In order to elucidate the structure of heritage grammars, this paper presents an analysis of word order variation in Moundridge Schweitzer German (MSG), a moribund heritage variety of German spoken in South Central Kansas. Based on elicited production data and an acceptability judgment task, we show that the current state of the MSG grammar maintains the asymmetric German verb-second (V2) and verb-final (V-final) word-ordering closely tied to specific pragmatic information associated with clause-types and complementizers. Extensive contact with English does not lead to adoption of English word order; rather, it occasions restructuring of German word order within the constraints of German syntax. We model these findings in a syntactic analysis following recent proposals by Putnam & Sánchez (2013) and Polinsky (2011) that challenge the notion of ‘incomplete acquisition’ as a way to conceptualize heritage language acquisition.
Amaral, L., & Roeper, T. (2014). Multiple grammars and second language representations. Second Language Research, 301, 3–36.
Antomo, M. (2012). Interpreting embedded verb second: Causal modifiers in German. Proceedings of ConSOLEXVII, 27–51. [URL] (accessed: 10.4.2014)
Antomo, M., & Steinbach, M. (2010). Desintegration und Interpretation: Weil-V2-Sätze an der Schnittstelle zwischen Syntax, Semantik und Pragmatik. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 291, 1–37.
Benmamoun, Elabbas, Silvina Montrul, and Maria Polinsky. (2013). Keynote article. Heritage languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistics. Theoretical Linguistics 39.3–4:129–181.
Besch, W., & Loffler, H. (1977). Alemannisch. Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwan.
Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Clahsen, H. (1982). Spracherwerb in der Kindheit. Eine Untersuchung zur Entwicklung der Syntax bei Kleinkindern. Tübingen: Narr.
Clyne, M. (1994). What can we learn from Sprachinseln? Some observations on ‘Australian German’. In K. Mattheier, and N. Berend (eds.), Sprachinseln (pp. 105–122). Frankfurt: Lang.
Clyne, M. (2003). Dynamics of language contact. English and immigrant languages. Cambridge: CUP.
Clyne, M., & Cain, H. (2000). Trilingualism in related languages - Dutch-German-English near and far. In G. Hirschfelder, D. Schnell, & A. Schrutka-Rechtenstamm (Eds.), Kulturen - Sprachen - Uebergaenge. Festschrift fuer H.L. Cox zum 65. Geburtstag (pp. 135–152). Cologne: Boehlau.
Dubenion-Smith, S. (2010). Verbal complex phenomena in West Central German: Empirical domain and multi-causal account. Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 221, 99–191.
Freywald, U. (2008). Zur Syntax und Funktion von dass-Sätzen mit Verbzweitstellung. Deutsche Sprache, 361, 246–285.
Fuller, J. (1997). Pennsylvania Dutch with a Southern touch: A theoretical model of language contact and change. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of South Carolina-Columbia.
Gawlitzek-Maiwald, I., & Tracy, R. (1996). Bilingual bootstrapping. Linguistics, 341, 901–936.
Gawlitzek-Maiwald, I., Tracy, R., & Fritzenschaft, A. (1992). Language acquisition and competing linguistic representations: The child as arbiter. In J.M. Meisel (Ed.), The acquisition of verb placement: Functional categories and V2 phenomena in language development (pp. 139–179). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Grewendorf, G., & Poletto, C. (2011). Hidden verb second: the case of Cimbrian. In M. Putnam (Ed.), Studies in German-language islands (pp. 301–346). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Grosjean, F. (2008). Studying bilinguals. Oxford: OUP.
Gross, S. (2005). Attrition and typological change. Presentation, 2nd International Conference on First Language Attrition. Vrije Universitet Amsterdam.
Håkansson, G. (1995). Syntax and morphology in language attrition: A study of Wve bilingual expatriate Swedes. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 51, 153–171.
Kaufman, M. (1975). The challenging faith. Newton, KS: United Printing Inc.
Lardiere, D. (2009). Some thoughts on a contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 251, 173–227.
Lightfoot, D. (2006). How new languages emerge. Cambridge: CUP.
Louden, M. (1988). Bilingualism and syntactic change in Pennsylvania German. Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell University.
Louden, M. (2006). Pennsylvania German in the twenty-first century. In N. Berend, & E. Knipf-Komlósi (Eds.), Sprachinsel weltweit - The word of language islands (pp. 89–107). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Montrul, S. (2009). Incomplete acquisition of tense-aspect and mood in Spanish heritage speakers. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 131, 239–269.
Montrul, S., & Bowles, M. (2009). Back to basics: Differential object marking under incomplete acquisition in Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12(4), 363–383.
Montrul, S., & Sánchez-Walker, N. (2013). Differential object marking in child and adult Spanish heritage speakers. Language Acquisition, 201, 1–24.
Müller, N., Kupisch, T., Schmitz, K., & Cantone, K. (2006). Einführung in die Mehrsprachigkeitsforschung. Tübingen: Narr.
Obler, L.K., & Pekkala, S. (2008). Language and communication in aging. In B. Stemmer, & H. Whitaker (Eds.), Handbook of neurolinguistics (2nd ed.) (pp. 351–358). Oxford: Elsevier Press.
O’Grady, W., Lee, M., & Choo, M. (2001). The acquisition of relative clauses by heritage and non-heritage learners of Korean as a second language: A comparative study. Journal of Korean Language Education, 121, 283–294.
Pascual y Cabo, D., & Rothman, J. (2012). The (il)logical problem of heritage speaker bilingualism and incomplete acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 331, 450–455.
Pires, A., & Rothman, J. (2009). Disentangling sources of incomplete acquisition: An explanation for competence divergence across heritage grammars. International Journal of Bilingualism, 131, 211–238.
Poeppel, D., & Wexler, K. (1993). The full competence hypothesis of clause structure in early German. Language, 691, 1–33.
Polinsky, M. (2006). Incomplete acquisition: American Russian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 141, 191–262.
Polinsky, M. (2008). Heritage language narratives. In D. Brinton, O. Kagan, & S. Bauckus (Eds.), Heritage language education. A new field emerging (pp. 149–164). New York: Routledge.
Polinsky, M. (2009). What breaks in A- and A-bar chains under incomplete acquisition, Poster presentation at CUNY Sentence Processing Conference. UC Davis; 2009.
Polinsky, M. (2011). Reanalysis in adult heritage language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 331, 305–328.
Polinsky, M., & Kagan, O. (2007). Heritage languages: In the ‘wild’ and in the classroom. Language and Linguistics Compass, 11, 368–395.
Post, R. (1992). Pfälzisch. Einführung in eine Sprachlandschaft. Landau: PfälzischeVerlagsanstalt.
Putnam, M. (2012). Dative case maintenance in Moundridge Schweitzer German via restructuring. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, 791, 41–67.
Rein, K. (1977). Religiöse Minderheiten als Sprachgemeinschaftsmodelle: deutsche Sprachinseln täuferischen Ursprungs in den Vereintigen Staaten von Amerika (Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik. Beiheft 15). Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag.
Reis, M. (2013). “Weil-V2”-Sätze und (k)ein Ende? Anmerkungen zur Analyse von Antomo & Steinbach (2010). Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 321, 221–262.
Riehl, C. (2004). Sprachkontaktforschung. Eine Einführung. Tübingen: Narr.
Riehl, C. (forthcoming). Language contact, language attrition and the concept of relic variety: The case of Barossa German. Bilingualism. Language and Cognition.
Rizzi, L. (1996). Residual verb second and the wh-criterion. In A. Belletti, & L. Rizzi (Eds.), Parameters and functional heads: Essays in comparative syntax (pp. 63–90). Oxford: OUP.
Rizzi, L. (1997). The fine structure of the left periphery. In L. Haegeman (Ed.), Elements of grammar: Handbook in generative syntax (pp. 281–337). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Roberts, I., & Roussou, A. (2003). Syntactic change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP.
Rothman, J. (2009). Understanding the natural and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 131, 155–163.
Schmid, M.S. (2013). Language attrition. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 31, 96–117.
Schmid, M.S., & Fägersten, K. (2010). Disfluency markers in L1 attrition. Language Learning, 601, 753–791.
Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-prime user’s guide. Pittsburgh: Psychology Software Tools, Inc.
Schönenberger, M. (2001). Embedded V-To-C in child grammar: The acquisition of verb placement in Swiss German. Dordrecht: Springer.
Slabakova, R. (2009). Features or parameters: Which one makes SLA easier, and more interesting to study?Second Language Research, 251, 313–324.
Sorace, A. (2004). Native language attrition and developmental instability at the syntax-discourse interface: Data, interpretations and methods. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 71, 143–145.
Stolberg, D. (2014). Changes between the lines. Diachronic contact phenomena in written Pennsylvania German (Studia Linguistica Germanica). Berlin: de Gruyter.
Truckenbrodt, H. (2006). On the semantic motivation of syntactic verb movement in C in German. Theoretical Linguistics, 221, 257–306.
Truscott, J., & Sharwood Smith, M. (2004). Acquisition by processing: A modular perspective on language development. Bilingualism. Language and Cognition, 71, 1–20.
Valdés, G. (2000). Introduction. In Spanish for Native Speakers, Volume I. AATSPProfessional Development Series Handbook for teachers K-16, (pp. 1–20) New York, NY: Harcourt College.
Vikner, S. (1995). Verb movement and expletive subjects in the Germanic languages. Oxford: OUP.
Westergaard, M. (2008). Acquisition and change: On the robustness of the triggering experience for word order cues. Lingua, 1181, 1841–1863.
Wild, K. (1994). Syntax der eingeleiteten Nebensätze in den “Fuldaer” deutschenMundarten Südungarns. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
2023. Complete acquisition in the heritage language: Evidence from indefiniteness in Turkish. RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi :33 ► pp. 813 ff.
2022. South Korean immigrant workers in Germany: L2 German verb placement and sociolinguistic factors. International Journal of Bilingualism► pp. 136700692211369 ff.
Pashkova, Tatiana, Wintai Tsehaye, Shanley E. M. Allen & Rosemarie Tracy
2022. Syntactic Optionality in Heritage Language Use: Clause Type Preferences of German Heritage Speakers in a Majority English Context. Heritage Language Journal 19:1 ► pp. 1 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
Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Joseph Salmons
2021. Germanic Heritage Varieties in the Americas. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 252 ff.
Kinn, Kari
2021. Split possession and definiteness marking in American Norwegian. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 44:2 ► pp. 182 ff.
2021. Overextension in Gottscheerisch (negative) imperatives: proclisis at the edge of the first phase. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 24:2 ► pp. 185 ff.
Bousquette, Joshua & Michael T. Putnam
2020. Redefining Language Death: Evidence From Moribund Grammars. Language Learning 70:S1 ► pp. 188 ff.
CHONDROGIANNI, Vasiliki & Richard G. SCHWARTZ
2020. Case marking and word order in Greek heritage children. Journal of Child Language 47:4 ► pp. 766 ff.
Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Michael T. Putnam
2020. Heritage Germanic Languages in North America. In The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics, ► pp. 783 ff.
Lohndal, Terje
2020. Predicting outcomes in heritage grammars. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 23:1 ► pp. 31 ff.
Lohndal, Terje
2021. Syntax of Heritage Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 644 ff.
Stringer, David
2020. Not all acquisition entails attrition: The persistence of syntax in the teeth of lexical breakdown. Second Language Research 36:2 ► pp. 225 ff.
Łyskawa, Paulina & Naomi Nagy
2020. Case Marking Variation in Heritage Slavic Languages in Toronto: Not So Different. Language Learning 70:S1 ► pp. 122 ff.
2021. Grammatical Aspects of Heritage Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 579 ff.
[no author supplied]
2021. Heritage Languages around the World. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 11 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 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.