Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 14:6 (2024) ► pp.886–914

Lexical and morphosyntactic variation in Persian heritage language outcomes

 | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
 | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
 | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Individual variation in heritage language (HL) outcomes does not seem to be random. Instead, this variation can be related to the specific exposure and use patterns heritage speakers (HSs) have with their languages in the contexts they reside. In this study, we present data from 38 child HSs of Persian in English dominant contexts (in New Zealand and the UK), their mothers as well as a control group of age-matched monolinguals in Iran. All participants completed a film-retelling task from which their lexical sophistication (LS) and clausal density (CD) were measured. In addition, the HSs’ mothers completed a sociolinguistic questionnaire for their children which was used to calculate proxies for language experiences. Out of the two linguistic measures, the HSs differed from monolinguals only in LS scores. Regarding the relationship between HSs’ linguistic scores and language experiences, Random Forest analyses showed HL literacy to be the most important variable for the CD scores; while it was the HSs’ age-at-testing for LS. The mothers’ scores were only important for the HSs’ LS scores. This study contributes to the ongoing discussions on the nature of HL development, outcomes and individual variation.
Keywords: heritage language bilingualism, vocabulary, morphosyntax, random forest analysis, literacy, Persian
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Studies on HL vocabulary, morphosyntax and individual variation
    • This study
    • Methodology
      • Participants
      • Procedure
    • Measures of HL proficiency
      • Vocabulary
      • Morphosyntax
      • Social and language background
    • Findings
      • Comparing the heritage speakers to their control groups and their motherslexical sophistication
    • Clausal density
    • Input and HL outcomes
    • Results of random forest models
  • Discussion and conclusion
  • Data availability statement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.21052.gha
References (96)
References
Altmann, A., Tolosi, L., Sander, O. & Lengauer, T. (2010). Permutation importance: a corrected feature importance measure, Bioinformaticsw 261:1340–1347. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Armon-Lotem, S., Rose, K., & Altman, C. (2021). The development of English as a heritage language: The role of chronological age and age of onset of bilingualism. First Language, 41(1), 67–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baese-Berk, M. M., Drake, S., Foster, K., Lee, D. Y., Staggs, C., & Wright, J. M. (2021). Lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, and predictability for speech in multiple listening conditions. Frontiers in Psychology, 12 1, 2328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, C. (2006). Foundations of bilingualism. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Bialystok, E., Luk, G., Peets, K. F., & Sujin, Y. A. N. G. (2010). Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and cognition, 13(4), 525–531. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., & Hared, M. (1991). Literacy in Somali: linguistic consequences. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 121, 260–282. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bigelow, M., & Tarone, E. (2004). The role of literacy level in second language acquisition: Doesn’t who we study determine what we know?. TESOL quarterly, 38(4), 689–700. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blake, J., Quartaro, G., & Onorati, S. (1993). Evaluating quantitative measures of grammatical complexity in spontaneous speech samples. Journal of Child Language, 20(1), 139–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boulesteix, A. L., Janitza, S., Kruppa, J., & König, I. R. (2012). Overview of random forest methodology and practical guidance with emphasis on computational biology and bioinformatics. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 2 (6), 493–507. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Breiman, L. (2001). Random Forests. Machine Learning, 451, 5–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). Development of the first language in the human species. American psychologist, 28(2), 97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bühlmann, P., & Van De Geer, S. (2011). Statistics for high-dimensional data: methods, theory and applications. Springer Science & Business Media. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bylund, E. (2009). Maturational constraints and first language attrition. Language learning, 59(3), 687–715. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cabo, D. P. Y., & Rothman, J. (2012). The (il) logical problem of heritage speaker bilingualism and incomplete acquisition. Applied linguistics, 33(4), 450–455. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chakraborty, S., Ghosh, M., & Mallick, B. K. (2012). Bayesian nonlinear regression for large p small n problems. Journal of Multivariate Analysis, 108 1, 28–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cummins, J. (2005). A proposal for action: Strategies for recognizing heritage language competence as a learning resource within the mainstream classroom. Modern Language Journal, 585–592.Google Scholar
Dąbrowska, E. (2012). Different speakers, different grammars: Individual differences in native language attainment. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 2(3), 219–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Daller, M. H. (2020). Turkish heritage speakers in Germany. Studies in Turkish as a Heritage Language, 601, 17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Daller, M., & Ongun, Z. (2018). The threshold hypothesis revisited: Bilingual lexical knowledge and non-verbal IQ development. International Journal of Bilingualism, 22(6), 675–694. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Daskalaki, E., Elma, B. L. O. M., Chondrogianni, V., & Paradis, J. (2020). Effects of parental input quality in child heritage language acquisition. Journal of child language, 47 (4), 709–736. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Cat, C. (2021). Socioeconomic status as a proxy for input quality in bilingual children?. Applied Psycholinguistics, 42 (2), 301–324. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Houwer, A. (1990). The acquisition of two languages from birth: A case study. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2002). Comparing monolingual and bilingual acquisition. Alkalmazott Nyelvtudomány, 11, 5–18.Google Scholar
(2007). Parental language input patterns and children’s bilingual use. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28(3), 411. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, D. M. (2007). PPVT4: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (4th ed.). Minneapolis, MN: NCS Pearson.Google Scholar
Eisenchlas, S. A., Schalley, A. C., & Guillemin, D. (2013). The importance of literacy in the home language: The view from Australia. Sage Open, 3(4). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuchs, Z. (2021). Facilitative use of grammatical gender in Heritage Spanish. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Golberg, H., Paradis, J., & Crago, M. (2008). Lexical acquisition over time in minority first language children learning English as a second language. Applied psycholinguistics, 29(1), 41–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gullifer, J. W., & Titone, D. (2020). Characterizing the social diversity of bilingualism using language entropy. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23(2), 283–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gutierrez–Clellen, V. F., & Kreiter, J. (2003). Understanding child bilingual acquisition using parent and teacher reports. Applied psycholinguistics, 24 (2), 267–288. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hastie, T., Tibshirani, R. & Friedman, J. H. (2001). The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction. Springer-Verlag, New York. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoff, E. (2003). The specificity of environmental influence: Socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech. Child development, 74 (5), 1368–1378. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental review, 26(1), 55–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karayayla, T., & Schmid, M. S. (2019). First language attrition as a function of age at onset of bilingualism: First language attainment of Turkish–English bilinguals in the United Kingdom. Language Learning, 69(1), 106–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
King, K. A., L. Fogle, and A. Logan-Terry. (2008). Family language policy. Language and Linguistics Compass, 2(5), 907–922. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Köpke, B., & Schmid, M. S. (2004). Language attrition. First language attrition: Interdisciplinary perspectives on methodological issues, 28(1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kupisch, T., & Rothman, J. (2018). Terminology matters! Why difference is not incompleteness and how early child bilinguals are heritage speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism, 22(5), 564–582. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jia, G., & Fuse, A. (2007). Acquisition of English grammatical morphology by native Mandarin-speaking children and adolescents: Age-related differences. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 50(5), 1280–1299. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lahmann, C., Steinkrauss, R., & Schmid, M. S. (2019). Measuring linguistic complexity in long-term L2 speakers of English and L1 attriters of German. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 29 (2), 173–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lanza, E., & Svendsen, B. A. (2007). Tell me who your friends are and I might be able to tell you what language (s) you speak: Social network analysis, multilingualism, and identity. International journal of bilingualism, 11(3), 275–300. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laufer, B., & Nation, P. (1995). Vocabulary size and use: Lexical richness in L2 written production. Applied linguistics, 16(3), 307–322. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Limia, V., Özçalişkan, Ş., & Erika, H. O. F. F. (2019). Do parents provide a helping hand to vocabulary development in bilingual children?. Journal of child language, 46(3), 501–521. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lloyd-Smith, A., Bayram, F., & Iverson, M. (2020). The effects of heritage language experience on lexical and morphosyntactic outcomes. Studies in Turkish as a Heritage Language, 601, 63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lohndal, T., Rothman, J., Kupisch, T., & Westergaard, M. (2019). Heritage language acquisition: What it reveals and why it is important for formal linguistic theories. Language and Linguistics Compass, 13 (12). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES Project: Tools for analyzing talk. transcription format and programs (Vol. 1). Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Marian, V., & Hayakawa, S. (2021). Measuring bilingualism: The quest for a “bilingualism quotient”. Applied Psycholinguistics, 42 (2), 527–548. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mimeau, C., Plourde, V., Ouellet, A. A., & Dionne, G. (2015). Comparison of measures of morphosyntactic complexity in French-speaking school-aged children. First Language, 35(2), 163–181. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. (2004). Convergent outcomes in L2 acquisition and L1 loss. First language attrition: Interdisciplinary perspectives on methodological issues, 259–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009). Knowledge of tense-aspect and mood in Spanish heritage speakers. International Journal of bilingualism, 13(2), 239–269. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016). The acquisition of heritage languages. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Montrul, S. A. (2008). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism: Re-examining the age factor (Vol. 391). John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S., & Sánchez-Walker, N. (2013). Differential object marking in child and adult Spanish heritage speakers. Language Acquisition, 20 (2), 109–132. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mori, Y., & Calder, T. M. (2017). The role of parental support and family variables in L1 and L2 vocabulary development of Japanese heritage language students in the United States. Foreign Language Annals, 50 (4), 754–775. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nesteruk, O. (2010). Heritage language maintenance and loss among the children of Eastern European immigrants in the USA. Journal of Multilingual and multicultural Development, 31(3), 271–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nippold, M. A. (1993). Developmental markers in adolescent language: Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 24(1), 21–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oller, D. K., Pearson, B. Z., & Cobo-Lewis, A. B. (2007). Profile effects in early bilingual language and literacy. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28(2), 191–230. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J. (2007). Second language acquisition in childhood. In E. Hoff & M. Shatz (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of language development (pp. 387–405). Blackwell Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J., & Genesee, F. (1996). Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children: Autonomous or interdependent?. Studies in second language acquisition, 18(1), 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J., Nicoladis, E., Crago, M., & Genesee, F. (2011). Bilingual children’s acquisition of the past tense: A usage-based approach. Journal of child language, 38(3), 554. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pearson, B. Z., Fernández, S. C., Lewedeg, V., & Oller, D. K. (1997). The relation of input factors to lexical learning by bilingual infants. Applied psycholinguistics, 18(1), 41–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pires, A., & Rothman, J. (2009). Disentangling sources of incomplete acquisition: An explanation for competence divergence across heritage grammars. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 211–238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Place, S., & Hoff, E. (2011). Properties of dual language exposure that influence 2-year-olds’ bilingual proficiency. Child development, 82 (6), 1834–1849. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polinsky, M. (1995). American Russian: Language loss meets language acquisition. In Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics. Cornell Meeting. Michigan Slavic Publications.Google Scholar
(2007). Reaching the end point and stopping midway: Different scenarios in the acquisition of Russian. Russian Linguistics, 31(2), 157–199. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011). Reanalysis in adult heritage language: New evidence in support of attrition. Studies in second language acquisition, 305–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018). Heritage languages and their speakers (Vol. 1591). Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polinsky, M., & Scontras, G. (2020). A roadmap for heritage language research. Bilingualism: Language and cognition, 23(1), 50–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Putnam, M. T., & Sánchez, L. (2013). What’s so incomplete about incomplete acquisition?: A prolegomenon to modeling heritage language grammars. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 3(4), 478–508. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quiroz, B. G., Snow, C. E., & Zhao, J. (2010). Vocabulary skills of Spanish – English bilinguals: impact of mother – child language interactions and home language and literacy support. International Journal of Bilingualism, 14(4), 379–399. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rothman, J. (2007). Heritage speaker competence differences, language change, and input type: Inflected infinitives in Heritage Brazilian Portuguese. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(4), 359–389. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009). Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International journal of bilingualism, 13 (2), 155–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rothman, J., Bayram, F., DeLuca, V., Di Pisa, G., Dunabeitia, J. A., Gharibi, K., ... & Wulff, S. (2023). Monolingual comparative normativity in bilingualism research is out of “control”: Arguments and alternatives. Applied Psycholinguistics, 44(3), 316–329. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scheele, A. F., Leseman, P. P., & Mayo, A. Y. (2010). The home language environment of monolingual and bilingual children and their language proficiency. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31 (1), 117–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, M. E., Köpke, B. E. (2019). The Oxford handbook of language attrition. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, M. S. (2011). Language attrition. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, M. S., & Fägersten, K. B. (2010). Disfluency markers in L1 attrition. Language learning, 60(4), 753–791. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, M. S., & Jarvis, S. (2014). Lexical access and lexical diversity in first language attrition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(04), 729–748. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, M. S., Verspoor, M., Verspoor, M. H., & MacWhinney, B. (2011). Coding and extracting data. In A dynamic approach to second language development (pp. 39–54). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scott, C. (2005). Learning to write. In H. Catts & A. Kamhi (Eds.), Language and reading disabilities (2nd ed., pp. 233–273). Boston: Pearson.Google Scholar
Scott, C. M., & Stokes, S. L. (1995). Measures of syntax in school-age children and adolescents. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 26(4), 309–319. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Serratrice, L. (2013). Acquisition of features in the nominal domain in bilingual acquisition. International Journal of Bilingualism, 17(5), 657–664. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A. (2004). Native language attrition and developmental instability at the syntax-discourse interface: Data, interpretations and methods. Bilingualism Language and Cognition, 7(2), 143–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011). Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism. Linguistic approaches to bilingualism, 1 (1), 1–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spolsky, B. (2009). Language management. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strobl, C., Malley, J., & Tutz, G. (2009). An introduction to recursive partitioning: rationale, application, and characteristics of classification and regression trees, bagging, and random forests. Psychological methods, 14 (4), 323. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thordardottir, E. (2011). The relationship between bilingual exposure and vocabulary development. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15 (4), 426–445. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tomaschek, F., Hendrix, P., & Baayen, R. H. (2018). Strategies for addressing collinearity in multivariate linguistic data. Journal of Phonetics, 71 1, 249–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Treffers-Daller, J., Daller, M., Furman, R., & Rothman, J. (2016). Ultimate attainment in the use of lexical collocations among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany and Turkish-German returnees. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19(3), 504–519. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tsimpli, I. M. (2014). Early, late or very late?: Timing acquisition and bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 4(3), 283–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Unsworth, S. (2013). Current issues in multilingual first language acquisition. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 33 1, 21–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016). Early child L2 acquisition: Age or input effects? Neither, or both?. Journal of child language, 43 (3), 608–634. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Willard, J. A., Agache, A., Jäkel, J., Glück, C. W., & Leyendecker, B. (2015). Family factors predicting vocabulary in Turkish as a heritage language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36 (4), 875–898. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wright, M. N., Ziegler, A. (2017). ranger: A Fast Implementation of Random Forests for High Dimensional Data in C++ and R. Journal of Statistical Software, 77(1): 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yilmaz, G., & Schmid, M. S. (2012). L1 accessibility among Turkish-Dutch bilinguals. The Mental Lexicon, 7(3), 249–274. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Antonova-Unlu, Elena & Fatih Bayram
2023. The role of external factors on the reactivation of the heritage language of Turkish-German returnees. Frontiers in Psychology 14 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.