Response to inquiry: Differences between heritage & non-heritage learners

[Scott McGinnis]

From: Kim Potowski [mailto:kpotow1 at uic.edu]
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 7:40 PM

Silvina Montrul (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) compared
the selection of preterite & imperfect by Spanish-English bilinguals who
had:
(1) differing ages of "onset of bilingualism" and  (2) grown up in the
United States vs Latin America .  She found that age of onset of
bilingualism has an effect on the acquisition and attrition of
tense/aspect morphology in Spanish, that semantic features of functional
categories are affected by incomplete acquisition and language loss, and
that many patterns exhibited by bilinguals resemble stages of second
language acquisition.

Forthcoming, *Bilingualism: Language & Cognition*.  Sorry, that's all I
have of the reference.  Please don't flood her with requests; I'll post
the complete reference when it's published.

I found her article fascinating and agree that more work like it is
needed in order to understand what bilinguals' linguistic systems look
like, which should, after all, be a primary consideration in our
curriculum development.  Can we incorporate this into the agenda at the
Heritage Languages conference in D.C. in October 2002?

Everyone who has posted on this listserv appears eager,  dedicated, and
helpful.  Kudos to Scott for making it happen.  Let's keep the
comraderie & nourish a safe place for inquiry for both novice &
experienced scholars with all kinds of heritage language interests.

Kim Potowski
University of Illinois at Chicago

> > > (original posting follows)
> > >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I'm interested in looking into cognitive/
> > lingusitic differences of
> > > heritage learners in comparison to non-heritage
> > learners and other
> > learners.
> > >
> > > I was wondering if there are any (empirical)
> > studies done in the
> > literature
> > > on linguistic characteristics, cognitive styles
> > (psycholinguistic),
> > and/or
> > > aptitude of heritage learners?
> > >
> > > I would appreciate any suggestions for direction.
> > >
> > > Thank you.
> > >
> > > Hi-Sun Helen Kim
> > > University of Hawaii at Manoa
> > > Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literature
> > > Korean Linguistics (Ph.D.)