Looking for contact-induced language change: Converbs in heritage Turkish

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 1035-1048 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dilek Turan ◽  
Elena Antonova-Ünlü ◽  
Çiğdem Sağın-Şimşek ◽  
Mehmet Akkuş
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Picture Story ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Description Task ◽  
Qualitative Analyses

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The aim of the study is to contribute to the debate about a possible contact-induced change in the heritage language and to examine whether there is contact-induced language change at the morpho-syntactic level in Turkish spoken in Germany. We focus on the perception and use of the converbs –Ip and –IncA in heritage Turkish. Design/methodology/approach: The perception and production of the converbs –Ip and –IncA by 30 German–Turkish bilinguals, who were born and have resided in Germany, are compared with those of the control group. Data and analysis: Two tasks are used in the study: a grammaticality judgement task and a picture-story description task. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are utilized. Findings/conclusions: The analysis of the perception of the converbs by the participants revealed that the bilinguals’ perception of the grammatical constructions with –IncA and of the ungrammatical constructions with –Ip and –IncA differed significantly from that of the monolinguals; however, the perception of the grammatical constructions with –Ip was found to be similar between the bilingual and monolingual groups. The analysis of the production of the converbs by the bilingual participants showed that they tended to use the converbs significantly less than the monolingual control group did. The qualitative analysis of the production task also revealed that there were several cases in the use of the converbs that could be considered as ungrammatical and/or unconventional.

scholarly journals Interfaces in the returnees’ heritage language: Is the complete (re-)activation possible?

2021 ◽  
pp. 136700692110435
Author(s):  
Elena Antonova-Unlu ◽  
Li Wei ◽  
Didem Kaya-Soykan
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Syntactic Position ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Object Marking

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The aim of this study is to examine whether the complete (re-)activation of interface domains in the heritage language (HL) is possible or whether interfaces are likely to preserve features typical for the HL even after many years of residing in the country of origin. Design/methodology/approach: We present the group analysis of direct object marking in Turkish, which is a morphology-syntax-pragmatics interface, of Turkish-German returnees, who returned to Turkey after puberty and have been residing in the country for a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 34 years, and compare them with the control group consisting of Turkish speakers who have been living in Turkey all their lives. Data and analysis: The data were collected using a narrative task, a completion task and a grammaticality judgement task, and analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Findings/conclusions: The analysis of the narrative task revealed that the returnee participants used case-marking on direct objects productively depending on the discourse and syntactic position of the direct object in their heritage Turkish. However, their performance on the completion and grammaticality judgement tasks diverged from those of the control group. These findings can be considered as a piece of evidence that interface domains stay obstinate to complete (re-)activation and may preserve features typical for the HL many years after the return to the country of origin. Originality: The study suggests relevance of the Interface Hypothesis to the process of HL (re-)activation. Significance/implications: The study contributes to the research on the HL development of returnees after their return to the country of origin.

Yiddish–Lithuanian bilingualism: Incomplete acquisition, change through contacts, or both?

2020 ◽  
pp. 136700692093266
Author(s):  
Anna Verschik
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
First Language ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
L1 Acquisition ◽  
Significant Factors ◽  
Incomplete Acquisition

Aims and Objectives/Purposes/Research Questions: Studies on incomplete first language (L1) acquisition emphasize restricted input, the low prestige of heritage/immigrant/minority languages, and age of acquisition as significant factors contributing to changes in L1. However, it is not always clear whether it is possible to distinguish results of incomplete acquisition and contact-induced language change. This article deals with two Yiddish–Lithuanian bilinguals who acquired both languages at home (recorded in 2010 and 2011). The focus of the article is the absence of the Yiddish past tense auxiliary in both informants and the replacement of Yiddish discourse-pragmatic words by their Lithuanian or English equivalents in the speech of the second informant. Design/Methodology/Approach: Qualitative analysis of the speech of two Yiddish–Lithuanian bilinguals. Data and Analysis: Two sets of recordings analyzed for the past tense use and other features mentioned in Yiddish attrition studies. Findings/Conclusions: Restricted input is to be considered as a factor in any case. However, it is argued that phenomena reported in the heritage language literature are often the same as in the contact linguistic literature: impact on non-core morphosyntax, prosody, and word order are usually mentioned as primary candidates of contact-induced structural change. Based on purely linguistic phenomena, it is not possible to distinguish between the results of acquisition under the conditions of limited input and in other contact situations where limited input is not necessarily the case. Many features of the informants’ Yiddish are a result of Lithuanian impact. Originality: Yiddish–Lithuanian early bilingualism is extremely rare nowadays. The data and analysis contribute to a general understanding of the interplay between contact-induced language change and limited input. Significance/Implications: Unlike what is often presumed, it is not always possible to make comparisons to monolinguals or balanced bilinguals because monolingual speakers of Yiddish do not exist.

scholarly journals Lessons learned during Covid-19 concerning cheating in e-examinations by university students

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Krambia Kapardis ◽  
George Spanoudis
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Academic Integrity ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Internal Controls ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Using Data

Purpose The researchers aim to investigate how students can be deterred from cheating, whether legal or ethical policies and procedures are effective and whether there are gender differences. Design/methodology/approach Using data on students undertaking midterm and final e-examinations, as well as a control group of students who were caught cheating in an online mid-semester examination, the authors attempt to answer the research questions. Findings No differences were found in cheating in terms of students’ gender or whether they were repeating a course or not. However, the study revealed that if there are more internal controls imposed and if before the examination students are made to reinforce their academic integrity, e-examination cheating is reduced. Originality/value No other published study was carried out with students who were involved in cheating.

The speakers of minority languages are more multilingual

2021 ◽  
pp. 136700692110231
Author(s):  
Nina Dobrushina ◽  
George Moroz
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
First Language ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Second Languages ◽  
Research Questions

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The paper tests the hypothesis that the larger the population of language speakers, the smaller the number of second languages mastered by these speakers. Design/methodology/approach: We match the size of the population of 29 Dagestanian languages and the number of second languages spoken by the speakers of these languages from 54 villages, and run a Poisson mixed effects regression model that predicts the average number of second languages spoken by speakers from first-language communities of different size. Data and analysis: Data for this study comes from two sources. The information on the population of Dagestanian languages is based on the digitalized census of 1926. The information on the number of second languages in which the residents of Dagestan are proficient is taken from the database on multilingualism in Dagestan (4032 people). Findings/conclusions: The study supports the hypothesis that the size of language population is negatively correlated with the multilingualism of the language community. Originality: The paper is the first to test the correlation between the size of language population and the level of multilingualism of its speakers using statistical methods and a large body of empirical data. Significance and implications: Population size is a factor that could have influenced patterns of language evolution. The population is interrelated with other factors, one of which is long-standing multilingualism. The methodological lesson of this research is that there is a difference in the level of multilingualism within a range of populations where the largest was about 120,000 people. Limitations: The data is limited to one multilingual region. The revealed correlation probably does not hold for areas where language communities do not interact with their neighbors and even speakers of minority languages can be monolingual, or for the territories where many people migrated and the area where a language is spoken was discontinuous.

scholarly journals Physical Computing Strategy to Support Students’ Coding Literacy: An Educational Experiment with Arduino Boards

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1830
Author(s):  
Chih-Chao Chung ◽  
Shi-Jer Lou
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Program Design ◽  
Analysis Of Covariance ◽  
Control Group ◽  
School Students ◽  
Physical Computing ◽  
Technical High School ◽  
Experimental Group

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of introduction of the physical computing strategy of Arduino Boards in a program design course on coding literacy and the effectiveness of the application in technical high school students. This study selected two classes of twelfth-grade students enrolled in a program design course at a technical high school in Southern Taiwan as the samples. One class was the control group (43 students), and the other was the experimental group (42 students). During the 18-week course, the control group carried out a DBL (design-based learning) programming project, and the experimental group carried out the DBL programming project using the physical computing strategy of Arduino boards. Pre- and posttests and a questionnaire survey were carried out, while ANCOVA (analysis of covariance) was used for evaluation purposes. In the course, students in the experimental group were randomly selected for semi-structured interviews to understand their learning status and to perform qualitative analysis and summarization. This study proposed the physical computing strategy of Arduino boards, featuring staged teaching content, practical teaching activities, and real themes and problem-solving tasks. The results show that the coding literacy of students in the different teaching strategy groups was significantly improved. However, in the Arduino course on DBL programming, the students in the experimental group had a significantly higher learning efficiency in coding literacy than those in the control group. Moreover, according to the qualitative analysis using student interviews, Arduino boards were found to improve students’ motivation to learn coding and to aid in systematically guiding students toward improving their coding literacy by combining their learning with DBL theory. Thus, Arduino technology can be effectively used to improve students’ programming abilities and their operational thinking in practically applying programming theories.

scholarly journals Exploring the Discursive Construction of Obedience: An Analysis of Application Letters for the Position of Executioner in Hitler’s Germany

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Leisser ◽  
Katie Bray ◽  
Anaruth Hernández ◽  
Doha Nasr
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
National Socialist State ◽  
Interdisciplinary Framework ◽  
Research Questions

AbstractThis article presents an empirical investigation into the construction of obedience in letters of applications mailed to National Socialist authorities for the position of executioner between the years 1933 and 1945. To this end, a corpus of 178 letters of application was compiled, annotated, and analyzed using the corpus analysis toolkits Antconc and Lancsbox. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the corpus was conducted. The findings were related to and interpreted from the perspectives of applied legal linguistics, stylistics, and legal history. The project aims to explore the construction of a shared discourse of obedience and how this discourse is operative in the letters of application. Drawing on an explorative interdisciplinary framework, this project seeks to answer the following research questions: Is obedience a construct in applicants’ letters of motivation? Which linguistic devices and discursive strategies are used by the executioners to express submission to officials of the National Socialist state? Are there variants of the construction of submission by applicants?

scholarly journals VOICE ONSET TIME IN MULTILINGUAL SPEAKERS: ITALIAN HERITAGE SPEAKERS IN GERMANY WITH L3 ENGLISH

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Miriam Geiss ◽  
Sonja Gumbsheimer ◽  
Anika Lloyd-Smith ◽  
Svenja Schmid ◽  
Tanja Kupisch
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Bilingual Advantage ◽  
L3 Acquisition ◽  
Crosslinguistic Influence

Abstract This study brings together two previously largely independent fields of multilingual language acquisition: heritage language and third language (L3) acquisition. We investigate the production of fortis and lenis stops in semi-naturalistic speech in the three languages of 20 heritage speakers (HSs) of Italian with German as a majority language and English as L3. The study aims to identify the extent to which the HSs produce distinct values across all three languages, or whether crosslinguistic influence (CLI) occurs. To this end, we compare the HSs’ voice onset time (VOT) values with those of L2 English speakers from Italy and Germany. The language triad exhibits overlapping and distinct VOT realizations, making VOT a potentially vulnerable category. Results indicate CLI from German into Italian, although a systemic difference is maintained. When speaking English, the HSs show an advantage over the Italian L2 control group, with less prevoicing and longer fortis stops, indicating a specific bilingual advantage.

An exploratory study on pro-drop in a written description task in L2 Spanish

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
An Vande Casteele ◽  
Alejandro Palomares Ortiz
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
L2 Spanish ◽  
Spanish Language Learners ◽  
Description Task ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
Written Description

Abstract The present article aims at investigating the pro-drop phenomenon in L2 Spanish. The phenomenon of pro-drop or null subject is a typological feature of some languages, which are characterized by an implicit subject in cases of topic continuity. More specifically, behaviour regarding subject (dis)continuity in Spanish differs from French. This paper will offer a contrastive analysis on subject realisation by French learners of L2 Spanish compared to L1 Spanish speakers. So, the goal of this pilot study is to see if a different functioning in pro-drop in the mother tongue also influences the L2. The study is based upon a written description task presented to the two groups of participants: the experimental group of French mother tongue L2 Spanish language learners and the control group of Spanish native speakers.

Why is this happened? Passive morphology and unaccusativity

1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Balcom
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Syntactic Rule ◽  
English Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Unaccusative Verbs

Zobl discussed inappropriate passive morphology (‘be’ and the past participle) in the English writing of L2 learners, linking its occurrence to the class of unaccusative verbs and proposing that learners subsume unaccusatives under the syntactic rule for passive formation. The research reported here supports and amplifies Zobl' proposal, based on a grammaticality judgement task and a controlled production task containing verbs from a variety of subclasses of unaccusatives. The tasks were administered to Chinese L1 learners of English and a control group of English native speakers. Results show that subjects both used and judged as grammatical inappropriate passive morphology with all verbs falling under the rubric of unaccusativity. The article concludes with linguistic representations which maintain Zobl’s insights but are consistent with current theories of argument structure.

scholarly journals Code-switching within the noun phrase: Evidence from three corpora

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 695-714 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Carmen Parafita Couto ◽  
Marianne Gullberg
Keyword(s):  
Linear Regression ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Statistical Software ◽  
Switching Patterns ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Research Questions

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This study aims to improve our understanding of common switching patterns by examining determiner–noun–adjective complexes in code-switching (CS) in three language pairs (Welsh–English, Spanish–English and Papiamento–Dutch). The languages differ in gender and noun–adjective word order in the noun phrase (NP): (a) Spanish, Welsh, and Dutch have gender; English and Papiamento do not; (b) Spanish, Welsh, and Papiamento prefer post-nominal adjectives; Dutch and English, prenominal ones. We test predictions on determiner language and adjective order derived from generativist accounts and the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) approach. Design/methodology/approach: We draw on three publicly available spoken corpora. For the purposes of these analyses, we re-coded all three datasets identically. From the three re-coded corpora we extracted all monolingual and mixed simplex NPs (DetN) and complex NPs with determiners (determiner–adjective–noun (DetAN/NA)). We then examined the surrounding clause for each to determine the matrix language based on the finite verb. Data and analysis: We analysed the data using a linear regression model in R statistical software to examine the distribution of languages across word class and word order in the corpora. Findings/conclusions: Overall, the generativist predictions are borne out regarding adjective positions but not determiners and the MLF accounts for more of the data. We explore extra-linguistic explanations for the patterns observed. Originality: The current study has provided new empirical data on nominal CS from language pairs not previously considered. Significance/implications: This study has revealed robust patterns across three corpora and taken a step towards disentangling two theoretical accounts. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of comparing multiple language pairs using similar coding.

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