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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 5:2 (2015) ► pp.180–214

Syntactic restructuring in heritage grammars

Word order variation in Moundridge Schweitzer German

| Universität Mannheim
| Pennsylvania State University

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.

Keywords: heritage German, incomplete acquisition, reanalysis, syntactic change, word order variation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Effects of language contact and major issues in heritage syntax
    • 2.2Moundridge Schweitzer German as a heritage variety
  • 3.German word order
    • 3.1The acquisition of word order in (standard) German and dialect varieties
    • 3.2Subordinate clause word-order in German language islands
  • 4.Experiments
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Spontaneous production data
      • 4.2.1Procedure
      • 4.2.2Results
      • 4.2.3 dass-clauses
      • 4.2.4 weil-clauses
      • 4.2.5Temporal complementizers
      • 4.2.6Relative clauses
    • 4.3Experiment: Acceptability judgment task
      • 4.3.1Materials
    • 4.4.2Procedure
    • 4.4.3Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 July 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.5.2.02hop
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