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Lost in Transmission: The role of attrition and input in heritage language development
Edited by Bernhard Brehmer and Jeanine Treffers-Daller
[Studies in Bilingualism 59] 2020
► pp. 15–32

Definiteness in Wenzhounese Chinese in the Netherlands and in China

Evidence for generational change in two locations

| University of Amsterdam
| University of Amsterdam
| University of Amsterdam
| University of Amsterdam

By comparing two generations of speakers in China and the Netherlands, we investigated whether Wenzhounese Chinese as spoken by heritage speakers in the Netherlands might be subject to change due to its contact with the Dutch language. To this end, we considered how nouns referring to already mentioned referents were encoded, hypothesizing an increase in overtly marked already mentioned referents in the speech of second generation speakers in the Netherlands. Also, shifts in the use of classifier and demonstrative constructions were investigated as carriers of definite meanings. The data showed clear generation effects, especially in the use of classifier and demonstrative constructions, but no location effects. Although the interpretation of the data is compromised by the fact that Wenzhounese as spoken China is under threat, the study suggests that innovations found in heritage speakers may not necessarily be related to the heritage scenario, but can also reflect more general contact effects or internally motivated changes.

Keywords: cross-linguistic influence, heritage speakers, definiteness, Wenzhounese Chinese, change across the lifespan, co-activation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
    • 2.1Cross-linguistic influence and change across the lifespan
    • 2.2Definiteness marking, language contact and bilingual acquisition
    • 2.3Definiteness marking in heritage languages
    • 2.4Definiteness marking on already mentioned nouns in Wenzhounese Chinese and Dutch
    • 2.5Present study
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Traces of Contact corpus
    • 3.3Coding
    • 3.4Data analysis
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 29 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.59.01aal
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