4/18/12. Heritage languages bear significant resemblance to the languages from which they were formed (the baseline)

Transcription

1 Formal Approaches to Heritage Languages April 21-22, 2012 University of Massachusetts Amherst Heritage languages bear significant resemblance to the languages from which they were formed (the baseline) They tend to amplify certain trends that are already present in these languages Maria Polinsky Harvard University 1 2 Heritage languages deviate from the baseline in a number of ways Contrary to expectations, they do not look enough like the baseline Heritage languages bear significant resemblance to each other They deviate from the baseline in similar ways which call for a principled explanation While there are some parallels between structures/forms in the heritage language and in the dominant language, such parallels are not exhaustive What prevents heritage languages from transferring all they need from the dominant language? 3 4 1

2 Viewpoint A: Learning about heritage languages Arriving at a comprehensive description of heritage languages, understanding their structure, processing, and origins Viewpoint B: Learning from heritage languages Using heritage languages as a new source of data feeding into theory construction New material for understanding language in time and space Language origins Language acquisition Better theory of acquisition, development, and evolution 5 6 The Bickerton Quadriga Adult heritage languages Definitely a more accessible source than members of the Quadriga Allow researchers to collect data and conduct experiments on a much broader basis New angle on the core of human language capacity Hence, new window on Universal Grammar 7 8 2

3 New data for testing our theories of language structure and language processing Agreement (phi-features) Case licensing Language universals Better theory of language Language structure 9 10 Well-established: [person] [number] [gender] Well-established: [person] [number] [gender] Somewhat more tentative: [status] (honorification) [wh-agreement]

4 Person agreement never/rarely appears on adjectives Probing for [person] and [number]/ [gender] occurs in separate derivation steps (Anagnostopoulou 2003, Béjar 2003, Chomsky 2000, Laka 1993, Shlonsky 1989, Sigurdsson 1996, Taraldsen 1995, a.o.) Person agreement never/rarely appears on adjectives Probing for [person] and [number]/ [gender] occurs in separate derivation steps (Anagnostopoulou 2003, Béjar 2003, Chomsky 2000, Laka 1993, Shlonsky 1989, Sigurdsson 1996, Taraldsen 1995, a.o.) [person] is probed first Phi features are internally structured in a hierarchical way (Harley & Ritter 2002, McGinnis 2005, Béjar & Rezac 2009, Coon & Preminger 2010; Preminger 2011) Person > number/gender Production: various errors, often with the default person and number/gender Comprehension: greater sensitivity to person mismatches than to number or gender mismatches

5 Auditory experiment evaluating sensitivity to gender, number, or person mismatch in the verbal paradigm Rating task (1-7 scale), subject and verb separated by two words; all verbs stemstressed (to minimize cuing) Too bad that she quite often think 24 subjects (avg. age 26), intermediate proficiency The asymmetry is confirmed: person > number > gender If person is probed first, the failure of probing on other features may be accounted for by the need for a truncated structure Possible mechanism: shallow structure building, with only closest nodes accessed? ClassP [ ] NumP [ ] πp [ ] X X Subject Unexpected: gender is different from number Two possibilities: Number is probed earlier than gender, and the hierarchy needs to be more fine-grained Number and gender are still equal as phifeatures but the computation of number is determined situationally the computation of gender requires going back to the lemma, which imposes extra processing costs

6 Within HLs: optimize processing conditions for heritage speakers to see if the contrast disappears in comprehension make comparison conditions for controls more difficult Outside HLs: look for evidence that gender and number probe sequentially A possible candidate: Highest conjunct agreement (HCA), as in Arabic or Hindi (Aoun et al. 1999, 2004; Benmamoun et al. 2009, Bhatt & Walkow 2012; Polinsky 2012) Agreement marking on a probe depends on the properties of only one conjunct, structurally or linearly the closest one (HCA) Also known as single conjunct or partial agreement In contrast with full or resolved agreement (RA): agreement marking on the probe results from the computation over the properties of all the conjuncts VS order: HCA ža Omar w Karim Moroccan came.3msg Omar and Karim Arabic Omar and Karim came SV order: RA Omar w Karim žaw Omar and Karim came.3pl Omar and Karim came

7 VS order: RA žaw Omar w Karim came.3pl Omar and Karim Omar and Karim came Resolved Agreement Highest Conjunct Agreement SV order: *HCA *Omar w Karim ža Omar and Karim came.3msg Subject before verb (SV) Subject after verb (VS) Yes Yes No Yes [number] probes for the highest target, the coordinate DP inactivating it (cf. Rackowski & Richards 2005) The next probe, [gender], then targets the highest remaining target: in this case, the DP in [Spec,&P]. Unexpected: gender is different from number Two possibilities: Number is probed earlier than gender, and the hierarchy needs to be more fine-grained Number and gender are still equal as phifeatures but the computation of number is determined situationally

8 HL hierarchy of phi features: person > number > gender Implications for the existing hierarchies: class (gender) is not on the same level as number Structural case: assigned in a certain structural configuration Inherent case: assigned depending on theta-marking Lexical case: assigned based on an idiosyncratic property of the assigning head Baseline Structural cases: NOM (unmarked), ACC Inherent cases: Assigned by a verbal head: DAT Assigned by a nominal head: GEN Assigned by a P head: INSTR, LOC Heritage, production Structural cases: null forms Inherent cases: DAT ACC Cases assigned by nonverbal heads: null forms, confusion of oblique cases (noisy production) % Correct NOM ACC DAT exp DAT goal GEN suppliance omission overgeneralization 82 subjects avg. age

9 Baseline Structural cases: NOM (unmarked), ACC Inherent cases: Assigned by a verbal head: DAT Assigned by a nominal head: GEN Assigned by a P head: INSTR, LOC Heritage, comprehension Structural cases: high tolerance of null forms Inherent cases: DAT and ACC both accepted Cases assigned by nonverbal heads: low tolerance of null forms 36 subjects, avg age 18; Structural case Production Replaced by an unmarked form or a frequent form, many errors Inherent case Maintained as in the baseline or replaced by another marked case Lexical case Replaced by a more regular form Comprehensi on Mismatches tolerated Mismatches not tolerated Mismatches ignored Attrition? Yes No May vary depending on lexical item Structural case gets replaced/attrited, inherent case is retained Both production and comprehension are necessary to evaluate case in HLs inherent cases assigned by P and N were truly testable only in comprehension

10 Applying these generalizations to case configurations where primary data have not resulted in a conclusive analysis Most agree: assigned in spec, vp Disagreement concerning the licensing of ERG: Inherent case (Woolford 2000, 2006, a.o.) Structural case (Bobaljik & Branigan 2006, a.o.) Heritage Hindi: High rate of omission of the ergative postposition ne and replacement by null form in production (G. Mahajan 2009, Montrul et al. 2012) Heritage Hindi: Inappropriate ergative receives high ratings (Montrul et al. 2012) ERG undergoes significant attrition, symptomatic of structural case GEN and DAT are regularized but well preserved, symptomatic of inherent case ERG is treated as a structural case

11 Avar: Nakh-Dagestanian (NE Caucasian) language One of the largest in Dagestan (about 750K speakers) A large number of speakers are bilingual in Russian and Avar Core cases: ABS, ERG, DAT, GEN (and many locatives), agglutinative marking Milliseconds * Controls Heritage was son, boy ABS ERG DAT GEN LOC1 was was:-as was:-asul was:-as-e was:-asda ABS ERG 42 controls, 18 HL speakers Production: relatively low error rate Ergative replaced by the absolutive and dative Dative is replaced by the absolutive and ergative No case omission Morphological leveling of case allophones (N=5 speakers, video clip story) Most agree: assigned in spec, vp Disagreement concerning the licensing of ERG: Inherent case (Woolford 2000, 2006, a.o.) Structural case (Bobaljik & Branigan 2006, a.o.) Solution: Two different ergatives, structural in some languages, inherent in others

12 Differential properties of the ergatives across HLs Some languages have structural ergative (Hindi, Dyirbal) Other languages have inherent ergative (Avar) Heritage languages are a valuable source of data that feed back into linguistic theory We need to learn how to mine this source Next question, addressed to theorists: what parametric properties are correlated with the two different ergatives? Four- way comparison: HL adults HL children Monolingual adults Monolingual children This allows us to separate attrition from incomplete acquisition

13 Do child learners (future heritage speakers) and adult heritage speakers have the same morphosyntactic deficits? If a child and an adult deviate from the baseline in the same way, the feature has not been acquired If a child and an adult perform differently, the feature has been acquired but lost/reanalyzed 49 Adult heritage language = fossilized child language, with the level of fossilization roughly corresponding to the age of interruption? 50 Feminine: cerkov church, tetrad notebook, krovat bed, sol salt, ten shadow Masculine: put way, dožd rain, portfel briefcase, kalendar calendar Standard child language error: feminine nouns are interpreted as masculine, up to age 7;0 (Gvozdev 1961) independent of frequency Gender of feminine nouns in palatal consonant is acquired late and poses a problem for monolingual and heritage children alike This incompletely acquired feature then persists in HL adults

14 Adult incomplete grammar undergoes attrition and is different from the initial state represented by heritage child grammar Acquired early (2;0-2;6) Universal preference for subject relatives Error rate (wrong head choice), ages 4-6: English : 10%-13% (multiple studies) Indonesian: 11% (Tjung 2006) Mandarin Chinese: 3.9% (Hsu et al. 2006, 2009) Turkish: 4% (Slobin 1985) Russian: 3.7%-4.2% (Fedorova 2005, Polinsky 2008, 2011) HL children perform on par with agematched monolingual controls and significantly outperform HL adults The syntax of relative clauses undergoes a reanalysis across the lifespan and presents a case of attrition Adults (C/H): 17/21, age 24; children (C/H): 6/23, age

15 Same HL with a different dominant language: minimize the effect of transfer Structuring the tests in such a way that we could go against the transfer (Russian relative clauses, Polinsky 2011) Distinguish heritage speakers from heritage language learners So far, no direct comparison between heritage speakers in the wild and HL relearners Many subjects of HL studies are drawn from HL classes (a self-selected group) English-speaking learners of German in Switzerland years old (mean 17.5) Tested After three weeks (following an introductory course) Five months later Test performance correlated with increase in gray matter density Increase in gray matter density over five months correlated positively with difference in proficiency (measured by improved test scores) in Left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) Left anterior temporal lobe (ATL)

16 61 62 Gray matter density in language-related areas increases in as little as five months of instruction in country (even with a huge dialect difference) This increase correlates with the amount learned This again suggests brain growth stimulated by effective interaction with the second language Even a small amount of input in the target language changes its neurological representation and may also have behavioral consequences By focusing on HL learners we do not always tap into the depths of language attrition/ incomplete acquisition

17 Production can be used for preliminary data mining In assessing production, aim for a controlled setting Video descriptions Maps Sentence completion Elicited imitation He wante- he go- he took from zeh garbage a cigarette, and, and zen he saw zeh police, said hello, and zen he, just, em, just, frew zeh garbage can- can, zen, eh, zeh rabbit, em, how it s called flowered his flowers, and wanted zen to he eat him, so he took a rope and went up, an- and zeh rabbit saw him, and he was wif scissors, so he cut ze- cut zeh rope, and zen he fell into zeh police s car. (So how did he notice the rabbit in the first place?) Because eh, zeh rabbit wan- eh, wer- because he flowered zeh, his flowers, uh, one, on- two drops went on him. (So where did the drops go?) One on his cigarette, and zeh, zeh fire, eh not burned blew out? And one on his nose Speaker describes a map to a confederate who moves objects on the screen (Gómez Gallo et al. 2007) Speakers produce spontaneous instructions to the confederate Confederate does not give verbal feedback Mandarin Chinese, baseline: Beijing dialect 13 native speakers and 17 heritage speakers of advanced proficiency in spoken Mandarin However, five HL speakers do not have the knowledge of formal registers

18 Basic word order is SVO, but attributes including relative clauses precede the head noun Nouns occur with classifiers Use of numerals with nouns is associated with indefiniteness Locative expressions: in most cases, locative PPs appear before the VP Serial verbs are widely used, and some serialization correlates with the presence of the ba-construction 69 Proxy: noun filling the gap after the relative clause when the real head precedes the relative clause. For instance: [ RC ] ba small triangle corner have ball de figure move to Beijing REAL HEAD RELATIVE CLAUSE PROXY Move the small triangle with a ball on its corner to Beijing. 70 In Mandarin, numeral phrases include numerals and classifiers: a triangle yi ge sanjiaoxing NUM CLF NOUN Generally, numeral phrases are considered indefinite In our corpus, native controls used numerals less, esp. when the theme expression had modifiers (hence, was more likely to be definite) Heritage speakers show lack of awareness of this subtle semantic feature 72 18

19 Controls use the ba-construction, which is problematic for heritage speakers Controls use prenominal relative clauses, heritage speakers use postnominal relatives 74 Relative clauses (RC) precede the head noun Most native speakers strictly follow this rule [ RC ] [ Head Noun ] corner has a diamond ADN small square a small square that has a diamond at its corner Heritage speakers tend to put the relative clause after the head noun In Beijing, put a big triangle the hypotenuse has a dot ADN In Beijing, put a big triangle that has a dot on its hypotenuse Possible reasons: Late planning in production, due to the overall complexity of the theme description Interference from English

20 Native speakers Heritage speakers Proxy construction Yes No Numerals Less likely More likely Word order 1) ba-construction 2) Attributes before head noun 1) Rigid SVO 2) Attributes after head noun Verb complexity Verb compound Single verb The Fruit Cart experimental design is an effective method if eliciting production form heritage speakers in such a way that their output is well constrained 78 Allows researchers to focus on the areas that may cause difficulty Borrow from the playbook of other fields: L1, L2, clinical populations, fieldwork experiments Types of phenomena Methodologies 79 Grammaticality Judgment Tasks (GJTs) Points of general concern: What is the exact nature of grammaticality? Dichotomous or gradient? What is the role of extragrammatical factors? Point of methodological concern: Absence of rigorous control techniques An additional worry: Heritage speakers show a notoriously high rate of null responses on GJT (Polinsky 2006) 80 20

21 Avoiding GJT (Schütze 1996, Tremblay 2005) Alternatives: Response time Rating or magnitude estimation Eye tracking (Irina Sekerina s work) Optimize the comprehension conditions for heritage speakers Allows us to make sure we are not dealing with bottleneck effects Speed/add distractions to comprehension conditions for the controls Self-paced reading (SPR), an established tool (Just et al. 1982, Mitchell 2004) Timing is regular except for areas of difficulty Problem: HL speakers have difficulty reading, even if the alphabet is the same How can one extend the SPR paradigm to populations that do not read? Taking lessons from researchers for whom reading is irrelevant, inappropriate, or an unwelcome confound Sign language research Child language acquisition research Research on clinical populations Phonological investigations

22 Sentence-picture matching (SPM), also well-established (Bamber 1969, Carey & Lockhart 1973, Clark & Chase 1972, Frost 1972, Seymour 1974, Shepard 1967, a.o.) Present acoustic stimuli and record response time for a stimulus-to-picture matching task Common in the fields of aphasiology and child language acquisition An unknown: Do SPR and SPM produce comparable results? Test case: Relative clause processing Subject relatives are easier to process (SPR: Traxler et al. 2002; ERP: King & Kutas 1995; PET: Stromswold et al. 1996; fmri: Just et al. 1996; Eye-tracking: Traxler et al ) Cross-linguistic advantage of subject relatives (Dutch: Frazier 1987; German: Mecklinger et al. 1995; Hebrew: Arnon 2005; Japanese: Miyamoto & Nakamura 2003; Korean: Kwon et al. 2006; Russian: Polinsky 2011 ) Subject preference in the processing of relative clauses in Russian (Levy et al. 2007, submitted; Polinsky 2011, 2012) Subject and object RCs can have the same word order NP i [which NOM i Verb NP ACC ] = Subject Relative NP i [which ACC i Verb NP NOM] = Object Relative

23 * Subjects see two pictures on computer screen followed by a sound file Time in ms Subject Object Polinsky 2012; Polinsky & Fedorova in prep Time in ms * Heritage studies can re-appropriate wellestablished paradigms from other experimental fields Picture matching in lieu of SPR Possible use of self-paced listening, also used in L1 and L2 research (Marinis 2003) Subject Object Polinsky & Fedorova in prep

24 Heritage studies can re-appropriate wellestablished paradigms from other experimental fields Using visual world paradigms in general will provide rich results: more need for eye-tracking in HL studies From behavior to brain From modules to interfaces From homogenous sub-populations to assessing variance ERP measures: brain/behavior dissociations Grammar University students learning Spanish for the first time Violations of tense (similar to English) Su abuela *cocinando/cocina muy bien His grandmother *cooking / cooks very well Violations of gender (no parallel in English) Ellos fueron a *un/una fiesta They went to a party Violations of number (English has it, but not here) *El/los niños están jugando The boys are playing

25 97 98 University students again showed a brain/ behavior dissociation: Their acceptability judgment responses were at chance But their brain responses reliably differentiated grammatical from ungrammatical sentences In this respect, their brain responses looked like those of native speakers

26 NPIs are licensed by negation and negative-like contexts Nobody expects Congress to ever change. Voters expect Congress to ever change. Few people expect Congress to ever change. Voters doubt that Congress will ever change. But negation can t be just anywhere, it must be structurally higher than the NPI *The people [ rel. cl. who can t stand it] expect Congress to ever change. No bills [that the democratic senators supported] will ever become law. *The bills [that the democratic senators supported] will ever become law. *The bills [that no democratic senators supported] will ever become law. (German: Drenhaus et al. 2005; English: Xiang et al, 2009) U of Chicago undergraduates tested in Autism-spectrum Quotient (AQ) Focus on communication subscale (known to correlate negatively with pragmatic comprehension) Lower score better pragmatic inferencing NPI Illusions: Lower AQ score ( pragmatic skills) more illusions Agreement Illusions: no correlation with AQ score Autism-spectrum Quotient (AQ) can be used on healthy HL populations to separate the syntax-semantics or syntaxpragmatics interface from purely grammatical phenomena

27 Extreme variation with regard to proficiency in heritage speakers C.f. three-stage model (Polinsky & Kagan 2007) (i) Acrolectal HS: high proficient, near-native speakers of Russian, maximally close to competent monoling (ii) Mesolectal HS: clear deficencies if compared to monolingual (iii) Basilectal HS: lowest-proficiency speaker, maximally removed from native attainment, may have never acquired literacy in Russian Rate of speech (measured in words per minute) may serve as a predictor of heritage speakers overall language proficiency Advantages: Does not rely on literacy skills A very simple measure Disadvantages: More proof of the concept needed Unclear what RoS actually reflects