36.2718, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2026: Stability in the Grammar of Germanic Heritage and Minority Languages (Germany)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2718. Fri Sep 12 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2718, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2026: Stability in the Grammar of Germanic Heritage and Minority Languages (Germany)

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Date: 12-Sep-2025
From: Patrick Mächler & Ann-Marie Moser [patrick.maechler at unifr.ch]
Subject: Workshop at SLE 2026: Stability in the Grammar of Germanic Heritage and Minority Languages


Workshop at SLE 2026: Stability in the Grammar of Germanic Heritage
and Minority Languages
Short Title: SLE 2026

Date: 26-Aug-2026 - 29-Aug-2026
Location: Osnabrück, Germany
Contact: Patrick Mächler
Contact Email: patrick.maechler at unifr.ch
Meeting URL: https://linguistlist.org/issues/36/2149/

Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Phonology;
Syntax; Typology
Subject Language(s): Danish (dan)
                     German (deu)
                     Icelandic (isl)
                     Norwegian (nor)
                     Swedish (swe)
Language Family(ies): Germanic

Submission Deadline: 01-Oct-2025

Description of the Topic and Research Questions:
Previous research in (Germanic) heritage and minority languages has
mainly focused on various aspects of language change and the
simplification, convergence, or loss of grammatical features, often
identifying language attrition and the incomplete acquisition of
grammar as the driving forces behind these developments (see Benmamoun
et al. 2013, Montrul 2008 and, for instance, the case studies by
Kolmer 2010, Larsson/Johannessen 2015, Lohndal/Westergaard 2016,
Mächler/Hasse 2023, Montrul et al. 2015, and Moser 2025). Less
attention, however, has been given to the stability of grammatical
features, i.e., to features which do not change despite intensive
language contact with surrounding languages (a notable exception, with
a Pan-Germanic focus, being Westergaard/Kupisch 2020, and
Poletto/Tomaselli 2021 with a case study on Cimbrian grammar). This is
surprising, given that features resistant to far-reaching
restructuring processes (or loss) even under high-contact settings
unravel the “basic, perhaps universal, core structural properties of
their languages” (Benmamoun et al. 2013: 148), similar to the order in
which features are acquired in L1 acquisition and lost in language
impairments, respectively.
In our workshop, we will focus on stable grammatical features in
Germanic heritage and minority languages to determine whether these
features are the same (or very similar) across all these languages or
not. Germanic languages are the ideal testing ground to this end, as
they are closely typologically and genealogically related and are,
above all, one of the best-documented language families worldwide.
Thanks to extensive field work in recent decades, this also holds true
for Germanic heritage and minority languages. In our workshop, we aim
at bringing together researchers from different linguistic disciplines
with an interest in theoretically grounded approaches to grammar based
on solid empirical evidence.
Due to a long tradition of emigration from Germanic-speaking areas,
sometimes dating back to the Middle Ages, Germanic languages reached
many parts of the world, giving rise to a plethora of different
language-contact scenarios in which a Germanic language is (or was
until recently) spoken as a heritage or minority language. In our
workshop we do not differentiate between research in heritage
languages and research in minority languages such as linguistic
islands (Sprachinseln). We are interested in all languages spoken by
minority communities surrounded by one or several majority
language(s). This includes not only (rather recent) migrant
communities such as German, Swedish, and Norwegian in North America
(e.g. Larsson/Kinn 2025, Larsson et al. 2015, and Yager et al. 2015)
or Low German and Danish in South America (e.g. Kaufmann 2025, Heegård
Petersen et al. 2018). It also comprises minority languages or
linguistic islands which were founded before the 18th century, such as
those attested in Eurasia (e.g. Bidese/Tomaselli 2018, Dal Negro 2004,
Moser/Gasner in press, Rabanus 2015, Riehl 2018, Rosenberg 2016,
Rosenkvist 2018) and the Americas (e.g. Louden 2016, Hasse/Seiler
2024) as well. What both heritage language communities and minority
languages have in common, is the widespread bi-/multilingualism of
their speakers. Therefore, these varieties provide insight into
typological stability and  drift in various settings: These settings
differ, for instance, in terms of the intensity and duration of
language contact, the number of languages involved, the number of
speakers, the age and type of acquisition (L1, L2) of the
heritage/minority language and the majority language(s), and the
typological (dis-)similarity of the languages.
The broad empirical base gained through decades of intensive field
work in Germanic heritage and minority languages enables us to (1)
take our starting point in analyses that are empirically
well-informed, and to (2) compare varieties spoken in very different
contact scenarios. Findings from research on heritage Germanic in
Europe and North America (summarised by Westergaard/Kupisch 2020)
prove that this kind of approach is necessary to arrive at sound
conclusions: In second-generation Swedish and German spoken in
Romance-language countries in Europe as well as in the US, V2 word
order in declarative sentences seems to be highly intact and robust.
Also in heritage Norwegian in the US, V2 violations have turned out to
be surprisingly rare, given the intensity of contact with English. One
might jump to the conclusion that there is something innately stable
about V2 declaratives. However, as Westergaard/Lohndal (2019) have
shown, the results from moribund North American Norwegian might be
simply due to the fact that the speakers produce a low number of V2
contexts compared to Germanic languages with V2, where
non-subject-initial sentences account for 30–40% of all declaratives.
This difference is probably the result from pragmatic transfer from
English, a language with less than 10% non-subject-initial
declaratives. That the preliminary conclusion about V2 robustness does
not hold up to scrutiny is also shown by data from German linguistic
islands in Northern Italy, where V2 in declaratives is highly variable
and more than one constituent is allowed before the finite verb (see
e.g. Bidese et al. 2020).
As many heritage/minority language speakers are fluent in both their
heritage/minority language and their surrounding (dominant)
language(s), questions arise as to how we can account for the
multilingualism of these speakers when modelling their grammar. One
approach considering both actual language use and the multilinguistic
reality of the speakers/communities is Diasystematic Construction
Grammar, which tries to discern the contexts of language-specific
constructions and contexts unspecified for language (see Höder 2014,
2018, Boas/Höder 2021). Another approach is the incomplete acquisition
hypothesis (see Montrul 2002, Polinsky 2006) and the alternative model
inspired by the incomplete acquisition hypothesis (Putnam/Sánchez
2013). The latter suggests that it is not the dominance of L2 input
influencing the formation of heritage grammars, but different levels
of activation inside the grammar.
Questions relevant to our workshop include, but are not limited to,
the following ones:
 - Do we find different degrees of stability in different components
of grammar, e.g. is morphosyntax more stable than morphology?
 - Are there components in heritage/minority-language grammars that
have proven to be stable despite being absent or organised radically
different in the surrounding (dominant) majority language?
 - Do structural properties of the different Germanic languages (e.g.
North vs. West Germanic) influence the stability or instability of a
certain grammatical feature?
 - Do structural properties of the different Germanic languages (e.g.
North vs. West Germanic) influence the emergence of new features such
as progressive aspect (or even new grammatical categories)?
 - Does the degree of relatedness of the languages in contact have an
impact on the stability of grammatical features?
 - How can we appropriately model the grammar of these
bi-/multilingual speakers, e.g. with the help of (Diasystematic)
Construction Grammar or in generative approaches?
 - Do we find extralinguistic factors influencing the stability of
heritage/minority languages such as different settings of language
acquisition or the existence of closely related varieties spoken
somewhere else as majority language?
Please send your abstract (maximum 300 words, excluding references) in
PDF format by 1 October 2025 to
ann-marie.moser at ds.uzh.ch
patrick.maechler at unifr.ch
References:
Benmamoun, Elabbas; Montrul, Silvina; Polinsky, Maria (2013): Heritage
languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for
linguistics. In Theoretical Linguistics 39 (3–4), pp. 129–181.
Bidese, Ermenegildo; Padovan, Andrea; Tomaselli, Alessandra (2020):
Rethinking Verb Second and Nominative case assignment. In Ermenegildo
Bidese, Andrea Padovan, Alessandra Tomaselli (Eds.): Rethinking Verb
Second. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 575–593.
Bidese, Ermenegildo; Tomaselli, Alessandra (2018): Developing
pro-drop: The case of Cimbrian. In Federica Cognola, Jan Casalicchio
(Eds.): Null Subjects in Generative Grammar: A Synchronic and
Diachronic Perspective. Oxford: Oxford Academic, pp. 52–69.
Boas, Hans C.; Höder, Steffen (2021): Constructions in Contact 2.
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Dal Negro, Silvia (2004): The Decay of a Language. The Case of a
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Hasse, Anja; Seiler, Guido (2024): Amish Shwitzer: An Old Order
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Heegård Petersen, Jan; Foget Hansen, Gert; Thøgersen, Jacob; Kühl,
Karoline (2021): Linguistic Proficiency: A Quantitative Approach to
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Höder, Steffen (2014): Constructing diasystems. Grammatical
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