Cover not available
Part of
Studies in Turkish as a Heritage Language
Edited by Fatih Bayram
[Studies in Bilingualism 60] 2020
► pp. 63–84

Chapter 4
The effects of heritage language experience on lexical and morphosyntactic outcomes

| University of Konstanz
| UiT The Arctic University of Norway
| Indiana University Bloomington

In heritage language (HL) bilingualism, recent work has focused on understanding the dynamic effects that different input types can have on heritage language development and outcomes (e.g., Bayram et al., 2017; Kupisch & Rothman, 2018; Polinsky, 2018; Putnam & Sanchez, 2013; Karayayla & Schmid, 2019). The underlying question is to what extent one’s individual experiences with the HL modulate HL development and its outcomes. Following this line of research, we provide evidence from two datasets of Turkish as a HL in Germany that attempts to identify the relative ability of various aspects of language experience (parental background, language use at home, time spent in the HL country, age of exposure to the societal majority language, and quality of HL use) to predict lexical and morphosyntactic performance in Turkish. The results for the first HS group (adolescents) indicate that ‘parental language background’ was the strongest predictor of both lexical diversity and morphosyntactic complexity; for the second HS group (adults), “Turkish use in the home” and “Current Turkish use” were the strongest predictors. We interpret these results as evidence for the variable role played by different types of input in shaping HL outcomes, highlighting the need for more systematic approaches to measuring (and predicting) the effects of input across different areas of language.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Empirical studies
    • 3.1Complexity measures
      • 3.1.1Lexical diversity
      • 3.1.2Grammatical complexity
    • 3.2Study 1: Adults HSs of Turkish in Hamburg
      • 3.2.1Results for study 1
    • 3.3Study 2: Adolescent HSs of Turkish in Munich
      • 3.3.1Results for Study 2
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.60.04llo
References
Aksu-Koç, A.
(1994) Development of linguistic forms: Turkish. In R. A. Berman & D. Slobin (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study (pp. 329–385). New York, NY: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Aksu-Koç, A., & Slobin, D.
(1985) The acquisition of Turkish. In D. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, 2 (pp. 839–876). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Alba, R., Logan, J., Lutz, A., & Stults, B.
(2002) Only English by the third generation? Loss and preservation of the mother tongue among the grandchildren of contemporary immigrants. Demography, 39(3) 467–484. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, J. A. E., Mak, L., Keyvani Chahi, A., & Bialystok, E.
(2018) The language and social background questionnaire. Assessing degree of bilingualism in a diverse population. Behavior Research Methods, 50(1), 250–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baayen, H.
(2008) Analyzing linguistic data. A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bayram, F.
(2013) Acquisition of Turkish by heritage speakers: A processability approach (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Newcastle University.Google Scholar
Bayram, F., Rothman, J., Iverson, M., Kupisch, T., Miller, D., Puig-Mayenco, E., & Westergaard, M.
(2017) Differences in use without deficiencies in competence: Passives in the Turkish and German of Turkish heritage speakers in Germany. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. DOI logoGoogle 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.Google Scholar
Berwick, R. C., Pietroski, P., Yankama, B., & Chomsky, N.
(2011) Poverty of the stimulus revisited. Cognitive Science, 35(7), 1207–1242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bianchi, G.
(2013) Gender in Italian–German bilinguals: A comparison with German L2 learners of Italian. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16(3), 538–557. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brehmer, B., & Kurbangulova, T.
(2017) Lost in transmission? Family language input and its role for the development of Russian as a heritage language in Germany. In L. Isurin & C. M. Riehl (Eds.), Integration, identity and language maintenance in young immigrants. Russian Germans or German Russians (pp. 225–268). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, R.
(1973) A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bylund, E., & Díaz, M.
(2012) The effects of heritage language instruction on first language proficiency: A psycholinguistic perspective. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 15(5), 593–609. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curtiss, S., Fromkin, V., Krashen, S., Rigler, D. & Rigler, M.
(1974) The linguistic development of genie. Language, 50(3), 528–554. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dąbrowska, E.
(1997) The LAD goes to school: A cautionary tale for nativists. Linguistics 35(4), 225–271. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012) Different speakers, different grammars: Individual differences in native language attainment. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 2(3), 219–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Daller, M., van Hout, R. & Treffers-Daller, J.
(2003) Lexical Richness in the Spontaneous Speech of Bilinguals. Applied Linguistics, 24(3), 197–222. DOI logo.Google Scholar
De Houwer, A.
(1995) Bilingual language acquisition. In P. Fletcher & B. MacWhinney, The handbook of child language (pp. 219–250). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
(2007) Parental language input patterns and children’s bilingual use. Applied Psycholinguistics 28(3), 411–424. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018) The role of language input environments for language outcomes and language acquisition in young bilingual children. In D. Miller, F. Bayram, J. Rothman, & L. Serratrice (Eds.), Bilingual cognition and language: The state of the science across its subfields (pp. 127–153). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ege, P., Acarlar, F., & Güleryüz, F.
(1998) Türkçe kazanımında yaş ve ortalama sözce uzunluğunun ilişkisi. Türk Psikoloji Dergisi, 13(41), 19–33.Google Scholar
Friedmann, N., & Szterman, R.
(2006) Syntactic movement in orally trained children with hearing impairment. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 11(1), 56–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011) The comprehension and production of wh-questions in deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 16, 212–235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Friedmann, N., & Rusou, D.
(2015) Critical period for first language: The crucial role of language input during the first year of life. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 35, 27–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Genesee, F., Nicoladis, E., & Paradis, J.
(1995) Language differentiation in early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language 22, 611–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gharibi, K., & Boers, F.
(2017) Influential factors in incomplete acquisition and attrition of young heritage speakers’ vocabulary knowledge. Language Acquisition, 24(1), 52–69. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Göksel, A., & Kerslake, C.
(2004) Turkish: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karayayla, T.
(2018) Turkish as an immigrant and heritage language in the UK: Effects of exposure and age at onset of bilingualism on grammatical and lexical development of the first language. Colchester: University of Essex.Google Scholar
Karayayla, T., & Schmid, M.
(2019) First language attrition as a function of age at onset of bilingualism: First language attainment of Turkish–English bilinguals in the United Kingdom. Language Learning 69(1), 106–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ketrez, F. N.
(1999) Early verbs and the acquisition of Turkish argument structure (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Boğaziçi University, Turkey.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, J.
(1997) Turkish. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kupisch, T.
(2012) Generic subjects in the Italian of early German-Italian bilinguals and German learners of Italian as a second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 15(4), 736–756. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Adjective placement in simultaneous bilinguals (German-Italian) and the concept of cross-linguistic overcorrection. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(1), 222–233. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kupisch, T., Barton, D., Lein, T., Schröder, D. J., Stangen, I., & Stöhr, A.
(2014a) Acquisition outcomes across domain in adult heritage speakers of French. Journal of French Language Studies, 24(3), 347–376. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kupisch, T., Barton, D., Klaschik, E., Lein, T., Stangen, I., & van de Weijer, J.
(2014b) Foreign accent in adult simultaneous bilinguals. The Heritage Language Journal, 11(2), 123–150. 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
Kupisch, T., Stangen, I., & Zielke, M.
(2012) Türkisch-Englisch-Deutsch bei Herkunftssprechern (TEDH). Archived in the Hamburger Zentrum für Sprachkorpora. Version 1.0.0. [URL].Google Scholar
Lieven, E.
(2010) Input and first language acquisition: Evaluating the role of frequency. Lingua, 120, 2546–2556. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lloyd-Smith, A., Einfeldt, M., & Kupisch, T.
(2019) Italian-German bilinguals: The effects of heritage language use on accent in the early-acquired languages. International Journal of Bilingualism. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Luk, G., & Bialystok, E.
(2013) Bilingualism is not a categorical variable: Interaction between language proficiency and usage. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25, 605–621. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H. K., & Kaushanskaya, M.
(2007) The language experience and proficiency questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research 50(4), 940–967. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mayer, M.
(1969) Frog, where are you? New York, NY: Dial Press.Google Scholar
Meisel, J.
(1986) Word order and case marking in early child language. Evidence from simultaneous acquisition of two first languages: French and German. Linguistics, 24(1), 123–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1989) Early differentiation of languages in bilingual children. In K. Hyltenstam & L. K. Obler (Eds). Bilingualism across the lifespan. Aspects of acquisition, maturity, and loss (pp. 13–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2004) The bilingual child. In T. K. Bhatia & W. C. Ritchie (Eds.), The handbook of bilingualism (pp. 91–113). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
(2011) First and second language acquisition: Parallels and differences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mimeau, C., Plourde, V., Ouellet, A. A., & Dionne, G.
(2015) Comparison of measures of morphosyntactic complexity in French-speaking school-aged children. First Language, 35(2), 163–181. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. A.
(2008) Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism: Re-examining the age factor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016) The acquisition of heritage languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nesteruk, O.
(2010) Heritage language maintenance and loss among the children of Eastern European immigrants in the USA. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 31(3), 271–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E., & Genesee, F.
(1997) Language development in preschool bilingual children. Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, 21, 258–270.Google Scholar
Nippold, M.
(1993) Developmental markers in adolescent language: Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 24(1), 21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Özsoy, A. S.
(1999) Türkce (2nd ed.). Istanbul: Bogazici University Press.Google Scholar
Özsoy, S., & Erguvanlı-Taylan, E.
(1989) Belirtilik ve kavrami ve yabanci dil olarak Türkce. In F. Özden Ekmekci & V. Ülkü (Eds.), Dil Bilimi Uygulamaları (pp. 187–203). Adana: Cukurova University.Google Scholar
Paradis, J., & Genesee, F.
(1996) Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children: Autonomous or independent? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pascual y Cabo, D.
(2013) Knowledge of gustar-like verbs in Spanish heritage speakers. In J. C. Amaro, T. Judy, & D. Pascual y Cabo (Eds.), Proceedings of the 12th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA), 162–169. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
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
Pearson, B. Z., Fernandez, S. C., Lewedeg, V., & Oller, D. K.
(1997) The relation of input factors to lexical learning by bilingual infants. Applied Psycholinguistics, 18(1), 41–58. 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: A case for attrition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33(2), 305–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018) Heritage languages and their speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 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
Rothman, J.
(2008) Why not all counter-evidence to the critical period hypothesis is equal or problematic: Implications for SLA. Language and Linguistics Compass, 2(6), 1063–1088. 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
Rothman, J., & Chomsky, N.
(2018) Towards eliminating arbitrary stipulations related to parameters: Linguistic innateness and the variational model. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 8(6), 764–769. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rothman, J., & Slabakova, R.
(2018) The generative approach to SLA and its place in modern second language studies. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 40(2), 417–442. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, N.
(2010) Researching vocabulary: A vocabulary research manual. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, M. S., & Karayayla, T.
(2019) The roles of age, attitude, and use in first language development and attrition of Turkish–English bilinguals. Language Learning. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scott, C.
(2004) Syntactic ability in children and adolescents with language and learning disabilities. In R. A. Berman (Ed.), Language development across childhood and adolescence (pp. 111–133). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scott, C. M., & Stokes, S. L.
(1995) Measures of syntax in school-age children and adolescents. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 26(4), 309–319. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Serratrice, L.
(2013) Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual development. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 3(1), 3–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sezer, T., & Sever Sezer, B.
(2013) TS Corpus: Herkes için Türkce Derlem. In Proceedings of the 27th National Linguistics Conference (pp. 217–225). [URL]> (6 June 2020).
Sorace, A.
(2004) Native language attrition and developmental instability at the syntax-discourse interface: Data, interpretations and methods. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7(2), 143–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tao, L., Cai, Q., & Gollan, T. H.
(2019) Effects of cumulative language exposure on heritage and majority language skills. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Treffers-Daller, J., & Korybski, T.
(2015) Using lexical diversity measures to operationalize language dominance in bilinguals. In J. Treffers-Daller & C. Silva-Corvalán (Eds), Language dominance in bilinguals: Issues of measurement and operationalization (pp. 106–123). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google 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
(2019) Quantifying language experience in HL development. In M. Schmid & B. Köpke (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language attrition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Valdés, G.
(2000) The teaching of heritage languages: An introduction for Slavic-teaching professionals. In O. Kagan & B. Rifkin (Eds.), The learning and teaching of Slavic languages and cultures (pp. 375–3dd40). Bloomington, IN: Slavica.Google 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, 22(5), 513–529. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Suchtelen, P. I.
(2014) Maintained and acquired heritage Spanish in the Netherlands: The case of dative constructions. Applied Linguistics Review, 5(2), 375–400. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Xanthos, A., Laaha, S., Gillis, S., Stephany, U., Aksu-Koç, A., Christofidou, A., & Korecky-Kröll, K.
(2011) On the role of morphological richness in the early development of noun and verb inflection. First Language, 31(4), 461–479. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yang, C.
(2016) The price of linguistic productivity. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yang, C., Crain, S., Berwick, R. C., Chomsky, N., & Bolhuis, J. J.
(2017) The growth of language: Universal Grammar, experience, and principles of computation. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 81, 103–119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yip, V., & Matthews, S.
(2007) The bilingual child. Early development and language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zyzik, E.
(2009) The role of input revisited: Nativist versus usage-based models. L2 Journal, 1(1), 42–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Di Pisa, Grazia, Maki Kubota, Jason Rothman & Theodoros Marinis
2022. Effects of markedness in gender processing in Italian as a heritage language: A speed accuracy tradeoff. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
López Otero, Julio César, Esther Hur & Michele Goldin
2023. Syntactic optionality in heritage Spanish: How patterns of exposure and use affect clitic climbing. International Journal of Bilingualism ► pp. 136700692311706 ff. DOI logo
Rodina, Yulia, Alexandra Bogoyavlenskaya, Natalia Mitrofanova & Marit Westergaard
2023. Russian heritage language development in narrative contexts: Evidence from pre- and primary-school children in Norway, Germany, and the UK. Frontiers in Psychology 14 DOI logo
Rothman, Jason, Fatih Bayram, Vincent DeLuca, Grazia Di Pisa, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Khadij Gharibi, Jiuzhou Hao, Nadine Kolb, Maki Kubota, Tanja Kupisch, Tim Laméris, Alicia Luque, Brechje van Osch, Sergio Miguel Pereira Soares, Yanina Prystauka, Deniz Tat, Aleksandra Tomić, Toms Voits & Stefanie Wulff
2022. Monolingual comparative normativity in bilingualism research is out of “control”: Arguments and alternatives. Applied Psycholinguistics ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 may 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.