scholarly journals The Nativeness of Breton Speakers and Their Erasure

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Mélanie Jouitteau
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Linguistic Input ◽  
Linguistic Stress ◽  
Cultural Treatment

AbstractI discuss the nativeness of heritage speakers of Breton in the twentieth century. I present a syntactic test designed for Breton that sets apart its native speakers from its late learners, for whom Breton is a second language. Nativeness is revealed by a better tolerance to syntactic overload when sufficient linguistic stress is applied. Both heritage speakers of inherited Breton and early bilinguals whose linguistic input comes exclusively from school answer this test alike, which I take as a sign they are cognitively natives. The syntactic nativeness of children deprived of familial Breton input suggests there is many more young Breton natives among contemporary speakers than previously assumed. Taking stock of these results, I discuss the cultural erasure of Breton native speakers. I compare their cultural treatment with the figure of the ghost. I end by a discussion of the term new speaker.

scholarly journals Phrase frequency, proficiency and grammaticality interact in non-native processing: Implications for theories of SLA

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kailen Shantz
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Grammatical Development ◽  
Developmental Shift ◽  
Reading Experiment ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Linguistic Input

This study reports on a self-paced reading experiment in which native and non-native speakers of English read sentences designed to evaluate the predictions of usage-based and rule-based approaches to second language acquisition (SLA). Critical stimuli were four-word sequences embedded into sentences in which phrase frequency and grammaticality were crossed in order to examine whether grammatical processing is modulated by phrase frequency. The magnitude of grammaticality effects for native speakers did not differ by phrase frequency, indicating that phrase frequency does not modulate native grammatical processing. Phrase frequency did, however, modulate the magnitude of non-native grammaticality effects. This modulating effect of phrase frequency on grammatical processing for non-native speakers depended on proficiency, showing a u-shaped change in the size of grammaticality effects relative to speaker proficiency. The overall pattern of change in grammaticality effects suggests a gradual developmental shift in grammatical processing from an initial reliance on phrase frequency to an eventual abstraction of generalizable rules from the linguistic input once sufficient experience has accumulated. Results suggest that second language (L2) grammatical development relies on a combination of both usage-based and rule-based knowledge and processing, rather than exclusive reliance on one or the other.

Selective vulnerability and dominant language transfer in the acquisition of the Chinese cleft construction by heritage speakers

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-227
Author(s):  
Ziyin Mai ◽  
Xiangjun Deng
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Selective Vulnerability ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Different Types

Abstract This study investigates effects of selective vulnerability and dominant language transfer in heritage grammar. Mandarin Chinese has a shì…de cleft construction, which, despite its superficial similarities with the it-cleft in English, is subject to additional conditions. Four experimental tasks elicited eighteen adult heritage speakers’ implicit knowledge of the word order and the temporal, telicity and discourse conditions associated with the Chinese cleft. The heritage speakers demonstrated target-like representation of the conditions. Meanwhile, their sensitivity to the telicity and discourse conditions is weaker than that of native speakers in Beijing, suggesting selective vulnerability in the heritage grammar. By comparing the heritage speakers with adult second language learners of Chinese, we concluded that the vulnerability of the heritage grammar in the discourse domain did not result from cross-linguistic influence from English. In different types of Chinese-English bilinguals, the dominant language affects the weaker language in different ways.

Learning English as a Foreign / Second Language: A Critique

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Dr. M. Jyothi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Second Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Back Ground ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

A knowledge of the English Language has become an object of importance in relation to its application in various walks of life. A complete command over the language could be possible where the varied meanings of usage of words, idioms and phrases according to the changing circumstances and situations are comprehensively elucidated to learners. In the twentieth century there is the phenomenon of the native speakers of English being outnumbered by the non-native speakers considerably. There are as many as 1500 millions users of English as a second language. Of these, an estimated 18 million users are in India. The Indian users of English are spread all over India. Though the users of English are spread all over India. English in India has a pan-Indian character. Though the users of English in India make use of the charastic role of English, yet there is no complete homogeneity. The variation in the use of English is partly due to the vast linguistic diversity in the country. It is estimated that there are as many as fifteen major languages and 1652 languages and dialects spoken in India. The ethnic variety of proficiency tend to contribute to the lack of homogeneity in Indians’ use of English. Against this back ground, Indian users of English language, lack intelligibility in communicating English language as it ought to be communicated like native speakers of English. This kind of situations often noticed by the native speakers who claim that they use only Standard English. Standard English is defined by H.C.Wyld as a certain vareity of English “spoken within certain social boundaries, with an extraordinary degree of uniformity, all over the country”. It is neither a regional nor social dialect, but its use confers a social change on the speakers. Every educated Englishmen speak it as it is the widely accepted dialect. It is the English spoken in southern England and it remains to be the language of the cultured and educated people living in south of the River Thames. It is the speech heard among men who have bee

scholarly journals Can non-interactive language input benefit young second-language learners?

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
TERRY KIT-FONG AU ◽  
WINNIE WAILAN CHAN ◽  
LIAO CHENG ◽  
LINDA S. SIEGEL ◽  
RICKY VAN YIP TSO
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Second Graders ◽  
Story Reading ◽  
Linguistic Input ◽  
Children First

ABSTRACTTo fully acquire a language, especially its phonology, children need linguistic input from native speakers early on. When interaction with native speakers is not always possible – e.g. for children learning a second language that is not the societal language – audios are commonly used as an affordable substitute. But does such non-interactive input work? Two experiments evaluated the usefulness of audio storybooks in acquiring a more native-like second-language accent. Young children, first- and second-graders in Hong Kong whose native language was Cantonese Chinese, were given take-home listening assignments in a second language, either English or Putonghua Chinese. Accent ratings of the children's story reading revealed measurable benefits of non-interactive input from native speakers. The benefits were far more robust for Putonghua than English. Implications for second-language accent acquisition are discussed.

scholarly journals Silence is difficult: On missing elements in bilingual grammars

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oksana Laleko ◽  
Maria Polinsky
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Experience Difficulty

AbstractNear-native speakers (heritage speakers and adult second language learners alike) experience difficulty in interpreting and producing linguistic constructions that contain morphologically null elements. We dub this phenomenon the

scholarly journals Um teste de verificação lexical de português brasileiro (TVLPB) como língua adicional: criação e validação / A Vocabulary Level Eest for Brazilian Portuguese as a Second Language: Design and Validation

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Thaís Maíra Machado de Sá ◽  
Alexandre Alves Santos ◽  
Ricardo Augusto de Souza ◽  
Luiz Amaral ◽  
Victor Nascimento Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Internal Validity ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
Language Proficiency Test ◽  
Accuracy Rates

Resumo: Dado o aumento de falantes de português como língua adicional, de acolhimento e de herança, é de grande importância ter uma ferramenta padronizada de medida de proficiência que seja de fácil e rápida administração. Neste trabalho, mostramos a criação e validação interna de um Teste de Verificação Lexical do Português Brasileiro (TVLPB). O teste foi criado com cinco bandas de frequência que correspondem à distribuição de frequência lexical encontrada em diferentes corpora. Os resultados com falantes nativos mostram convergência de respostas em relação às rubricas selecionadas e às bandas de frequência utilizadas, indicando uma validade interna. O teste foi aplicado também com falantes de herança, em que também percebemos um aumento da dificuldade em relação às bandas do teste.Palavras-chave: VLT; português como língua adicional; teste de proficiência; avaliação.Abstract: Given the growing number of speakers of Portuguese as a host, second, and heritage language, a proficiency level test that can be easily and reliably administered is necessary. In this work, we show the design and validation of the Brazilian Portuguese Vocabulary Level Test (TVLPB). The test comprises five different frequency bands that correspond to the lexical distribution found in different corpora. The results show that native speakers’ responses tend to follow the same pattern across the different bands of the test which indicates internal validity. The test was also administered with heritage speakers of Portuguese, and the results show that accuracy rates decline as the frequency of words is decreased.Keywords: VLT; Portuguese as a second language; proficiency test; evaluation.

scholarly journals Intuiciones de los hablantes patrimoniales, de segunda lengua y nativos acerca de los verbos deícticos en español: más allá de las intuiciones del lingüista

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-90
Author(s):  
Daniel Chui
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
To Come ◽  
Heritage Speakers Of Spanish

<p class="AbstractHead">Previous analyses of the Spanish deictic verbs <em>venir </em>‘to come’, <em>ir</em> ‘to go’, <em>traer</em> ‘to bring’ and <em>llevar</em> ‘to take’ have drawn upon Fillmore’s (1975) series of lectures on deixis in noting that speakers of Spanish forbid the use of the verbs <em>venir </em>and <em>traer</em> to express movement towards the hearer. Under this egocentric view (Beinhauer, 1940; Ibañez, 1983), the Spanish verbs <em>venir</em> and <em>traer</em> can only be used to describe movement towards the speaker’s location. Little experimental research has been done, however, to confirm the extent to which heritage and second language (L2) speakers of the language conform to this pattern. The present study gathered data on the deictic preferences of bilingual, heritage speakers of Spanish and English (HS) and compared this data with that of L2 and monolingual native speakers of Spanish (NS). 74 participants, consisting of 12 NS, 34 HS, and 29 L2 speakers, assessed the grammaticality of 20 stimulus items that contained prescriptively correct and incorrect usages of the deictic verbs <em>venir, traer, llevar</em> and <em>ir</em>. Both HS and L2 speakers made significantly more errors than NS when the direction expressed in the stimulus was oriented towards the hearer, suggesting both groups may benefit from instruction on this topic.</p>

scholarly journals Global Accent in the Portuguese Speech of Heritage Returnees

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Flores ◽  
Anabela Rato
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Host Country ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Foreign Accent ◽  
Length Of Residence ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
European Portuguese ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
German Speaking Country

The present study examined whether heritage speakers (HSs) of European Portuguese (EP) who were born or moved to a German-speaking country before the age of eight years were perceived as native speakers of EP. In particular, this study intended to determine whether a change of linguistic environment, length of residence in a migrant context, length of residence in the country of origin before migration and after remigration, and age at return could predict the degree of (non)native accent in the heritage language. Thirty native Portuguese speakers assessed the global accent of 20 Portuguese-German bilinguals, five Portuguese monolinguals and five highly proficient German speakers of Portuguese as a second language (L2). The group of HSs comprised 17 speakers who returned to Portugal. The results revealed that listeners perceived a strong global foreign accent in the speech of the L2 learners, while the monolingual Portuguese speakers were clearly perceived as being native speakers of EP. The HSs’ ratings were considerably closer to the monolingual average ratings, but they showed more variation, indicating that their accent may bear non-native traces. Further analyses showed that the age at which the HSs emigrated was the only significant predictor, while length of residence in the host country and in Portugal were less predictive.

Mechanisms of Verbal Morphology Processing in Heritage Speakers of Russian

2008 ◽  
Vol Volume 6 (6.1 (Spring, 2008)) ◽  
pp. 105-126
Author(s):  
Natalia Romanova
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Morphological Processing ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Rule Application

The goal of the study is to analyze the morphological processing of real and novel verb forms by heritage speakers of Russian in order to determine whether it differs from that of native (L1) speakers1 and second language (L2) learners; if so, how it is different; and which factors may guide the acquisition process. The experiment involved three groups of subjects: 28 adult native speakers, 14 adult heritage speakers, and 17 beginning American learners of Russian. The results demonstrate that (1) novel form production in heritage processing, as in native and L2 processing, is rule-based, and that rule application—i.e. the generalization rate of conjugational patterns—depends on the input-based mechanism of statistical probabilities (to be defined below), and (2) that heritage speakers' mental representations of morphological structures are unstable and their morphological processing is different from either adult native or L2 processing.

scholarly journals Crosslinguistic Influence in the Discrimination of Korean Stop Contrast by Heritage Speakers and Second Language Learners

Languages ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Yuhyeon Seo ◽  
Olga Dmitrieva ◽  
Alejandro Cuza
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Perceptual Accuracy ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Crosslinguistic Influence

The present study examines the extent of crosslinguistic influence from English as a dominant language in the perception of the Korean lenis–aspirated contrast among Korean heritage speakers in the United States (N = 20) and English-speaking learners of Korean as a second language (N = 20), as compared to native speakers of Korean immersed in the first language environment (N = 20), by using an AX discrimination task. In addition, we sought to determine whether significant dependencies could be observed between participants’ linguistic background and experiences and their perceptual accuracy in the discrimination task. Results of a mixed-effects logistic regression model demonstrated that heritage speakers outperformed second language learners with 85% vs. 63% accurate discrimination, while no significant difference was detected between heritage speakers and first language-immersed native speakers (85% vs. 88% correct). Furthermore, higher verbal fluency was significantly predictive of greater perceptual accuracy for the heritage speakers. The results are compatible with the interpretation that the influence of English on the discrimination of the Korean laryngeal contrast was stronger for second language learners of Korean than for heritage speakers, while heritage speakers were not apparently affected by dominance in English in their discrimination of Korean lenis and aspirated stops.

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