Heritage receptive bilinguals (RBs) are individuals who report understanding but not speaking their family language. This study tests whether semantic features of functional morphemes, namely tense, aspect, and agreement markers, are accessible to them in comprehension. RBs in this study are fluent speakers of English with receptive knowledge of Labrador Inuttitut. Many RBs showed fluent-like comprehension of aspectual suffixes, subject-object-verb agreement suffixes, and past versus future contrasts in tense suffixes, but most could not identify remoteness degrees in tense suffixes. Lowest-proficiency RBs did not show knowledge of any morphemes. Remoteness features are missing from most RBs’ grammars; the same applies to many features in LRBs’ grammars. Some RBs showed inconsistent performance: better than chance, but worse than fluent speakers. The corresponding parts of RBs’ grammars are therefore fluent-like, but access to them is difficult. RBs’ grammars consist of fluent-like parts, parts with reduced access, and incomplete parts.
Albirini, A., Benmamoun, E., & Saadah, E. (2011). Grammatical features of Egyptian and Palestinian Arabic heritage speakers’ oral production. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33(2), 273–303.
Andersen, C. (2009). A sociolinguistic survey of language behaviours and attitudes in Nain, Nunatsiavut. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. Johns, NL.
Andersen, C., & Johns, A. (2005). Labrador Inuttitut: Speaking into the future. Études/Inuit/Studies, 291, 187–205.
Au, T.K., Knightly, L.M., Jun, S.A., & Oh, J.S. (2002). Overhearing a language during childhood. Psychological Science, 13(3), 238–243.
Benmamoun, E., Montrul, S., & Polinsky, M. (2010). White paper: Prolegomena to heritage linguistics. Ms., Harvard University.
Bittner, M. (2005). Future discourse in a tenseless language. Journal of Semantics, 22(4), 339–387.
Clarke, S. (2009). The manifestation of viewpoint aspect in Inuktitut. Studia Linguistica, 63(3), 292–322.
Cowper, E. (1998). The simple present tense in English: A unified treatment. Studia Linguistica, 52(1), 1–19.
Crago, M., & Allen, S.E.M. (2001). Early finiteness in Inuktitut: The role of language structure and input. Language Acquisition, 9(1), 59–111.
Dorian, N.C. (2006). Negative borrowing in an indigenous language shift to the dominant national language. The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 9(5), 557–577.
Fenyvesi, A. (2000). The affectedness of the verbal complex in American Hungarian. In A. Fenyvesi, & K. Sándor (Eds.), Language contact and the verbal complex of Dutch and Hungarian: Working papers from the 1st Bilingual Language Use Theme Meeting of the Study Centre on Language Contact, November 11-13, 1999, Szeged, Hungary (pp. 94–107). Szeged: JGyTF Press.
Filip, H. (1999). Aspect, eventuality types and noun phrase semantics. New York: Garland.
Fortescue, M., Jakobson, S., & Kaplan, L. (1994). Comparative Eskimo dictionary (with Aleut cognates). Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Hayashi, M. (2011). The structure of multiple tenses in Inuktitut. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (Accession Order No. AAT NR77704).
Jakobson, R. (1941). Child language, aphasia, and phonological universals. English translation reprinted in 1968. Hague: Mouton.
Johns, A. (1995). On some mood alternations in Labrador Inuttut. In C. Burgess, K. Dziwirek, & D. Gerdts (Eds.), Grammatical relations: Theoretical approaches to empirical questions (pp. 131–151). Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.
Johns, A. (2001). An inclination towards accusative. Linguistica Atlantica, 231, 127–144.
Laleko, O. (2010). The syntax-pragmatics interface in language loss: Covert restructuring of aspect in heritage Russian. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (Accession Order No. AAT 3408406).
Montrul, S. (2002). Incomplete acquisition and attrition of Spanish tense/aspect distinction in adult bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 51, 39–68.
Paradis, J., & Navarro, S. (2003). Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: what is the role of the input?Journal of Child Language, 30(2), 371–393.
Pascual Y. Cabo, D. & Rothman, J. (2012). The (il)logical problem of heritage speaker bilingualism and incomplete acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 33(4), 450–455.
Polinsky, M. (1997). American Russian: Language loss meets language acquisition. In W. Browne, E. Dornisch, N. Kondrashova, & D. Zec (Eds.), Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The Cornell meeting 1995 (pp. 370–406). Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic.
Polinsky, M. (2006). Incomplete acquisition: American Russian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 141, 191–262.
Polinsky, M. (2008). Without aspect. In G. Corbett, & M. Noonan (Eds.), Case and grammatical relations (pp. 263–282). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Polinsky, M. (2011). Reanalysis in adult heritage language: New evidence in support of attrition. Studies in Second Language, 33(2), 305–328.
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.
Shaer, B. (2003). Towards the tenseless analysis of a tenseless language. Proceedings of SULA, 21, 139–156.
Sherkina-Lieber, M. (2010). Comprehension of functional morphemes by Labrador Inuttitut receptive bilinguals. In K. Franich, K.M. Iserman, & L.L. Keli (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 34 (pp. 351–362). Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Sherkina-Lieber, M. (2011). Comprehension of Labrador Inuttitut functional morphology by receptive bilinguals. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (Accession Order No. AAT NR78022).
Sherkina-Lieber, M., Perez-Leroux, A., & Johns, A. (2011). Grammar without speech production: The case of Labrador Inuttitut heritage receptive bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14(3), 301–317.
Silva-Corvalan, C. (2003). Linguistic consequences of reduced input in bilingual first language acquisition. In S. Montrul, & F. Ordonez (Eds.), Linguistic theory and language development in Hispanic languages (pp. 375–397). Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Smith, L. (1978). A survey of the derivational postbases of Labrador Inuttut (Eskimo). Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.
Swift, M. (2004). Time in child Inuktitut: A developmental study of an Eskimo-Aleut language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Valdes, G. (2000). Spanish for native speakers. AATSP professional development series, handbook for teachers K-12. Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers.
2024. Trilingual parallel processing: Do the dominant languages grab all the attention?. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition► pp. 1 ff.
Thane, Patrick D.
2023. Frequency matters in second language acquisition too! Frequency effects in the production of preterit morphology with state verbs in Spanish second language learners and heritage speakers. Lingua 295 ► pp. 103611 ff.
2022. What does a receptive bilingual understand? Evidence from Polish as a heritage language in Germany. Zeitschrift für Slawistik 67:3 ► pp. 355 ff.
Bayram, Fatih, Grazia Di Pisa, Jason Rothman & Roumyana Slabakova
2021. Current Trends and Emerging Methodologies in Charting Heritage Language Grammars. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 545 ff.
D'Alessandro, Roberta, David Natvig & Michael T. Putnam
2021. Addressing Challenges in Formal Research on Moribund Heritage Languages: A Path Forward. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Giancaspro, David & Liliana Sánchez
2021. <i>Me, mi, my</i>: Innovation and variability in heritage speakers’ knowledge of inalienable possession. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6:1
Ionin, Tania
2021. Semantics of Heritage Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 668 ff.
Jegerski, Jill & Irina A. Sekerina
2021. The Psycholinguistics of Heritage Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 449 ff.
Nagy, Naomi
2021. Heritage Languages in Canada. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 178 ff.
Putnam, Michael T., Lara Schwarz & Andrew D. Hoffman
2021. Morphology of Heritage Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 613 ff.
Dragoy, Olga, Ekaterina Virfel, Anna Yurchenko & Roelien Bastiaanse
2019. Aspect and tense attrition in Russian-German bilingual speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism 23:1 ► pp. 275 ff.
Giancaspro, David
2019. The Late(r) Bird Gets the Verb? Effects of Age of Acquisition of English on Adult Heritage Speakers’ Knowledge of Subjunctive Mood in Spanish. Languages 4:3 ► pp. 69 ff.
Perez-Cortes, Silvia, Michael T. Putnam & Liliana Sánchez
2019. Differential Access: Asymmetries in Accessing Features and Building Representations in Heritage Language Grammars. Languages 4:4 ► pp. 81 ff.
Sherkina-Lieber, Marina & Rena Helms-Park
2015. A prototype of a receptive lexical test for a polysynthetic heritage language: The case of Inuttitut in Labrador. Language Testing 32:4 ► pp. 419 ff.
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.