The L2 Acquisition of French Interrogatives: Pragmatic Inferences in Clefted wh-Questions

The present study aims to elaborate on the understanding of the second language (L2) acquisition of French interrogatives by focusing on clefted (subject) wh-questions, structures that are largely absent in prior L2 literature. Our research question addresses how L2 learners of French understand two specific properties associated with these interrogatives: existence and exhaustivity. Using two rating tasks, we examined whether a total of 48 L2 learners converge towards the native norm for these properties, which occur at the syntax-discourse interface and may therefore be vulnerable to incomplete acquisition, following the Interface Hypothesis. Our findings suggest that L2 learners at the intermediate level acquire an understanding of the existential inference before an understanding of exhaustivity.

French as a Heritage Language in Germany

Research on child heritage speakers (HSs) has shown successful language acquisition, comparable to monolinguals, whereas research on adult HSs often claims incomplete acquisition. This seems to be an evident contradiction in the current state of research, which may be explained by a possible language shift during adolescence or adulthood, but which does not necessarily have to be equated with a lack of competence. In an overview of the existing studies on child and adult HSs of French in Germany, we show that HSs are not incomplete acquirers of French and we suggest theoretical and practical implications following these findings. Our aim is to show, first, that HSs of French in Germany are not unanimously disadvantaged compared with French speakers in countries where French is a majority language, and second, that complete acquisition is independent of language dominance, a notion that has received particular attention in studies on multilingual and HL acquisition.

When a cross-linguistic tendency marries incomplete acquisition: Preposition drop in Russian spoken in Daghestan

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The purpose of the study is to figure out what factors condition the phenomenon of preposition drop (P-drop) in locative, directional and temporal phrases. Specifically, we investigate what kind of phrases allow P-drop in Russian spoken in Highland Daghestan and aim at understanding the rationale for this phenomenon. Design/Methodology/Approach: We conduct a quantitative analysis of data extracted from the Corpus of Russian spoken in Daghestan, which includes interviews with 53 native speakers of 15 Daghestanian and Turkic languages, amounting to 228 thousand tokens. Data and Analysis: Data from 47 (29 male; 18 female) consultants speaking Russian as a second language (L2) who produced a sufficient number of prepositional phrases (PPs) were included in the analysis. 50 PPs were collected from each speaker, resulting in a data set of 2350 PPs. Each PP was annotated for P-drop and several sociolinguistic and linguistic parameters. We fitted a logistic mixed-effects regression model to determine which parameters are significant predictors of P-drop. Findings/Conclusions: We show that the probability of P-drop depends on preposition type, phonetic context and the speaker’s fluency in Russian. We propose that the prominence of P-drop in the speech of Daghestanian highlanders results from an interplay of two factors: a typological tendency for certain spatial and temporal locations to be formally unmarked, and incomplete acquisition of the Russian prepositional system. Originality: This is the first detailed quantitative study of P-drop based on an inferential statistical analysis of data from a large number of L2 Russian speakers from Daghestan. Significance/Implications: The results show that the apparently contact-induced phenomena such as P-drop may be explained both by typological tendencies and incomplete acquisition of L2. This paper is thus important both for the typological study of this phenomenon and for L2 acquisition research.

Contact-induced features in the Russian speech of Nganasans

This paper investigates the variety of Russian spoken by the Nganasans, basing on the Nganasan Russian subcorpus of narratives from the larger corpus of contact-influenced Russian speech of Russian Far East and Northern Siberia. The study focuses on morphosyntactic phenomena, namely peculiarities in noun and verbal inflection, verbal derivation, preposition drop, non-standard verb argument encoding, gender disagreement and some others, that presumably are contact-induced – they could be explained by direct structural copying (with clear parallels in Nganasan) or by incomplete acquisition of Russian (with no clear parallels in Nganasan). The second aim of this paper is to speculate as to whether the varieties of Russian spoken in the 1990s (when the audiofiles were collected) by the Nganasans form a post-pidgin continuum, with Govorka as the basilect and Standard Russian as the acrolect. Kokkuvõte. Irina Xomtšenkova: Kontaktist tingitud jooned nganassaanide venekeelses kõnes. Selles artiklis uuritakse nganassaanide kõneldavat vene keele varianti. Töö põhineb narratiividel, mis on pärit suuremast Venemaa Lähis-Ida ja Põhja-Siberi suulise vene keele korpusest, mis sisaldab just kontaktist mõjutatud vene keele näiteid, sealhulgas ka nganassaanide kõneldud vene keele allkorpust. Uurimus keskendub morfosüntaktilistele nähtustele, sealhulgas eripäradele noomenite ja verbide inflektsioonis, verbituletuses, prepositsioonide väljajätus, mittestandardses verbi argumentide kodeerimises, soo mitteühildumises jms, mis on eeldatavasti kontaktist tulenevad – neid võib seletada otsese strukturaalse kopeerimisega (otsesed paralleelid nganassaani keeles) või vene keele mittetäieliku omandamisega (ilma otseste paralleelideta nganassaani keeles). Uurimuse teine eesmärk on spekuleerida, kas 1990ndatel kogutud keelenäidete põhjal moodustavad selleaegsed nganassaanide kõneldud vene keele variandid pidžini-järgse kontiinumi, milles govorka ehk Taimõri poolsaare pidžinvene keel on vähemprestiižne keelevariant ja vene kirjakeel on prestiižne keelevariant. Аннотация. Ирина Хомченкова: Интерференция в русской речи нганасанов. Данная статья представляет обзор русского языка нганасанов, основанный на нганасанском подкорпусе нарративов из корпуса контактно- обусловленной русской речи билингвов – носителей малых языков Севера Сибири и Дальнего Востока. Исследование сфокусировано на морфосинтаксических феноменах, а именно нестандартности в именном и глагольном словоизменении, глагольном словообразовании, на опущении предлогов, нестандартном кодировании аргументов глагола, рассогласовании по роду и некоторых других, которые предположительно контактно обусловлены – их употребление может быть объяснено либо с помощью прямого структурного копирования (с явными параллелями в нганасанском), либо с помощью неполного усвоения русского (без явных параллелей в нганасанском). Вторая цель работы – это обсуждение того, образуют ли варианты русского языка нганасанов в 1990-х гг. (когда были записаны аудиозаписи) постпиджинный континуум, где говорка является базилектом, а стандартный русский – акролектом.

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

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.

Language Attrition and the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis

The Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) is a theoretical approach according to which linguistic information is associated with atomic feature bundles and functional heads. Successful reassembly involves the reassignment of feature bundles to different functional heads. Here we discuss the benefits and challenges of modelling instances of language attrition through the lens of the FRH. Adopting Putnam & Sánchez’s (2013) position which associates incomplete acquisition and language attrition with the increased lack of activation of the recessive first language (L1) over the course of the lifespan, we demonstrate here the potential to integrate these ideas with the FRH into a unified model. This chapter concludes with a discussion of how the core ideas can be extended to research beyond the traditional generative paradigm, including an extension to probabilistic models of linguistic analysis.

TERMINOLOGY CHOICE IN GENERATIVE ACQUISITION RESEARCH

Pascual y Cabo and Rothman (2012) and Kupisch and Rothman (2018) argue against the use of termincompleteto characterize the grammars of heritage speakers, claiming that it reflects a negative evaluation of the linguistic knowledge of these bilingual speakers. We examine the reasons for and against the use of “incomplete” across acquisition contexts and argue that its use is legitimate on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Our goal is to present arguments for using the term, not to evaluate the scientific validity of incomplete acquisition over other possible accounts. Although our conclusion is that the term should not be abandoned, we advocate a position whereby researchers consider the possible negative impact of the terminology they use and how they use it. This position aims to resolve the tension between the need to prioritize scientific effectiveness and the need to avoid terminology that can be negatively misconstrued by the general public.

TERMINOLOGY MATTERS ON THEORETICAL GROUNDS TOO!

Herein, we provide counterargumentation to some of Domínguez, Hicks, and Slabakova's claims that the termincomplete acquisitionis conceptually necessary on theoretical grounds for describing the outcome grammars of heritage language bilingualism. Specifically, we clarify their claim that previous challenging of the term in our and others’ work is primarily based on a misconceived belief that incompleteness is intended to describe heritage speakers. We contextualize and problematize their appropriation of descriptive constructs in the adjacent fields of child L1, child 2L1, and adult L2 acquisition as a basis for supporting their general thesis. Relatedly, we conclude that a fundamental blurring of development and ultimate attainment issues is at the core of what, in our view, is flawed reasoning. While we empathize with the well-intentioned spirit of Domínguez et al.’s article—to provide a forum for respectful discussion—we invite the field to engage more directly with the inherent quandary of labeling the coherent grammars of heritage bilinguals in their own right as “incomplete” on the basis of differences to standard varieties.