Transcript How native are heritage speakers?

Heritage Language Summer Institute
University of California, Los Angeles
June 18-22, 2012
How native are heritage
speakers?
Silvina Montrul
University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign
Who is a native speaker?
• We all have an intuitive notion of what a
native speaker is or should be
(Sharwood-Smith 2011)
• Precise definitions are elusive (Davis
2003)
Stability vs. constrained variability
• Abstract linguistic knowledge (Chomsky)
• Sociolinguistic variation (Labov)
• Psycholinguistic variation (working
memory, executive control, aptitude,
other individual variables)
Knowledge of language
complete, stable?
FULLY FLUENT
NATIVE SPEAKER
DEVELOPING
NATIVE SPEAKER
Birth
4 yrs
12 yrs
18 yrs
40s
What develops?
•
•
•
•
A phonological system
A lexicon
A set of grammatical rules and principles
Morphological expressions of forms and
meanings
• Sentence structure (syntax)
• communicative competence
• Sociolinguistic competence
Examples of complete, fluent knowledge of language
Mature educated native speakers
• Pronounce the sounds of their language well
• Do not make morphological errors of omission or commission.
They are more than 90% accurate on the use of morphology in
obligatory contexts.
• Know how to conjugate their verbs and make agreement in
phrases
• Know many words in their language
• Speak and write in grammatical sentences.
• Understand different meanings of words and phrases
• Know how to use language in different sociolinguistic contexts
• Have pragmatic competence
• Show consistent ceiling performance in tasks of grammatical ability
regardless of modality of task
Key variables that define and affect
the developing native speaker
•
•
•
•
•
Exposure to the language from birth
Use of the language at home
Schooling in the language
Socialization beyond the home in the language
Consistent exposure and language use in a variety of
contexts and communicative situations until about early
adulthood
• Abnormal language development (SLI, down syndrome,
autism, etc.)
Types of Native Speakers
Monolingual native speakers
Bilingual native speakers
Monolingual native speakers vary in
SES:
low, mid, high SES
Literacy:
literate, semiliterate, illiterate
Pathology: healthy vs. language impaired
Other
How these variables affect linguistic competence is a
matter of debate (see Dabrowska, 2012 and
commentaries)
Bilingual native speakers vary in
All dimensions of monolingual speakers as well as in
• age of acquisition of the 2 languages
simultaneous bilinguals
sequential bilinguals
• degree of use of the language/s
fluent vs. non-fluent
Ultimate attainment in
monolingual native speakers
complete, stable?
beginning
middle
end
FULLY FLUENT
NATIVE SPEAKER
DEVELOPING
NATIVE SPEAKER
Birth
4 yrs
12 yrs
18 yrs
40s
What is ultimate attainment?
The end state of the acquisition/language
development process.
Is ultimate attainment always “native” level in
bilingual native speakers?
NO
• It can be fully native, as in monolingual native
speakers
• It can be near-native, as in some L2 learners
• It can be non-native, as in most L2 learners
Typology of Bilingual Native Speakers
• The fully fluent native speaker
• The interrupted native speaker (heritage
speakers, international adoptee)
• The attrited native speaker
• The bilingual aphasic native speaker
• Other?
“Native” ability
• Can also be dissociated in bilinguals
• E.g., native or near-native in phonology and
non-native in morphosyntax (heritage speakers
in Au et al. 2002)
• Or native/near native in morphosyntax and nonnative in phonology (near-natives in White &
Genesee 1996)
• Very few L2 speakers are “native” on all linguistic
dimensions (Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam 2009)
Purpose of this presentation
To show that despite exhibiting high degree of
variability in degree of ultimate attainment
like L2 learners, heritage speakers show a
much higher incidence of native ability in
morphosyntactic and lexical aspects of
language that are extremely hard for L2
learners to master at native levels, even after
significant amounts of input.
Heritage speakers and L2 learners
If we control for proficiency, does early language
experience bring advantages to Spanish
heritage speakers in their knowledge of early
acquired aspects of morphosyntax when
compared to late L2 learners of Spanish?
Advantage = more native-like performance
Phonology (Au et al. 2002)
17
Morphosyntax (Au et al. 2002)
18
Gender Agreement
• Mastered by monolingual Spanish-speaking
children error free (100% accuracy) by age 3
(Montrul 2004) in oral production.
• Yet, full mastery of gender agreement in
production is highly unlikely in L2 acquisition,
even in so called near natives, with the highest
amount of exposure in the language for several
years and proficiency scores on global measures
that fall within the range of variation of native
speakers.
Examples
Franceschina (2001): Case study of Martin (British
guy who had been living in Argentina for more
than 30 years)
Almost 10% of gender agreement errors in
production, especially with adjectives, articles
and demonstratives.
Grüter, Lew-Williams & Fernald 2012: 19 near
native speakers of Spanish exhibited 20% errors
in an oral production task (17.2% assignment,
2.8% agreement)
Near native ability?
• Studies that have found that non-native
speakers do not differ from native speakers
have used tasks focusing exclusively on regular
or canonical ending nouns: ending in –a if
feminine and in –o if masculine (e.g., White et
al. 2004).
• Several studies have shown that gender
assignment and agreement with noncanonical or non-transparent nouns take
longer to learn and to process (Bates et al.1995,
1996; Taraban & Kempe 1999, Taraban & Roark 1996).
Spanish Masculine Nouns
canonical
puente
‘bridge’
noncanonical
-cons
lápiz
‘pencil’
ojo
‘eye’
coche
‘car’
mantel
mapa
‘tablecloth’ ‘map’
suelo
‘floor’
cable
‘wire’
reloj
‘clock’
-o
libro
‘book’
noncanonical
-e
noncanonical
-a
problema
‘problem’
planeta
‘planet’
Spanish Feminine Nouns
canonical noncanonical
-a
-e
casa
leche
‘house’
‘milk’
mesa
‘table’
noncanonical
-cons
nariz
‘nose’
fuente
piel
‘fountain’ ‘skin’
manzana llave
‘apple’
‘key’
canción
‘song’
noncanonical
-o
mano
‘hand’
foto
‘picture’
moto
‘motorcycle’
Montrul, Foote & Perpiñán (2008)
• 140 Spanish L2 learners and heritage speakers
ranging from low to advanced levels of
proficiency.
• Both L2 learners and heritage speakers made
gender errors, especially with non-canonical
ending nouns.
• Advantages for heritage speakers on gender
agreement depending on task.
• L2 learners performed better than heritage
speakers in highly metalinguistic written tasks.
• Heritage speakers performed more accurately
than L2 learners in oral production tasks.
Task Effects
100
95
90
85
80
Written PIT
75
Written RT
70
Oral PDT
65
60
55
50
native speakers
heritage speakers
L2 learners
Revisiting knowledge of gender agreement
(Montrul, Davidson de la Fuente and Foote)
Control for modality and avoid use of written
language (literacy effect).
Investigate both regular and irregular nouns.
4 aural/oral experiments that vary on the
implicit/explicit dimension
1.
2.
3.
4.
Timed grammaticality judgment task (GJT)
Timed aural gender monitoring task (GMT)
Timed oral word repetition task (WRT)
Elicited production task (EPT)
Participants
• 24 Spanish native speakers (control group)
• 29 Spanish heritage speakers (acquired
Spanish at birth and English before age 6)
• 37 English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish
(acquired Spanish after age 12)
Heritage speakers and L2 learners ranged from
intermediate to advanced based on a written
proficiency test.
Picture-Naming Task
Rationale:
proficiency measure based on oral production
Stimuli:
48 inanimate object nouns
– frequency of 3 or higher in Spanish (Alameda &
Cuetos, 1995)
– 24 canonical endings: 12 masculine -o, 12 feminine –a
– 24 non-canonical endings: 6 masculine -cons, 6
feminine -cons, 6 masculine -e, 6 feminine -e
Picture-Naming Tasks
• Participants completed the task both in Spanish and
in English (only HS and L2ers); native speakers only in
Spanish.
• They were asked to view a series of black and white
images and to name them as quickly as possible after
hearing the audio prompt “diga” / “say” (recorded
by a female Spanish native speaker)
• Items in both tasks were presented in random order
• Naming accuracy and reaction times (after the onset
of the prompt) were measured
Picture-Naming Tasks
Image samples
Libro “book”
Casa “house”
Sobre “envelope”
Llave “key”
Corazón “heart”
Flor “flower”
Picture-Naming Tasks: Results
English
Reaction Times (ms)
1000
855
800
Accuracy Scores (%)
100
764
60
400
40
200
20
0
0
L2
98
HS
L2
80
600
HS
97
Picture-Naming Tasks: Results
Spanish
Reaction Times (ms)
1400
1110
1200
1000
800
Accuracy Scores (%)
1227
100
95
**
80
**
788
88
88
HS
L2
60
600
40
400
20
200
0
0
NS
HS
L2
NS
Word-Recognition Experiments
1. Timed grammaticality judgment task (GJT)
2. Timed aural gender monitoring task (GMT)
3. Timed word repetition task (WRT)
(Bates et al. 1995, 1996, Guillelmon & Grosjean
2001)
Experimental Design
• For all three tasks, 300 determiner-nounadjective phrases (half target, half fillers) were
constructed with 150 nouns, 3 determiners
(masculine el, feminine la, neutral su) and 7
adjectives.
• All nouns were inanimate (half feminine, half
masculine) with canonical and non-canonical
endings, controlled for syllable length, stress, and
frequency.
• All tasks used the same stimuli but with different
distribution of fillers and targets in 3 conditions.
Conditions used in the three tasks
Conditions
grammatical
ungrammatical
neutral (control)*
Gender
Noun ending
canonical
Non-canonical
feminine
la gran casa
la gran calle
masculine
el peor texto
el peor viaje
feminine
*el gran casa
*el gran calle
masculine
*la peor texto
*la peor viaje
feminine
su gran casa
su gran calle
masculine
su peor texto
su peor viaje
NOTE: only the GMT and the WRT had a neutral condition, the GJT did
not.
Procedures
• The GMT required participants to listen to the noun
phrases and push one of two buttons on the keyboard (one
for feminine, one for masculine), depending on the gender
of the noun. (VERY EXPLICIT FOCUS ON GENDER)
• In the GJT, participants listened to the noun phrases and
pushed one of two buttons to indicate whether the phrase
was grammatical or ungrammatical. (INDIRECT ATTENTION
TO GENDER)
• In the WRT, participants heard the noun phrases and were
asked to repeat the last word in each phrase as quickly and
accurately as possible. (NO ATTENTION TO GENDER)
Predictions
Task
Type of
response
Degree of
explicitness
Advantages
for HS over L2
learners?
GMT
Decide whether a
noun is feminine or
masculine
very explicit focus
on gender
no
GJT
Decide whether a
noun phrase is
grammatical or
ungrammatical
Explicit, but indirect no
focus on gender
WRT
Repeat the last
word in the phrase
implicit
yes
Gender Monitoring Task: Accuracy
100
mean percentage accuracy
95
90
85
80
75
grammatical
70
neutral
65
ungrammatical
60
55
Grammaticality effect for all three groups
Native speakers > [heritage speakers = L2
learners]
Canonicity effect for L2 learners and HS.
50
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
100
95
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
55
50
mean percentage accuracy
mean percentage accuracy
Spanish native speakers
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
Spanish heritagespeakers
100
95
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
55
50
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
L2 learners of Spanish
Summary Effects GMT
(difference % between ungrammatical and grammatical sentences)
25
20.8
20
16.3
13.9
15
canonical
9.3
10
4.4
5
0.7
0
native speakers heritage speakers
L2 learners
noncanonical
Gender Monitoring Task RTs
2100
mean reaction times
1900
1700
Grammaticality effect for all three groups
Native speakers > [heritage speakers = L2
learners]
1500
1300
grammatical
1100
neutral
ungrammatical
900
Canonicity effect.
700
500
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
2100
2100
1900
1900
1700
1700
mean reaction times
mean reaction times
Spanish native speakers
1500
1300
1100
900
700
1500
1300
1100
900
700
500
500
canonical ending nouns noncanonical ending nouns
Spanish heritage speakers
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
L2 learners of Spanish
Summary Speed Effects GMT
(grammatical - ungrammatical RTs)
native speakers
heritage
speakers
L2 learners
0
-50
-69
-100
canonical
-95
noncanonical
-115
-150
-200
-250
-145
-194
-179
Grammaticality Judgment Task Accuracy
100
Grammaticality effect for all three groups.
Native speakers > [heritage speakers = L2 learners]
mean percentage accuracy
95
90
85
80
75
grammatical
70
ungrammatical
65
60
55
50
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
Spanish native speakers
100
100
mean percentage accuracy
90
85
80
75
grammatical
70
ungrammatical
65
60
mean percentage accuracy
95
95
90
85
80
75
70
60
55
50
50
Spanish heritage speakers
ungrammatical
65
55
canonical ending nouns noncanonical ending nouns
grammatical
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
Spanish L2 learners
Summary Accuracy Effects GJT
30
28
25
20
20
canonical
15
noncanonical
10
7
6
5
1
3
0
native speakers heritage speakers
L2 learners
Grammaticality Judgment Task RTs
2100
grammatical
ungrammatical
mean reaction times
1900
1700
Grammaticality effect for all three groups
Native speakers > [heritage speakers = L2 learners]
1500
1300
1100
900
700
500
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
Spanish native speakers
grammatical
2100
1900
meann reaction times
mean reaction times
2100
ungrammatical
1900
1700
1500
1300
1100
900
1700
1500
1300
1100
900
700
700
500
500
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
Spanish heritage speakers
grammatical
ungrammatical
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
Spanish L2 learners
Summary Speed Effect GJT
native speakers
heritage
speakers
L2 learners
0
-50
-100
-78
-89
canonical
-150
-138 -142
-200
-250
-210
-300
-350
-307
noncanonical
mean reaction times
Word Repetition Task--RT
900
grammatical
850
neutral
ungrammatical
800
No grammaticality effect for L2 learners.
[native speakers = heritage speakers] >L2 learners
750
700
650
600
550
500
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
900
900
850
850
800
800
mean reaction times
mean reaction times
Spanish native speakers
750
700
650
600
550
750
700
grammatical
650
neutral
600
ungrammatical
550
500
500
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
Spanish heritage speakers
canonical ending nouns
noncanonical ending nouns
L2 learners of Spanish
Summary Speed Effect WRT
native speakers
heritage
speakers
L2 learners
60
39
40
20
canonical
0
-5
-9
-20
-23
-40
-43
-60
-80
noncanonical
-66
Summary
• Canonical and noncanonical nouns are processed differently.
Noun ending did not affect the native speakers to the same
extent as the two experimental groups.
• HS and L2 learners were slower and less accurate on noncanonical ending nouns than on canonical ending nouns.
• The results of the GJT and the GMT revealed significant
grammaticality effects for all groups.
– They use gender cues on determiners in noun recognition.
• In the WRT, the NS and the HS showed a grammaticality
effect, while the L2 learners did not.
– L2 learners may not have the same type of implicit knowledge of
gender tested by this type of task.
Task effect
Task
Response
Degree of explicitness
GMT
Masculine/feminine
Very explicit
GJT
Grammatical/ungrammatical
explicit
WRT
repeat
implicit
Favors heritage speakers
Helps L2 learners
Conclusion
• These results confirm that HS have an
advantage (i.e., show native-like patterns)
over L2 learners in tasks tapping implicit
knowledge.
– Although this advantage could be due to age of
onset of bilingualism (early vs. late) (Guillelmon &
Grosjean 2001), it may also be related to context
of acquisition (naturalistic vs. instructed) and
experience with oral production.
The Role of Experience
• Elicited Oral Production Task (untimed)
• Elicitation of simplex and diminutive nouns with
gender agreement.
elefante
simplex
elefantito
diminutive
Why diminutives?
• Hallmark of Child Directed Speech in early
language development
• Highly productive morphological mechanism
• Appear to facilitate the acquisition of
declensional noun endings in many languages
(Savickienė & Dressler 2007): Lithuanian,
Russian, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Dutch,
Austrian German, Hungarian, Finnish, Hebrew
Diminutives in Child Language
• They are acquired early due both to their
frequency in the input (in Child Directed
Speech) and their morphological
characteristics in many languages.
• In Spanish, they are acquired/used
productively between the ages of 1;9 and 1;10
(Marrero, Aguirre and Albalá, 2007)
Spanish
• Aguirre, Marrero & Albalá (2007) claim that the
frequency of usage of diminutives is not very high
in Standard Spanish.
• Yet, Spanish-acquiring children use 13 times more
diminutives than Spanish-speaking adults, and
adults addressing children use them as much, if
not more than the children themselves (Marrero,
Albalá & Moreno, 2002: 155).
• In Spanish, most diminutives appear with nouns
(but also with adjectives and adverbs).
Regularizing Gender Suffixes with Diminutives
o , -ita (among other dialectal variants)
-it
Canonical ending nouns
Non-canonical ending
nouns
simplex
diminutive
simplex
diminutive
la casa
la casita
la nariz
la naricita
Masculine el auto
el autito
el coche
el cochecito
Feminine
Diminutives and gender
• Seva et al. (2007)
Experimental study of 2 and 3 year old Russian
and Serbo-Croatian children
• children were given simplex and diminutive
forms of nouns and were asked to produce noun
phrases with adjectives showing gender
• the toddlers were more accurate at gender
agreement with diminutive nouns than with
simplex forms. -> DIMINUTIVE ADVANTAGE
Research Question
Does the diminutive advantage carry over into
adulthood?
Hypotheses
• Heritage speakers should know more (about)
diminutives (i.e. their form and how to use
them) than L2 learners.
Hypotheses
• Heritage speakers should be more accurate
at producing gender agreement in general
and with noncanonical nouns in particular
than L2 learners of Spanish.
– Diminutives help regularize noncanonical nouns
– Heritage speakers were exposed to child directed
speech in Spanish; adult L2 learners were
exposed to more “adult” input in Spanish, which
contains very few diminutives.
Elicited Oral Production Task
• Stimuli came from the noun images used in the
picture-naming tasks
• Subjects were now asked to produce utterances
containing a determiner, a noun and a color
adjective
• 8 color adjectives used: 4 explicit (rojo/a), 4 nonexplicit (azul)
• Target nouns were randomly assigned an explicit
color adjective, distracters were randomly
assigned a non-explicit color adjective
Design and Procedure
• Participants saw a total of 96 images (both
simplex and diminutive forms were requested)
• Order of presentation was randomized and held
constant across participants
• Participants’ responses were monitored by a
researcher with a check-list
• Check-lists and audio recordings were analyzed
by at least two different raters
Elicited Oral Production Task
Stimulus Samples
un pan gris
un pancito gris
una cruz negra
una crucecita negra
“a black
cross(dim.)”
“a gray
bread(dim.)”
Gender agreement in oral production
62
Results: Canonicity by Group
Gender by domain of agreement
100
99.9
Masculine
Feminine
99.9
100
93.7
95
91.7
determiner
95
90.8
90
90
85
85
80
80
90.9
adjective
79.9
75.8
75
heritage speakers
L2 learners
75
heritage speakers
L2 learners
Canonical Nouns in simplex and
diminutive forms
100
100
Masculine
99.9
96.6 98.9
Feminine
100
90
90
80
80
70
70
60
60
50
50
heritage speakers
L2 learners
97.5 97.9
96.9 96.4
simplex
diminutive
heritage speakers
L2 learners
Non-canonical nouns in simplex and
diminutive forms
100
99
100
Masculine
Feminine
100
88.5
90
83.6
80
90
82.3
85.5
simplex
80
70
diminutive
70
61.6
60
60
50
50
heritage speakers
L2 learners
56.5
heritage speakers
L2 learners
Summary
– Native speakers are at ceiling in everything: no
effect for diminutive, gender or canonicity.
– Both HS and L2ers perform almost at ceiling
with canonical-ending Ns regardless of
whether they are in the simplex or in the
diminutive form
– With non-canonical Ns, HS show a clear
quantitative advantage over L2ers.
– No Diminutive Advantage for heritage
speakers.
Error Analysis by subjects
Errors with diminutives
1. produce simplex instead of diminutive form
2. wrong form of diminutive (augmentative or
other)
Errors with gender
1. lexical assignment errors =*el serpiente(F)
negro(M)
2. agreement error = *la serpiente(F) negro(M)
3. ambiguous = *el serpiente(F) negra(F)
% errors
Percentage of errors by group
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
17.5
18.5
gender agreement
7
diminutives
5.1
0 0.7
native speakers
heritage
speakers
L2 learners
proportion of diminutive errors
Type of errors with diminutives
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
0
49
77
100
diminutive form
simplex substitution
51
23
native
speakers
heritage
speakers
L2 learners
Percentage of individuals who made
gender errors in each group
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
0
gender
errors
35
100
no gender
errors
100
65
0
% of native speakers% of heritage speakers % of L2 learners
proportion of agreement errors
Types of errors with gender
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
0.84
0.78
ambiguous
assignment
agreement
0.15
0.15
heritage speakers
L2 learners
Summary
• Native speakers do not make errors with
gender in production
• Many heritage speakers did not make errors
either (19/29)
• All the L2 learners made gender errors
• The most frequent error (~80%) in both L2
learners and heritage speakers is the one of
lexical assignment.
*El serpiente(F) negro
Conclusions
• Early language experience confers some
advantages to heritage language learners with
early acquired aspects of language and in oral
production, like gender agreement.
Are there differences between L2
learners and heritage speakers?
YES, but it depends on structures and tasks
Metalinguistic tasks favor L2 learners
Less metalinguistic tasks favor heritage speakers
(see Bowles, 2011)
Written tasks favor L2 learners
Oral tasks favor heritage speakers (proficiency
matters, cf. Au et al. 2002)
Tasks
oral/aural
implicit
heritage speakers
explicit
written/visual
L2 learners
Why?
Learning experience
Heritage speakers are child learners
Aural input
L2 learners are adult learners
Visual and aural input
Different input and input processing experience.
Gender processing in L1 acquisition
Gender is in the lexicon.
Children hear sequences of determiners and
nouns in the acoustic input and must identify
nouns in the speech stream (through
computations or transitional probabilities)
Spanish-speaking children in the one-word stage
produce prenominal vowels that coincide with
vowels found in determiners (a fó, e pe, ua queca)
(López Ornat 2007, Lleó 2001).
Most Recent Experimental Evidence
• Noun-gender associations are strong in the L1
lexicon.
• Lew-Williams and Fernald (2007, 2010): native
Spanish speakers and 3-4 year old Spanish
speaking children use gender information in
determiners to predict nouns (Visual world
paradigm).
L2 learners are different
• Already know about determiners and nouns from
their L1.
• Visual input gives information about word
boundaries and L2 learners do not need to rely as
much on distributional properties and transitional
probabilities to segment the acoustic stream.
• The association between noun-determiners and
noun-gender in the lexicon is not very strong in the
L2 (Grüter, Lew-Williams and Fernald, 2010).
• Input modality matters for language processing and
production.
How about heritage speakers?
• They are like L1 learners
• Their noun-gender lexical associations are
stronger than in L2 learners but weaker than
in mature native speakers.
Weaker Links Hypothesis (Gollan et al. 2008)
Why are heritage speakers quantitatively
different from native speakers?
Noun-gender associations are part of lexical
acquisition.
Reduced input and use of the minority language
throughout the school-age period leads to
reduced frequency of use of nouns and their
associated genders.
Links might have been stronger in childhood but
progressively weakened as the first language
became the secondary language.
Effects of Weaker Links
•
•
•
•
Gender assignment errors
Slower retrieval of nouns in the lexicon
Slower insertion of nouns in the syntax
Reduced speed at computing syntactic
dependencies (concord with determiner and
noun)
• Gender agreement errors
Differences in heritage speakers
19 HS did not make any gender errors in the Oral
Production task
10 HS did
RTs in Spanish PNT
HS who made errors
1262 ms
HS who made no errors
1030 ms
232 (t(29)= 8.54, p < 0.0001)
Why does canonicity (noun ending) matter for L2
learners and Heritage speakers?
Dual mechanism model? (Pinker & Prince 1994, Pinker
1999, Ullman 2002)
Canonical nouns are stored in procedural
memory and handled by rule (implicitly
acquired in childhood by heritage speakers
and learned later but automatized in L2
learners).
(fem –a and masc –o word markers are “regular”, other markers are irregular
Harris 1991)
Non-canonical nouns need to be memorized.
Native speakers are not affected
• Reduced input in L2 learners and heritage
speaker affects storage in declarative memory.
• Mature native speakers whose primary
language is Spanish, do not exhibit gaps with
declarative memory because they use the
language more frequently and the lexicalassociation links remain strong for both
canonical and non-canonical ending nouns.
Prediction
Native speakers undergoing L1 attrition will
make gender errors with non-canonical ending
nouns.
Montrul (2011): Alicia, Guatemalan adoptee
Accuracy with Gender in Alicia
Oral production
Spanish native
speakers
100%
Morphology recognition 100%
task
Picture identification
100%
task
Grammaticality
100%
judgment task
Alicia
84%
82.5%
71.8%
60%
Alicia’s errors
• Most errors were with non-canonical ending
nouns, especially on the picture description
task: atleta, planeta, mapa, dentista, país,
nuez, luz.
• 7 of 9 errors in the morphology recognition
task were with non-canonical ending nouns
Another possibility
• Single associative model (canonical and
noncanonical nouns)
• Lexical links in L2 learners and heritage speakers
are weaker than in native speakers
• Morphophonological cues in Spanish help
activate/access canonical nouns faster and more
accurately by virtue of phonological regularity.
• Noncanonical nouns do not have cues
• Differences in cues affect strength of lexical links.
Conclusion
• Age effects may explain important differences
between L2 learners and heritage speakers
• But it is also important to evaluate the
contributing role of experience with the
language, as revealed by different tasks.
• Experience affects how input is processed
more generally and the type and size of
vocabulary L2 learners and heritage speakers
may possess.
Conclusion
• Heritage speakers benefited from CDS in
Spanish and have retained some of these
features (i.e., diminutives)
• Many of the perennial problems observed
with gender in advanced L2 learners and
heritage speakers seem to be related to issues
of lexical assignment rather than of actual
syntactic agreement.
Conclusion
• When it comes to gender agreement, a
grammatical area that is very difficult for L2
learners to master, heritages speakers show
remarkable “native” abilities.
• Differences between native speakers and
heritage speakers are due to cumulative input
and use of the language throughout the
lifespan.
Looking ahead
• Heritage speakers can be really advanced
speakers of the language as well, not just
“incomplete native speakers” .
• A lot remains to be done to understand the
individual differences in language proficiency
achieved throughout the lifetime by heritage
speakers.
Heritage speakers as native
speakers
We also need to focus on the higher end of
proficiency and stress that many of these
abilities develop in childhood.
Thank you very much!