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What linguistic advantages do heritage language speakers have over second language learners?
by Oksana Laleko and Maria Polinsky
Research suggests that heritage speakers’ deficits vary across different levels of linguistic representations: in the absence of apparent phonological problems, heritage speakers may still exhibit morphosyntactic deficits, particularly evident for speakers at the lower end of the proficiency continuum, including overhearers (Au et al., 2008; Montrul, 2002; Polinsky, 2007). In high proficiency heritage speakers, discourse-level phenomena remain difficult despite otherwise target-like performance on phenomena mediated in the grammar (Laleko, 2010). Similarly, problems with morphosyntax and discourse-pragmatics have also been documented for adult second language (L2) learners. Does early (albeit interrupted) language exposure lead to any linguistic advantages for heritage speakers later in life? If so, what levels of language structure might reveal advantages of heritage speakers over L2 learners, and what effect does language proficiency play in highlighting these advantages?
We present and analyze data from two experiments examining two groups of heritage language speakers: low-proficiency heritage speakers of Japanese (the so-called ‘overhearers’) and advanced heritage speakers of Korean. In comparing heritage speakers in both groups with adult L2 learners and monolingual native speakers, we focus on phenomena mediated at different levels of linguistic organization: phonology, e.g. the use of vowel epenthesis in honorification; semantics, including animacy restrictions on reflexivization and the use of classifiers; morphology, e.g. the use of prefixes and suffixes in subject honorification; syntax, manifested in restrictions on scrambling and reflexivization; and discourse-pragmatics, represented by information-structural restrictions on quantifier floating.
We find that the overhearers in the Japanese group exhibit no apparent linguistic advantages over adult second language (L2) learners of Japanese, with the exception of baseline-like judgments on violations of phonological constraints. However, high-proficiency heritage speakers in the Korean group outperform L2 learners of Korean and overall exhibit similarities with baseline speakers, with the exception of the area of discourse-pragmatics, where both heritage language speakers and L2 learners diverge from the monolingual Korean baseline.