Differences in Linguistic Knowledge in Second Language Learners and Heritage Speakers: A Comparative Study

1. Linguistic knowledge in second language learners and heritage speakers:Where are the differences? Silvina Montrul University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

2. Collaborators • Justin Davidson • Israel de la Fuente • Rebecca Foote

3. Heritage Languages • In the context of the United States, heritage languages today are immigrant languages. • Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Korean, Arabic, Polish, etc. spoken by immigrants and their children in the United States.

4. Relevant terms

5. Who is a heritage speaker? • Exposed a minority language at home with the family in early childhood. • Dominant in the majority language. The second language becomes the primary language. • Rarely attains the linguistic competence of a native speaker in the family language. The first language becomes the secondary language.

6. Typical L1 and L2 acquisition situation L1 = native language (majority L) L2 = second language (International L) L1 L1 L1 L1 L2 L2 early childhood middle-late childhood adolescence adulthood

7. From primary to secondary language throughout development L1 = heritage language L2 = English (in the US) L2 L2 L2 L1 L1 L1 L1 L2 early childhood middle-late childhood adolescence adulthood

8. The Importance of Heritage Speakers • Bilingual population that has been studied by sociolinguists over the years but has recently become relevant to formal linguists, second language acquisition experts, and pedagogy specialists. • Large numbers (Kagan & Dillon 2001) about 30% of college undergrads in the US are heritage speakers; in California, up to 40%

9. The nature of deficits in the HL A number of researchers have shown persistent deficits in heritage speakers’ production and comprehension of their HL. What is the source of these deficits? • Incomplete acquisition? • L1 fossilization? • L1 attrition? • L2 transfer? • Inherent simplification?

10. Heritage speakers are important for linguistics • Formal theoretical linguistics seeks to study the nature of human language and how it is represented in adult native speaker knowledge. • Language acquisition is concerned with how the child acquires knowledge of language through input from the environment.

11. Critical questions raised by HSs 1) How long does it take for a native language to be acquired and solidified so that it does not go away with fluctuations in input? 2) Which areas of linguistic knowledge are robust and which are fragile? 3) How stable is early childhood acquisition? 4) What exactly is the role of input--including literacy--in the development vs. maintenance of a language?

12. Second language acquisition and teaching • Like L2 learners, many heritage speakers display different degrees of proficiency in the heritage language. • Many of the problem areas common in adult L2 acquisition are also problem areas in heritage language speakers. • Like L2 learners, heritage speakers show signs of “apparent” fossilization or arrested development.

13. Examples from two Spanish Heritage speakers (context: talking about her ideal job) Amigo, yo sé que tienes una problema de alcohol. Te aconsejo que necesitias a ver alguien. Es necesario que vas, que vas a alguien. Hasta que vas a la hospital con su problema no quiero hablar contigo. (context: retelling Little Red Riding Hood) La niña está camina y ve una perro que quiere comer la niña pero lo hombre con la ax mata el perro.

14. Example form two English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish (context: talking about her ideal job) Tal vez ser . . será . . sería una profesor de español o matemáticas . . . Necesito tener una apartamento pero yo creo que vas a vivir con mi mamá. (context: retelling Little Red Riding Hood) Y algún día fue su cumpleaños de su abuela y la Caperucita Roja le encantó su abuela mucha y siempre le visitó porque se divierten cuando están juntos. Entonces la Caperucita Roja salió su casa y fue a visitar su abuela visitar.

15. Some differences between L2 learners and heritage speakers: experience

16. Second Language Acquisition • According to theoretical accounts of adult L2 acquisition, maturational effects (age) explain fundamental differences between L1 acquisition by children and L2 acquisition by adults • Differences in the nature of linguistic knowledge • Differences in the degree of ultimate attainment • By comparing heritage speakers and L2 learners we can (re-)evaluate the role of age and experience in bilingual language development.

17. Second Language Teaching • Heritage speakers need motivation to maintain and develop their heritage language beyond what they acquired at home. • Many college-age heritage speakers seek to reacquire or improve their knowledge of the heritage language in the second/foreign language classroom. • Some universities have developed special programs for heritage language learners; most others place HL and L2 learners in the same classroom.

18. Research question Acquisition of a secondary language 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 target-like performance

19. Au et al. (2002) • Experimental study of incipient L2 learners of Spanish and Spanish heritage speakers with receptive knowledge of Spanish (overhearers) • VOT measurements of Spanish stops [p,t,k,ß, ð, ɣ] and a Grammaticality judgment task (verbal agreement, gender agreement, tense, aspect, mood, clitics, etc.) • The overhearers had advantages over the L2 learners in VOTs but did not have advantages in the aspects of morphosyntax tested.

20. Phonology (Au et al. 2002)

21. Morphosyntax (Au et al. 2002)

22. Research Program • Systematic comparison of L2 learners and heritage speakers (instructed and uninstructed) • Extended linguistic and psycholinguistic methodologies from SLA and L1 acquisition. • Tested several grammatical areas in different studies: gender agreement, tense-aspect-mood, object pronouns, case marking, word order, complex syntax, syntax-semantics.

23. Montrul, Foote & Perpiñán (2008) • 140 Spanish L2 learners and heritage speakers ranging from low to advanced levels of proficiency. • Advantages for heritage speakers on some 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 inoral production tasks.

24. Written Picture Interpretation Task • Capitalized on the syntactic availability of N-drop in Spanish (based on White et al. 2004) e.g. ¿Qué manzana querés? La Ø roja. what apple you want? the red • 32 target items (16 feminine, 16 masculine) • 13 distracters

25. Example "No quiero llevar las de ese color." A  bufanda          B    maletas                       C pantalones

26. Written Recognition Task • Passage with 40 blanks to fill • 20 feminine, 20 masculine • 20 determiners, 20 adjectives • 10 feminine –a, 10 masculine –o words • 10 feminine “other” ending, 10 masculine “other” ending

27. Example Select the correct form of the article or adjective • (1) Los/ Las llaves de la puerta, los televisores de 625 líneas y las ruidosaslavadoras se quedarán (2) obsoletos/ obsoletas en la próxima década, cuando el 60 por ciento de (3) el / la población de (4) los / las países (5) desarrollados / desarrolladas dependa de (6) las / los telecomunicaciones.

28. Oral Picture Description Task • 65 pictures • 50 targets and 15 distracters • 25 masculine (5 –o animate, 5 -o inanimate, 5 –e, 5 -consonant, 5 –a) • 25 feminine (5 –a animate, 5 -a inanimate, 5 –e, 5 -consonant, 5 –o) Responses were audiorecorded and transcribed

29. banana “Veo una banana madura”

30. Task Effects

31. Conclusion • Because L2 learners, who learned the language primarily in the classroom, have more experience with written languagethan heritage speakers, the untimed written tasks may have overestimated the L2 learners’ implicit knowledge of gender. • If we take into account the oral task only, the heritage speakers know more. • See also Montrul 2010, Montrul in press a, b.

32. Other findings • Controlling for proficiency is important in order to compare the two groups. • The distinction between implicit knowledge and explicit/metalinguistic knowledge of language should be taken more seriously in building theories of SLA (DeKeyser 2002, N. Ellis 2005, R. Ellis 2005, Jiang 2003), especially generative theories. • Task and task modality matters.

33. Revisiting knowledge of gender agreement Re-examine whether early language experience provides advantages to heritage speakers over L2 learners with gender processing. Avoid use of written language (literacy effect). 4 spoken word recognition experiments • Eyetracking (visual world paradigm) • Timed grammaticality judgment task (GJT) • Timed aural gender monitoring task (GMT) • Timed oral repetition task (RT) 1 oral production experiment.

34. 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.

35. Picture-Naming Task Rationale: proficiency measure based on oral production Stimuli: 48 Spanish inanimate object nouns • frequency of 3 or higher (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

36. Spanish Masculine Nouns

37. Spanish Feminine Nouns

38. Picture-Naming Tasks • Participants completed the task both in Spanish and in English (only HS and L2ers) • 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 randomly • Stimuli presentation, speech recording, and reaction times (after the onset of the prompt) were measured

39. Picture-Naming Tasks Image samples Libro“book” Casa“house” Sobre“envelope” Llave“key” Corazón“heart” Flor“flower”

40. Analysis • Spanish • Two one-way independent ANOVAs: one for accuracy and one for RTs • Between-subjects factor: Group (NS, HS, L2) • English • Two independent-samples t-tests: one for accuracy and one for RTs • Between-subjects factor: Group (HS, L2) NS differ significantly from HS and L2 in both accuracy and RTs (p<.001). HS and L2 do not differ significantly from each other in either task.

41. Picture-Naming Tasks: Results Spanish ** **

42. Picture-Naming Tasks: Results English

43. Word-Recognition Experiments • Timed grammaticality judgment task (GJT) • Timed aural gender monitoring task (GMT) • Timed oral repetition task (RT) (Bates et al. 1996, Guillelmon & Grosjean 2001)

44. Experimental Design • For all three tasks, 300 determiner-noun-adjective 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.

45. Conditions used in the three tasks NOTE: only the GMT and the RT had a neutral condition, the GJT did not.

46. 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. • In the GJT, participants listened to the noun phrases and pushed one of two buttons to indicate whether the phrase was grammatical or ungrammatical. • In the RT, participants heard the noun phrases and were asked to repeat the last word in each phrase as quickly and accurately as possible.

47. The GJT and the GMT focus on gender more explicitly (i.e., metalinguistic tasks) than the RT. • Reaction times and accuracy were measured for each task. • Assumption: native speakers slow down when they detect errors; they will be faster on grammatical than on ungrammatical phrases. • (grammaticality effect)

48. Results Gender Monitoring TaskAccuracy Grammaticality effect for all three groups Native speakers > [heritage speakers = L2 learners]

49. Results Gender Monitoring TaskReaction Times Grammaticality effect for all three groups Native speakers > [heritage speakers = L2 learners]

50. Grammaticality Judgment Task Accuracy Grammaticality effect for all three groups Native speakers > [heritage speakers = L2 learners]