to believe that the subject covered is how
attrited input from one heritage generation is being transmitted and
subsequently acquired by the next heritage generation. Nevertheless, the
contributions do address how heritage languages from one generation to the
next may be affected, thus expanding our understanding of attrition and input
in heritage language development. Moreover, many chapters have practical
implications, namely those that focus on the importance of biliteracy as well
as of exposure to and language use in the classroom for foreign language
learning. 

The volume caters to advanced level researchers and practitioners’ familiar
with linguistic issues, theories, and methods related to heritage
bilingualism, so it may prove to be a difficult read for the novice.
Nevertheless, the authors, when presenting approaches, theories, and methods
within the framework of their studies, do a good job of explaining these
notions. This is one of the merits of this volume. For example, in their
introduction the editors nicely describe the “input quality approach”,
Chapters 10 and 8 present the “Interface Hypothesis”, and in Chapter 7 the
“Interdependence Hypothesis” is discussed within the context of the results.
One remark however is centered on the “input quality approach”. While this
approach calls for the examination of data from first-generation immigrants in
order to establish the variety of input when analyzing heritage speakers’
variable output, controls in the volume included monolinguals, late
bilinguals’ dominant in their heritage languages, two heritage speaker groups,
and advanced English-speaking foreign language learners. Finally, while the
diversity of control groups is a merit, we may wonder whether late sequential
bilinguals and advanced foreign language learners meet the “input quality
approach” criteria. Another question is whether Norwegian in Chapter 4
qualifies as a heritage language, and the same can be asked about the Greek of
the children returning to Albanian in Chapter 7. Indeed, Montrul (2016) has
suggested a political dimension to describing heritage languages. Perhaps,
these studies would benefit from a brief discussion of the socio-political
status of their languages. Nevertheless, an interesting investigation would be
to study the Greek language development of the Albanian returnees.   

It was inspiring to see that this collection investigated a breadth of
languages, and not only in contact with three varieties of English (American,
British, and Canadian), but also in contact with other languages such as
German, Greek, Albanian, and Dutch. However, the volume as a whole centered
around experimental studies, with only one paper (Chapter 4) making use of a
corpus containing transcribed interviews and not one study using naturalistic
data. Thus, the question of attrition and input in heritage language
development based on spontaneous talk-in-interaction remains. Had the authors
used spontaneous speech, though understandably not easily applicable in all of
these studies, would this result in different conclusions? Nonetheless, while
this may seem to be a drawback of the volume, the results found within are a
fertile point of departure for research that investigates the role of
attrition and input in heritage language development from a usage-based
perspective grounded in naturalistic data. 

In the end, this volume is a superb contribution to the burgeoning study of
heritage bilingual acquisition. The editors and the contributing authors have
put together a thought-provoking book that engages in theoretical and
empirical research. The collection raises questions that only future research
and the study of more diverse language pairs will be able to untangle. In sum,
this work is another significant contribution that helps to understand the
variable linguistic outcomes of heritage bilinguals and serves as a pertinent
resource for language teachers and researchers.  

REFERENCES

Benmamoun, E., Montrul, S., & Polinsky, M. (2013). Heritage languages and
their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistics. “Theoretical
Linguistics”, 39(3-4). doi:10.1515/tl-2013-0009

Brehmer, B., & Treffers-Daller, J. (2020). “Lost in transmission: The role of
attrition and input in heritage language development”. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.

Cabo, D. P., & Rothman, J. (2012). The (Il)Logical Problem of Heritage Speaker
Bilingualism and Incomplete Acquisition. “Applied Linguistics”, 33(4),
450-455. doi:10.1093/applin/ams037

Grosjean, F. (2015). “Parler plusieurs langues: Le monde des bilingues”.
Paris: Albin Michel.

Köpke, B. & Schmid, M. (2004). Language Attrition. The next phase. In “First
language attrition: Interdisciplinary perspectives on methodological issues”.
Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Montrul, S. (2016). “The acquisition of heritage languages”. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Pires, A., & Rothman, J. (2009). Disentangling sources of incomplete
acquisition: An explanation for competence divergence across heritage
grammars. “International Journal of Bilingualism”, 13(2), 211-238.
doi:10.1177/1367006909339806

Rothman, J. (2007). Heritage speaker competence differences, language change,
and input type: Inflected infinitives in Heritage Brazilian Portuguese.
“International Journal of Bilingualism”, 11(4), 359-389.
doi:10.1177/13670069070110040201


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Eric Alvarez is a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate in linguistics at Sorbonne
Nouvelle University. He is also an associate teacher and researcher (ATER) at
the National Institute of Teaching and Education (INSPE) at the University of
Paris-East Créteil where teaches courses in the didactics of foreign languages
and bilingualism. His research interests include bilingual acquisition,
heritage bilingualism, language maintenance and shift, language contact,
lexical borrowing and code-switching in bilingual communities, and corpus
linguistics. He is currently researching, through a longitudinal case-study
and usage-based perspective, third-generation heritage Spanish socialization
and acquisition in Los Angeles, California.





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