Chapter published in:
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. 99–124

Word order variation in heritage languages

Subject shift and object shift in Norwegian

| The Arctic University of Norway
| The Arctic University of Norway | Norwegian University of Science and Technology
This study investigates two word order phenomena in Norwegian heritage language spoken in the US, subject shift (SS) and object shift (OS). SS and OS occur in syntactic environments where (pronominal) subjects and objects may either precede or follow negation. This paper explores to what extent these two phenomena in Heritage Norwegian are affected by the factors frequency and structural similarity/difference. As subjects are frequently shifted, while objects are not, SS is expected to be robust and OS vulnerable. There is generally no structural overlap between English and Norwegian in these cases; thus, cross-linguistic similarity or difference should not play a role, except in one context: questions with auxiliaries or be, in which the two languages allow both orders (is he not/isn’t he ), but have opposite preferences. The results show that OS is somewhat vulnerable, but SS is also affected, in that both proficient and less proficient speakers seem to overuse the word order preferred in English. We thus speculate that all heritage speakers may be affected by cross-linguistic influence in situations with complete structural overlap.
Keywords: incomplete/differential acquisition, attrition, frequency, complexity, structural overlap, cross-linguistic influence, cross-linguistic overcorrection, syntactic movement, verb second
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1The structures
    • 2.2Structural similarity/difference – Norwegian vs. English
    • 2.3SS and OS in L1 acquisition
    • 2.4Previous research on heritage Norwegian
  • 3.Research questions and predictions
  • 4.Participants
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Subject shift in heritage Norwegian
    • 5.2Object shift in heritage Norwegian
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Summary and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.59.04and
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