Cover not available
Part of
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. 33–70

Effects of first language attrition on heritage language input and ultimate attainment

Two generations of Turkish immigrants in the UK

| Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University

This study investigates the spoken performance of UK based adult heritage speakers (HSs) and first generation immigrants (LBs) of Turkish descent regarding the distribution of evidentiality encoded in the past tense system of Turkish. Additionally, we trace the effect of input quality and quantity on the development of the heritage language (HL). The analyses suggest that the ability to differentiate between different evidential structures is unstable in HL grammars. There are no signs of qualitatively modified input available to the HSs through the LBs. This performance is instead linked to the amount of input, which has been found to be insufficient to compensate for the detrimental effects of early bilingualism on the HL. Findings are discussed within the premises of available approaches to heritage language bilingualism.

Keywords: heritage language bilingualism, input quality and quantity, Turkish immigrants in the UK
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Measuring input quantity and quality
  • 3.Effects of defective input on HL development
  • 4.Evidentiality in Turkish
  • 5.Evidentials in monolingual and bilingual contexts
  • 6.Research questions and hypotheses
  • 7.Participants
  • 8.Instruments
    • 8.1Sociolinguistic questionnaire
    • 8.2Semi-structured interview (INT)
    • 8.3Picture description task (PD)
  • 9.Transcription and coding
  • 10.Predictive variables
    • 10.1Current L1 contact
    • 10.2Input quantity
    • 10.3L1 and L2 richness (input quality)
  • 11.Results
    • 11.1Evidential accuracy
    • 11.2Sources for HL variability
    • 11.3Individual analysis
  • 12.Discussion
  • 13.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 29 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.59.02kar
References
Aarssen, J.
2001 Development of temporal relations in narratives by Turkish-Dutch bilingual children. In Narrative Development in a Multilingual Context [Studies in Bilingualism 23], L. Verhoeven & S. Strömqvist (eds), 209–232. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aikhenvald, A. Y.
2004 Evidentiality. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Aksu-Koç, A.
1988 The Acquisition of Aspect and Modality: The Case of Past Reference in Turkish. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1994 Development of linguistic forms: Turkish. In Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study, R. A. Berman & D. I. Slobin (eds), 329–385. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
2000 Some aspects of the acquisition of evidentials in Turkish. In Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and Neighbouring Languages, L. Johanson & B. Utas (eds), 15–28. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 Evidentials: An interface between linguistic and conceptual development. In Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Psychology of Language: Research in the Tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin, J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura & S. Ozcalisk (eds), 531–542. London: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Aksu-Koç, A., Ogel-Balaban, H. & Alp, I. E.
2009 Evidentials and source knowledge in Turkish. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 2009(125), 13–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aksu-Koç, A., Terziyan, T. & Erguvanlı-Taylan, E.
2014 Input offers and child uptakes: Acquiring mood and modal morphology in Turkish. Language Interaction and Acquisition 5(1): 62–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Albirini, A., Benmamoun, E. & Saadah, E.
2011 Grammatical features of Egyptian and Palestinian Arabic heritage speakers’ oral production. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 33: 273–303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arslan, S. & Bastiaanse, R.
(2014) Tense/aspect and evidentiality in narrative speech of Turkish-Dutch bilingual speakers. Paper presented at the 17th International conference on Turkish linguistics, University of Rouen, France.
Arslan, S., Bastiaanse, R. & Felser, C.
2015 Looking at the evidence in visual world: eye-movements reveal how bilingual and monolingual Turkish speakers process grammatical evidentiality. Language Sciences 1387. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arslan, S., De Kok, D. & Bastiaanse, R.
2017 Processing grammatical evidentiality and time reference in Turkish heritage and monolingual speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20(3): 457–472. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J. & Bates, D. M.
2008 Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4): 390–412. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bacanlı, E.
2006 Türkçedeki Dolaylılık İşaretleyicilerin Pragmatik Anlamları. Modern Türklül Araştırmaları Dergisi 1(3): 35–47.Google Scholar
2008 Türkiye Türkçesindeki -miş Ekinin Dolaylılık ve Dolaylılık-Dışı Kullanımlarında Zamansal Atıf. Bilig 44: 1–24.Google Scholar
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B. & Walker, S.
2015 Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1): 1–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bayram, F., Pascual y Cabo, D. & Rothman, J.
2019 Intra-generational attrition contributions to heritage speaker competence. In The Oxford Handbook of Language Attrition, M. S. Schmid & B. Köpke (eds), 446–457. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Benmamoun, E., Montrul, S. & Polinsky, M.
2013 Heritage languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistics. Theoretical Linguistics 39(3–4): 129–181. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bylund, E.
2009 Maturational constraints and first language attrition. Language Learning 59(3): 687–715. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Çoban, C.
2014 İstanbul’da bir binanın üzerine vinç devrildi. Hürriyet 30 November 2014. [URL]> (3 January 2015).
Coşkun, H.
2010 Embedding indirective (evidential) utterances in Turkish. In Linguistic Realization of Evidentiality in European Languages, G. Diewald, E. Smirnova (eds), 187–221. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Csato, E. A.
2000 Turkish MIş- and IMIş- items: Dimensions of a functional analysis. In Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and Neighbouring Languages, L. Johanson & B. Utas (eds), 29–44. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Houwer, A.
2007 Parental language input patterns and children’s bilingual use. Applied Psycholinguistics 28(3): 411–424. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 An Introduction to Bilingual Development. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DeLancey, S.
2001 The mirative and evidentiality. Journal of Pragmatics 33(3): 369–382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gaziantep’te sel felaketi
2014 Milliyet 15 October 2014. [URL]> (3 January 2015).
Göksel, A. & Kerslake, C.
2005 Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gollan, T. H., Starr, J. & Ferreira, V. S.
2014 More than use it or lose it: The number-of-speakers effect on heritage language proficiency. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 22(1): 147–155. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gries, S. T.
2015 The most under-used statistical method in corpus linguistics: multi-level (and mixed-effects) models. Corpora 10(1): 95–125. 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
Heine, B. & Kuteva, T.
2005 Language Contact and Grammatical Change. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoff, E.
2006 How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental Review 26(1): 55–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoff, E., Core, C., Place, S., Rumiche, R., Señor, M. & Parra, M.
2012 Dual language exposure and early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language 39(1), 1–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Iglowstein, I., Jenni, O. G., Molinari, L. & Largo, R. H.
2003 Sleep duration from infancy to adolescence: Reference values and generational trends. Pediatrics 111(2): 302–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, R.
1941 Kindersprache, Aphasie, and allgemeine Lautgesetze. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Jia, R. & Paradis, J.
2014 The use of referring expressions in narratives by Mandarin heritage language children and the role of language environment factors in predicting individual differences. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, First View, 1–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johanson, L.
2000 Turkic indirectives. In Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and Neighbouring Languages, L. Johanson & B. Utas (eds), 61–88. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 Indirective sentence types. Turkic Languages 10: 73–89.Google Scholar
Kaltsa, M., Tsimpli, I. M. & Rothman, J.
2015 Exploring the source of differences and similarities in L1 attrition and heritage speaker competence: Evidence from pronominal resolution. Lingua 164B: 266–288. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karakoç, B.
2007 Connectivity by means of finite elements in monolingual and bilingual Turkish discourse. In Connectivity in Grammar and Discourse [Hamburg Studies on Multilingualism 5], J. Rehbein, C. Hohenstein & L. Pietsch (eds), 199–228. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kondo-Brown, K.
2005 Differences in language skills: heritage language learner subgroups and foreign language learners. The Modern Language Journal 89(4): 563–581. 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
La Morgia, F.
2011 Bilingual First Language Acquisition: The Nature of the Weak Language and the Role of the Input. PhD dissertation, Dublin City University. [URL]> (17 October 2014).
Lardiere, D.
2008 Feature-assembly in second language acquisition. In The Role of Formal Features in Second Language Acquisition, J. Liceras, H. Zobl & H. Goodluck (eds), 106–140. New York NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Lazard, G.
2001 On the grammaticalization of evidentiality. Journal of Pragmatics 33(3): 359–367. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leseman, P. P. M., Scheel, A. F., Mayo, A. Y. & Messer, M. H.
2009 Bilingual development in early childhood and the languages used at home: Competition for scarce resources? Streitfall Zweisprachigkeit – the Bilingualism Controversy, I. Gogolin & U. Neumann (eds), 289–316. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Long, D. & Rothman, J.
2014 Some caveats to the role of input in the timing of child bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 4(3): 351–356. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lytra, V.
2012 Discursive constructions of language and identity: Parents’ competing perspectives in London Turkish complementary schools. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 33(1): 85–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, B.
2000 The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk, 3rd edn. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Meriç suyunun hapsettiği mahalle: Karaağaç
2014 Milliyet 9 December 2014. [URL]> (3 January 2015).
Mindell, J. A., Sadeh, A., Wiegand, B., How, T. H. & Goh, D. Y. T.
2010 Cross-cultural differences in infant and toddler sleep. Sleep Medicine 11(3): 274–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S.
2008 Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism: Re-examining the Age Factor [Studies in Bilingualism 39]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 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
2010 Current issues in heritage language acquisition. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 30: 3–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016a The Acquisition of Heritage Languages. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016b Heritage language development: Connecting the dots. International Journal of Bilingualism. Online first. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016c Language attrition and language transmission. Paper presented at the Third International Conference on Language Attrition (ICLA3), Colchester, UK. [URL]> (5 July 2016).
Montrul, S., Bhatt, R. M. & Bhatia, A.
2012 Erosion of case and agreement in Hindi heritage speakers. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 2(2): 141–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S., Davidson, J., Fuente, I. D. L. & Foote, R.
2014 Early language experience facilitates the processing of gender agreement in Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 17(1): 118–138. 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
Mueller-Gathercole, V. C.
2007 Miami and North Wales, so far and yet so near: A constructivist account of morphosyntactic development in bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10(3): 224–247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Grady, W., Lee, O.-S. & Lee, J.-H.
2011 Practical and theoretical issues in the study of heritage language acquisition. Heritage Language Journal 8(3): 23–40.Google Scholar
Olds, T., Blunden, S., Petkov, J. & Forchino, F.
2010 The relationships between sex, age, geography and time in bed in adolescents: A meta-analysis of data from 23 countries. Sleep Medicine Reviews 14(6): 371–378. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Onar Valk, P.
2015 Transformation in Dutch Turkish subordination? Converging Evidence of Change Regarding Finiteness and Word Order in Complex Clauses. PhD dissertation, Tilburg University, Utrecht. [URL]> (9 November 2017).
Onar Valk, P. & Backus, A.
2013 Syntactic change in an immigrant language: from non-finite to finite subordinate clauses in Turkish. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics 4(2): 7–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ozturk, O. & Papafragou, A.
2008a The acquisition of evidentiality and source monitoring. In Proceedings from the 32nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, H. Chan, H. Jacob & E. Kapia (eds), 199–230. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
2008b The acquisition of evidentiality in Turkish. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 14(1): 297–309.Google Scholar
2016 The acquisition of evidentiality and source monitoring. Language Learning and Development 12(2): 199–230. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J. & Genesee, F.
1996 Syntactic Acquisition in Bilingual Children. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 18(1): 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pascual y Cabo, D.
2013 Agreement Reflexes of Emerging Optionality in Heritage Speaker Spanish. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. [URL]> (10 May 2017).
Pascual y Cabo, D. & Rothman, J.
2012 The (il)logical problem of heritage Speaker bilingualism and incomplete acquisition. Applied Linguistics 33(4): 450–455. 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
Polinsky, M.
2011 Reanalysis in adult heritage language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 33(2): 305–328. 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
R Core Team
2016 R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. [URL]> (19 July 2016).
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
Scheele, A. F., Leseman, P. P. M. & 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. S.
2007 The role of L1 use for L1 attrition. In Language Attrition: Theoretical Perspectives [Studies in Bilingualism 33], B. Köpke, M. S. Schmid, M. Keijzer & S. Dostert (eds), 135–153. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 Language Attrition. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, M. S. & Dusseldorp, E.
2010 Quantitative analyses in a multivariate study of language attrition: the impact of extralinguistic factors. Second Language Research 26(1): 125–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schroeder, C.
2000 Between resultative, historical and inferential:non-finite -mIş forms in Turkish. In Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and Neighbouring Languages, B. Utas & L. Johanson (eds), 115–143. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Şener, N.
2011 Semantics and Pragmatics of Evidentials in Turkish. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. [URL]> (4 August 2014).
Sezer, E.
2001 Finite inflection in Turkish. In The Verb in Turkish [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 44], E. Erguvanh Taylan (ed), 1–45. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C.
2016 Simultaneous bilingualism: Early developments, incomplete later outcomes? International Journal of Bilingualism. Online First. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. I.
2001 Form-function relations: How do children find out what they are? In Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development, M. Bowerman & S. C. Levinson (eds), 406–449. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. I. & Aksu, A.
1982 Tense, aspect, and modality in the use of the Turkish evidential. In Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragmatics [Typological Studies in Language 1], P. J. Hopper (ed), 185–200. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A.
2014 Input, timing, and outcomes in a wider model of bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 4(3): 377–380. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tafolar, M.
2014 CHP, Yalova’daki ağaç kesimini incelemeye aldı. Milliyet 1 December 2014. [URL]> (1 December 2014).
Treffers-Daller, J., Daller, M., Furman, R. & Rothman, J.
2016 Ultimate attainment in the use of collocations among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany and Turkish–German returnees. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 19(3): 504–519. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Treffers-Daller, J., Ozsoy, A. S. & van Hout, R.
2007 (In)complete acquisition of Turkish among Turkish-German bilinguals in Germany and Turkey: An analysis of complex embeddings in narratives. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10(3): 248–276. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tsimpli, I. M.
2014 Early, late or very late: Timing acquisition and bilingualism: A reply to peer commentaries. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 4(3): 393–402. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ünal, E. & Papafragou, A.
2013 Linguistic and conceptual representations of inference as a knowledge source. In 37th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, S. Baiz, N. Goldman & R. Hawkes, 433–443. Boston MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
2016 Production-comprehension asymmetries and the acquisition of evidential morphology. Journal of Memory and Language 89: 179–199. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Unsworth, S.
2013 Assessing the role of current and cumulative exposure in simultaneous bilingual acquisition: The case of Dutch gender. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16(1): 86–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Bilingual Language Exposure Calculator (BILEC): Manual. Nijmegen: Radboud University. [URL]> (6 October 2016).
Unsworth, S., Argyri, F., Cornips, L., Hulk, A., Sorace, A. & Tsimpli, I. M.
2014 The role of age of onset and input in early child bilingualism in Greek and Dutch. Applied Psycholinguistics 35(4): 765–805. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Osch, B. & Sleeman, P.
2016 Spanish heritage speakers in the Netherlands: Linguistic patterns in the judgment and production of mood. International Journal of Bilingualism. Online First. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verhoeven, L.
2004 Bilingualism and narrative construction. In Relating Events in Narrative: Typological and Contextual Perspectives, S. Strömqvist & L. Verhoeven (eds), 435–454. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [URL]> (20 July 2015).
Yılmaz, G.
2013 Bilingual Language Development among the First Generation Turkish Immigrants in the Netherlands. Groningen: University of Groningen. [URL]> (26 April 2015).
Yürürken üzerine duvar yıkıldı
2014 Hürriyet 28 November 2014. [URL]> (28 November 2014).
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Arslan, Seçkin & Roelien Bastiaanse
2020. Chapter 6. First language exposure predicts attrition patterns in Turkish heritage speakers’ use of grammatical evidentiality. In Studies in Turkish as a Heritage Language [Studies in Bilingualism, 60], ► pp. 105 ff. DOI logo
Coskun Kunduz, Aylin & Silvina Montrul
2022. Sources of variability in the acquisition of Differential Object Marking by Turkish heritage language children in the United States. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 25:4 ► pp. 603 ff. DOI logo
Karayayla, Tuğba
2021. A usage-based approach to productive use of inflectional patterns and level of lemma sophistication in adult heritage speakers’ performance. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 11:6 ► pp. 753 ff. DOI logo
Schmid, Monika S. & Barbara Köpke
2017. The relevance of first language attrition to theories of bilingual development. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 7:6 ► pp. 637 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 september 2023. 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.