[Lingtyp] Approaches to measuring langauge proficiency/dominance in minority/low resource languages

[Ruth Singer]

Hi Alex,

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.

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.

I use these three tasks:
A picture naming task
A picture description task designed to elicit sentences with transitive and
intransitive verbs
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.

The research is still ongoing, so I don't have any publications on the
study yet,

Ruth


On Thu, 22 Oct 2026 at 09:56, Heaton, Raina via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

> Hi Alex,
>
> 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.
>
>
> https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/dd9bc1bb-f28e-4df0-9e2e-6bdf97a993c1/content
>
> *Raina Heaton, Ph.D.*
>
> Associate Professor | Native American Studies
>
> Associate Curator | Sam Noble Museum
>
> The University of Oklahoma
>
> 2401 Chautauqua Ave | Norman, Oklahoma 73019
>
> 405-325-7588 <(405)%20325-7588> | samnoblemuseum.ou.edu
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Alexander Rice via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 21, 2026 12:05 PM
> *To:* LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject:* [Lingtyp] Approaches to measuring langauge
> proficiency/dominance in minority/low resource languages
>
> 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.
> ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerStart
> External Email
>
> ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerEnd
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Previously, I have used the BLP
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://blp.coerll.utexas.edu/__;!!GNU8KkXDZlD12Q!-k0jXtO1k17uoFjfj-06LzQOoSBcEa-4UZFoXj-_zPBIv-oFHf7nbscqw0G8kQRSX84q5WA5RLvurUoh9LzPNfw0z7r1$> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> best,
> Alex
> --
>
> Alexander Rice, PhD
>
> Postdoctoral Scholar
>
> Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics
>
> Native American and Indigenous Studies Center
>
> Florida State University
>
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