23.3431, Diss: Language Acquisition/ Inuktitut, Eastern Canadian: Sherkina-Lieber: 'Comprehension of Labrador Inuttitut...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-23-3431. Wed Aug 15 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.3431, Diss: Language Acquisition/ Inuktitut, Eastern Canadian: Sherkina-Lieber: 'Comprehension of Labrador Inuttitut...'

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Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 11:34:14
From: Marina Sherkina-Lieber [marina.lieber at gmail.com]
Subject: Comprehension of Labrador Inuttitut functional morphology by receptive bilinguals

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Institution: University of Toronto 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2011 

Author: Marina Sherkina-Lieber

Dissertation Title: Comprehension of Labrador Inuttitut functional morphology
by receptive bilinguals 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition

Subject Language(s): Inuktitut, Eastern Canadian (ike)


Dissertation Director(s):
Ana-Teresa Perez-Leroux
Alana Johns

Dissertation Abstract:

This study examines knowledge of grammar by receptive bilinguals 
(RBs) - heritage speakers who describe themselves as capable of 
fluent comprehension in Labrador Inuttitut (an endangered dialect of 
Inuktitut), but of little or no speech production in it. Despite the growing 
research on incomplete acquisition, RBs have yet to be studied as a 
specific population.


Participants (8 fluent bilinguals, 17 RBs, 3 low-proficiency RBs) 
performed a morpheme comprehension task and a grammaticality 
judgment task. General measures of their comprehension and 
production abilities included a story retelling task as an overall 
assessment of comprehension, a vocabulary test, an elicited imitation 
task, and a production task. This data was complemented by language 
behaviour interviews.


The results showed that RBs have good, though not perfect, 
comprehension and basic vocabulary, but speech production is very 
difficult for them. They have grammatical knowledge, but it is 
incomplete: Knowledge of some structures is robust, and their 
comprehension is fluent (past vs. future contrast, aspectual 
morphemes); others are missing (temporal remoteness degrees); and 
yet for others (case and agreement), RBs have the category and know 
its position in the word structure, but have difficulty connecting the 
features with the morphemes expressing them. These findings explain 
the significant asymmetry between comprehension and production in 
RBs: In comprehension, incomplete knowledge may result in loss of 
some aspects of meaning, but in many cases it can be compensated 
for by pragmatic knowledge and extralinguistic context, while in 
production, it can result in the selection of an incorrect morpheme or 
inability to select a morpheme.


Low-proficiency RBs have partial comprehension, small vocabulary, 
and almost no production. They do not understand most functional 
morphemes; however, they show knowledge of the basic properties 
such as the position of the obligatory agreement marker on the verb.


This study provides data on an understudied language and an 
understudied population at the extreme end of unbalanced 
bilingualism. The findings have implications both for the 
psycholinguistics of bilingualism and for language revitalization, 
especially in the context of a language shift in indigenous language 
communities, where RBs are often the last generation to have 
competence in the indigenous language.
 






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