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Aims and objectives: This study examines how social information is utilized in processes of bilingual speech perception. Specifically, we investigate whether racialized expectations of native language background trigger language-specific processing strategies in early or simultaneous Spanish–English bilinguals. Methodology: We coupled a visually-primed phoneme categorization task with a social evaluation questionnaire to test whether Spanish–English bilingual adults living in the United States (n = 30) drew on racialized ideologies about what speakers of certain languages look like during speech perception. We predicted that, if participants drew on these ideologies during the phoneme categorization task, they would cue an expectation of what language was being spoken and, consequently, a shift in the identification boundary. Data and analysis: Mixed logistic regression was used to investigate the effects of photograph (the visual prime) and voice on how participants categorized the continua while paired, two-tailed t -tests were used to compare how participants socially evaluated the two speakers. Findings: Raciolinguistic evaluations appeared to influence bilingual speech perception, significantly affecting how the continua were categorized, but they did not work the same way for every voice. Originality: Prior work has posited that interactional context influences bilingual language control (e.g., Grosjean, 2001); the ideological nature of this context has, however, been understudied. This paper offers insight into how ideologies related to race may shape language perception and use in bilinguals. Implications: The findings provide evidence for the role of social information in bilingual speech perception, suggest that multiple cues (acoustic and social) integrate to determine the interactional context, and indicate that the influence of raciolinguistic ideologies is neither straightforward nor homogeneous but rather contingent on complex aspects of the perceived speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: No recent studies have investigated language effects on counterfactual reasoning in bilinguals. This paper investigates the impact of bilinguals' native language and language of testing on counterfactual reasoning, addressing two questions: (1) Do older Chinese reasoners, educated before English became a school subject, draw different inferences, or use different cues to draw inferences, compared with English peers and younger ChineseL1 reasoners? Does knowing English affect their reasoning? and (2) Do Chinese reasoners draw different inferences, or use different cues, when tested in Chinese and when tested in English? Design: Experiment 1: The explanatory variables are first language (between-group: Chinese, English), age cohort (between-group: young, older), inferential chain length (within-group: short, long). Experiment 2: The explanatory variables are language of testing (between-group: Chinese, English) and inferential chain length (within-group: short, long). The outcome is the consequent probability rating. Open questions investigate cues used to draw inferences. Analysis: The sample comprised 188 participants. Generalised linear mixed-effects models were used for quantitative data, thematic analysis for qualitative data. Findings: Older Chinese speakers rate long-chain consequents as more probable than English peers. Chinese and English reasoners use different cues to make inferences, as do Chinese reasoners tested in Chinese L1 or English L2. Originality: This is the first paper to compare Chinese reasoners educated before and after English entered the school curriculum, and to investigate inferential chain length effects on Chinese counterfactual reasoning. It introduces a novel task (consequent evaluation), and adopts a mixed-method approach to investigate both the product and process of reasoning, using quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Significance: The study provides new evidence and interpretation for the old debate about language effects on counterfactual reasoning in cognitive psychology; shows that conditional reasoning is a fruitful topic for linguistic relativity and bilingual cognition research; and testifies that qualitative data allows detection of differences in thinking processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Distinguishing between language mixing and language fusion is a non-trivial task, particularly in situations of long-standing bilingualism. The main goal of this paper is thus to propose and test a methodology for discerning language fusion from conventionalized mixing. In addition, we examine the hypothesis that the fusion of unbound elements evolves from alternational mixing. Design: The paper addresses the goals through a distributional analysis of a vernacular variety of Kildin Saami, a seriously endangered East Saamic (Uralic) language spoken on the Kola Peninsula in Northwest Russia, as a partially fused lect due to contact with Russian. Data and Analysis: A one-hour recording of an informal group conversation with three native speakers, comprising some 10,000 word tokens, was transcribed and annotated for Russian-origin items. For comparison, other available speech samples, documenting the earlier stages of the language development, as well as the few existing grammatical descriptions and dictionaries were referred to. Findings: The paper develops and showcases three diagnostic criteria indicative of language fusion: (a) regularization of the donor language items' usage patterns in the mixed variety; (b) functional reduction, or functional extension, of the donor language element, and/or of its inherited native equivalent; (c) the introduction of new constructions involving the donor language grammatical elements by way of loan translation. Finally, we report multiple parallels existing between the distribution of Russian-origin items in vernacular Kildin Saami and alternational mixing. Originality: This paper is the first to propose and systematically test diagnostic criteria indicative of language fusion in a situation of long-term bilingualism. Significance: The proposed criteria may reliably be employed as indicators of fusion in future studies of contact varieties with little, or undocumented, linguistic histories. Furthermore, in contrast to the mainstream assumption, this study also provides evidence for the claim that alternational mixing can be a starting point for the emergence of a fused lect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The present paper aims to situate Macaronic Latin, a peculiar type of linguistic mixture that was used in literary works in early modern Europe, within the context of phenomena such as code-switching and borrowing, as well as mixed and constructed languages. The main objective is to see whether and how it can be compared to various instances of linguistic structures originating from more than one source language. Design/Methodology/Approach: After a description of its historical background and sociolinguistic features, main linguistic traits of Macaronic Latin are sketched and, finally, compared to other language contact phenomena, with particular reference to the fusion hypothesis. Data and Analysis: The main data for the analysis are sixty samples from macaronic works belonging to eleven language pairs. The analysis shows that mixed words in Macaronic Latin have properties of both borrowings and loans, being very similar to nonce formations. When compared to mixed and constructed languages, Macaronic Latin shows peculiarities that set it apart from either group. Findings/Conclusions: Although individual structural aspects of Macaronic Latin align its individual aspects with various outcomes of linguistic contact, the sociolinguistic pattern of its creation and later development make it a rather untypical case of linguistic mixing. Originality: Latin served as the main language of learned communication in medieval and early modern Europe; yet, this paper is the first study devoted to putting it in the context of mixed language debate. Significance/Implications: The study suggests that the preservation of the widespread use of a language with no native speakers requires sociolinguistic forces so strong so as to override many trends of what has been established as regular linguistic development. This implies that in investigating such cases we might need a modified research methodology and an extended terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: This paper investigates how children in multilingual and transnational families mobilise their multiple and developing linguistic repertoires creatively to assert their agency in language use and socialisation, and why these acts of agency are conducive to successful maintenance of the so-called "home", "community" or "minority" language. Methodology: Close, qualitative analysis of mealtime multiparty conversations is carried out to examine children's agency in language use and socialisation. Data and analysis: Twelve hours of mealtime conversations within one Arabic and English-speaking multilingual family in the UK were recorded over a period of eight months. The excerpts selected for analysis in this paper illustrate how agency is enacted in interaction. Findings: The data analyses of the family's language practices reveal both their flexible language policy and the importance the family attaches to Arabic. The children in this family are fully aware of the language preferences of their parents and are capable of manipulating that knowledge and asserting their agency through their linguistic choices to achieve their interactional goals. Originality: This paper explores how Arabic is maintained as a minority language by second and third generations of Arabic-speaking immigrants in the UK through close analysis of conversations. Significance: The findings contribute to the current discussions of family language policy and maintenance by demonstrating children's agentive and creative roles in language use and socialisation. Three factors are identified as the reason for the successful language learning, use and maintenance of Arabic: firstly, a family language policy that has a positive multilingual outlook; secondly, family relationship dynamics that connect and bond family members; and thirdly, the children's highly developed ability to understand their parents' language preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Many early Spanish-English bilingual speakers in the USA learn Spanish as their first language at home and English in school. This paper seeks to elucidate whether these speakers develop a separate phonological system for English and, if so, the role of primary and secondary cues in the development of the second language (L2) system. Design/methodology/approach: The phonetic realization of the voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/ is analyzed among three groups: early Spanish-English bilinguals; L1 English speakers who are late learners of Spanish; and L1 Spanish speakers who are late learners of English. The participants (N = 15) engaged in a reading task and a conversation task in each language during a single recording session. Data and analysis: 1578 tokens of /p/, /t/, /k/ were extracted and analyzed using acoustic software. Voice onset time in milliseconds and center of gravity in Hertz were analyzed, and monofactorial and multifactorial analyses were performed to determine the role of linguistic background. Findings/conclusions: Evidence is found of two phonological systems among early bilingual speakers, with varying degrees of assimilation to the phonological systems of the native speakers of each language. Originality: We argue that early bilinguals construct their L2 system of /p/, /t/, /k/ in English based on the primary cue of voice onset time rather than the secondary cue of center of gravity, as they are accustomed to noticing differences in voice onset time in Spanish and because the center of gravity of /p/, /t/, /k/ in English is more variable than voice onset time, and therefore represents a more variable and less predictable cue for early bilinguals as they construct their L2 system. Significance/implications: This paper contributes to the literature on the construction of phonological systems and to research detailing the speech of early Spanish-English bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate language contact between Haitian Creole and Dominican Spanish. We focus particularly on the acquisition of clitic pronouns (dative and accusative) in relation to their morpho-syntactic properties in the interlanguage of L2 Spanish speakers (Haitians and their bilingual descendants, whose first language is Creole) and we compare them with bilingual speakers of Creole and Spanish (Dominican-Haitians and Arayanos) and monolingual Spanish speakers (Dominicans), residents near the Dominican-Haitian border. Although the acquisition of clitic pronouns of L2 Spanish has been the object of multiple studies (Montrul, 2004; Sánchez, 2004), no study to date has referred to the case of native speakers of a Creole language, in this case of Haitian Creole. In Spanish, clitics can be heads of their own functional categories (AgrOP and AgrIOP) (Franco, 1993; Uriagereka, 1995), while acting as affixes of morphological agreement. For the purposes of this paper, we interviewed (semi) spontaneously, 11 informants, belonging to three groups of border speakers, whom we classified according to the variables of ethnicity and degree of bilingualism: 5 Haitians (Hs), 3 Arayanos (AYs) and 3 Dominicans (Ds); these latter were monolingual non-standard Spanish speakers that formed the control group. According to the results, there are significant differences or cases of divergence between the properties of the participants' grammar that could be due to the properties of their L1. The differences occur fundamentally in speakers of interlanguage, in relation to morphology (i.e. agreement — gender and number), rather than syntax. In the light of these results, it could be argued that Creole speakers with Spanish as an interlanguage do not seem to converge with monolingual speakers in their morpho-syntactic terms of the object pronouns (i.e. clitics), or they simply display an `'incomplete'' grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This paper investigates whether sustained immersion in a dominant second-language (L2) environment alters morphological processing strategies compared to those of L1-immersed speakers. Furthermore, we assess the methodological usefulness of a language-mode task in light of the validity of conducting native processing research on L2-immersed speakers. Design/methodology/approach: We use the design and stimuli of a previous long-lag visual lexical decision task conducted with native German speakers in Germany and use this group as a control. Thirty-two native German speakers resident in the UK (>2 years; minimal day-to-day German use) participated in two experimental sessions (one containing a 20-minute conversation task in German). Data and analysis: The data shows clear differences between facilitation patterns of L1 and L2-immersed participants. L2-immersed speakers display decreased sensitivity to subtle morphological differences as well as facilitation in a form condition similar to effects seen in L2 processing. Lexical decisions of pseudowords based on plausibility, however, remain similar. While the pre-experiment language-mode task resulted in overall faster responses, there was no effect on processing patterns. Findings/conclusions: L1 morphological processing is affected by continued exposure to a dominant second language with sensitivity to the internal structure or differences of morphologically complex items decreasing. The attrition group shows certain similarities to L2 morphological processing. Our findings also call for caution in the recruitment of L2-immersed experiment participants. Originality: Research on morphological processing in language attrition is scarce and no previous work has examined complex derived words. The addition of a principled manipulation of the pre-experiment task is also uncommon. Significance/implications: The possible similarity of L1-attrition and L2-learner processing challenges the concept of 'native' processing and the notion of 'nativeness' as a stable property. Further comparison of these populations may lead to a more thorough understanding of the adaptability of our processing system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The purpose of the study is to figure out what factors condition the phenomenon of preposition drop (P-drop) in locative, directional and temporal phrases. Specifically, we investigate what kind of phrases allow P-drop in Russian spoken in Highland Daghestan and aim at understanding the rationale for this phenomenon. Design/Methodology/Approach: We conduct a quantitative analysis of data extracted from the Corpus of Russian spoken in Daghestan, which includes interviews with 53 native speakers of 15 Daghestanian and Turkic languages, amounting to 228 thousand tokens. Data and Analysis: Data from 47 (29 male; 18 female) consultants speaking Russian as a second language (L2) who produced a sufficient number of prepositional phrases (PPs) were included in the analysis. 50 PPs were collected from each speaker, resulting in a data set of 2350 PPs. Each PP was annotated for P-drop and several sociolinguistic and linguistic parameters. We fitted a logistic mixed-effects regression model to determine which parameters are significant predictors of P-drop. Findings/Conclusions: We show that the probability of P-drop depends on preposition type, phonetic context and the speaker's fluency in Russian. We propose that the prominence of P-drop in the speech of Daghestanian highlanders results from an interplay of two factors: a typological tendency for certain spatial and temporal locations to be formally unmarked, and incomplete acquisition of the Russian prepositional system. Originality: This is the first detailed quantitative study of P-drop based on an inferential statistical analysis of data from a large number of L2 Russian speakers from Daghestan. Significance/Implications: The results show that the apparently contact-induced phenomena such as P-drop may be explained both by typological tendencies and incomplete acquisition of L2. This paper is thus important both for the typological study of this phenomenon and for L2 acquisition research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of an experimental study on the resolution of intra-sentential anaphora in Italian by two groups of 13–14-year-olds: monolingual native Italian speakers and highly proficient child second language (L2) learners of Italian whose native language is Croatian. In a picture selection task the participants were asked to identify antecedents of null and overt subject pronouns in ambiguous forward and backward anaphora sentences. Our assumption in the paper was that Italian and Croatian do not differ with respect to the antecedent biases of null and overt subject pronouns in the contexts under investigation. As predicted, the L2 learners expressed pragmatically appropriate antecedent preferences in all conditions. They even selected the pragmatically inappropriate subject antecedent for the overt pronoun less often than the native speakers, especially in backward anaphora. The L2 learners’ antecedent preferences closely mirror those established in previous research for their age-matched monolingual Croatian peers. We take this as evidence for our position that cross-linguistic influence is operative at the discourse–syntax influence in child L2 acquisition and that it might be the main cause of non-target-like behaviour of some groups of highly proficient bilinguals concerning certain properties pertaining to this interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: How does learning a second language influence native language processing? The present study examined whether knowledge of Spanish – a language that marks grammatical gender – influences lexical processing in English – a language that does not mark grammatical gender. Design/Methodology/Approach: Three groups of adult English native speakers were tested: monolinguals; emergent bilinguals with high exposure to Spanish; and emergent bilinguals with low exposure to Spanish. Participants engaged in an associative learning task in English where they learned to associate names of inanimate objects with proper names. For half of the pairs, the grammatical gender of the noun’s Spanish translation matched the gender of the proper name (e.g. corn-Patrick). For half of the pairs, the grammatical gender of the noun’s Spanish translation mismatched the gender of the proper noun (e.g. beach-William). Data and Analysis: Fifty-six participants were tested − 21 monolingual speakers of English, 18 emergent bilinguals with high exposure to Spanish, and 17 emergent bilinguals with low exposure to Spanish. Data were analyzed using mixed analyses of variance. Findings/Conclusions: High-Spanish-exposure bilinguals (but not monolinguals or low-Spanish-exposure bilinguals) were less accurate at retrieving proper names for gender-incongruent than for gender-congruent pairs. Originality: The methodological approach used in this paper is especially well-suited to testing activation of grammatical gender in languages like English, which do not grammaticize gender. Significance/Implications: The findings of this study indicate that second-language morphosyntactic information is activated during native-language lexical processing, even when the second language is acquired later in life. This is particularly significant, considering well-known limitations in explicit knowledge of grammatical gender distinctions in the late-acquired second language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: This paper examines bilinguals' retention of a television (TV) advertisement in their second language (L2) to test whether L2 competence, liking for the advertisement, and involvement with the advertised product cause a change in L2 retention. Methodology: An experiment exposed 304 Chinese–English bilinguals to audio-visual advertisements that were technically (e.g. similar executions) and linguistically alike (e.g. discourse with similar ratios of 'content words-to-grammatical lexicon') in their native language (L1; control) and L2 (treatment). Data and analysis: Content analysis of four unstructured items operationalised L2 advertisment memory by ranking retention scores from 0 to 4. We performed t -tests (with Cohen's d) and F -tests to compare retention across the levels of independent variables. Findings: L2 proficiency did not facilitate meaning-deduction from within context, but the length of bilinguals' residence did, indicating that subjects linguistically adapt to their L2 environment in time. Content features (e.g. message clarity) increased liking for the L2 advertisment while execution (e.g. music) increased L2 advertisement memory. Involvement with the advertised product did not affect L2 retention. Originality: Print stimuli use has limited the utility of earlier findings from research on advertising to bilinguals for exercising one language skill (i.e. L2 reading). The use of audio-visual stimuli to exercise concurrently L2 listening and reading skills have been rare despite the increased consumption of TV advertisements through online video-sharing platforms. Implications: When designing audio-visual inputs for bilinguals, 'what' (i.e. content) hardly matters in relative to 'how' (i.e. execution) unless bilinguals orient themselves to the natural contexts of their L2 settings. Firms in bilingual markets can optimise their communicative (e.g. belief reinforcement or creating awareness) and behavioural objectives (e.g. sales) by provoking the peripheral processing of their straightforward messages using appeals (e.g. music, emotional, and animated visuals) for longer retention among their non-native-speaker targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, it will be argued that the Akan spoken within the Ghanaian immigrant community in Bergamo is currently going through a transitional process that leads from code-switching to language mixing, as illustrated in Auer ((1999) From codeswitching via language mixing to fused lects: Towards a dynamic typology of bilingual speech. International Journal of Bilingualism, 3, 309–332). Analysis of excerpts drawn from a sample of face-to-face interactions, as well as formal interviews (comprising 27 hours of recordings in total), involving a selected group of Ghanaian immigrants in northern Italy will provide a useful starting point for discussing a distinguishing feature of the variety of Akan spoken by the above-mentioned immigrants – that is, the systematic insertion of English ‘chunks’ (e.g. single words or phrases) which do not appear to fulfil any pragmatic or discursive function. It will be argued that this ‘mixed’ variety of Akan is an expressive device of considerable importance within the community’s repertoire, which is regularly employed in informal spontaneous interactions not only by those community members who speak Akan as a lingua franca, but by Akan native speakers as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: Receptive multilingualism (RM), a mode of multilingual communication in which speakers of different languages use their own native language to communicate and still understand each other, is considered to be a relatively under-investigated area in multilingual research. This paper examines features of Turkish–Azerbaijani RM and, focusing on a hearer-based analysis, looks into strategies applied for achieving understanding in the receptive multilingual communication (RMC). Design/Methodology/Approach: The study is carried out within the conceptual framework of RM. Data and Analysis: Authentic data obtained from oral communication between an Azerbaijani and a Turkish native speaker are analyzed and a post-interview was conducted with the participants in order to investigate to what extent they were able to understand each other in the RMC and what strategies they applied to achieve understanding. Findings/Conclusions: The study reveals that the Turkish and Azerbaijani participants could communicate with each other in RM mode without much difficulty thanks to the typological proximity of their languages. In a few instances in which lack of understanding occurred, the participants were found to apply strategies such as asking questions for clarification, conveying confirmation, repeating, rephrasing, resorting to their lexical and world knowledge as well as utilizing the let-it-pass strategy. Originality and Significance/Implications: The significance of the study is twofold: first, it demonstrates that RMC between Turkish and Azerbaijani can be utilized as an alternative to lingua franca communication; and second, the study expands the taxonomy of hearer-based strategies in RMC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the language of child bilinguals and adult unbalanced bilinguals (heritage speakers) against that of bilingual native speakers of their home language (baseline). We identify four major vectors of correspondence across the language spoken by these three groups. First, all varieties may represent a given linguistic property in a similar way (child bilinguals = adult heritage speakers = bilingual native speakers of their home language). This occurs when either (i) the property in question is highly robust and is acquired by learners without difficulty or (ii) the property is already in decline in the baseline. We illustrate scenario (i) with data from Russian count forms, which are morphologically quite complex. The preservation of these forms in child bilinguals and adult heritage speakers suggests that simplicity of encoding is not the only factor determining robustness of retention. Second, child and heritage speakers may share a linguistic structure that differs from the one found in the baseline (bilingual native speakers of their home language ≠ child bilinguals = adult heritage speakers). This scenario occurs when incipient structural changes in the baseline become amplified in the language of next-generation bilinguals, or when a given structure is rare, confined to a specific register, and/or reinforced through literacy. Third, a structure may be acquired by bilingual children faithfully, but undergo reanalysis/attrition in the adult heritage language (bilingual native speakers of their home language = child bilinguals ≠ adult heritage speakers). Russian relativization illustrates this scenario; child bilinguals show native-like performance on relative clauses but adult heritage speakers show an exaggerated subject preference in the interpretation of gaps. Finally, a structure that is not fully learned by child speakers may be reanalyzed by adult heritage speakers following general principles, thus bringing the adult heritage representation closer to that of the baseline (bilingual native speakers of their home language = adult heritage speakers ≠ child bilinguals). Heritage speakers’ production and comprehension of psychological predicates in Spanish illustrates this possibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that the prosodic well-formedness conditions of a learner's native language phonology interfere with accurate perception of non-native segmental sequences. This interference induces a perceptual illusion effect due to which learners perceive an illusory vowel that, in fact, does not exist in the acoustic signal. In this way, a learner's percept of the L2 input, or L2 intake, actually includes more segmental material than is physically present. As a product of the native language phonology, these perceptual illusions are shown to occur only in environments where L2 segmental sequences cannot be licensed by L1 prosodic constituents. In addition, the quality of the perceived illusory vowel is shown to coincide with the vowel category inserted by a learner's native language phonology in environments conditioning epenthesis. Finally, by varying the duration of interstimulus intervals in an AX discrimination task, we reveal latent capacities to overcome the perceptual illusion effect when finer grained acoustic representations are made accessible. We conclude that perception of illusory segments is a direct result of a learner's native language phonology generating a phonological representation that abides by the prosodic constraints of the learner's native language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of the social meaning of a contemporary urban vernacular called Citétaal (Citélanguage).While most studies on the perception of urban vernaculars have applied qualitative discursive methods, we investigate the perception of and attitudes towards Citétaal by combining a qualitative and quantitative approach. In a discursive analysis of online surveys and social media networks, we analyze how this variety is perceived and represented on a collective level, and in comparison to other varieties, such as standard Dutch and regional Limburg Flemish. These insights are used to organize a speaker evaluation experiment (n=95) in which we verify to what extent the various meanings in the indexical field of Citétaal occur on the individual level of the listener’s mind and how they are structured. We will also measure the listener’s ability to guess the speaker’s ethnic and regional origin. The qualitative data will be further used to interpret the results of the experiment.It will be shown that although social meanings of Citétaal strongly vary within the community, they are clearly regimented by prevailing standard language ideologies. Citétaal is still perceived as a vernacular spoken by foreign speakers, and its social meanings fluctuate between values of low social status and high attractiveness. The opposition (considered as distance) between speaker attractiveness and status is the highest for Citétaal and the lowest for standard Dutch, which suggests that social meanings of standard Dutch are more stable and widely accepted throughout the Flemish community.The conclusions highlight the importance of combining qualitative and quantitative methods when studying perceptions and attitudes in order to provide a fuller understanding of the social meaning of urban vernaculars in the larger community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compared 121 native and 114 non-native speakers of Dutch (with 35 different first languages) on four digit-span tasks, varying modality (visual/auditory) and direction (forward/backward). An interaction was observed between nativeness and modality, such that, while natives performed better than the non-natives on the auditory tasks (which were performed in the non-natives’ second language), performance on the visual tasks (which was performed in participants’ dominant language) did not significantly differ between natives and non-natives. The interaction between nativeness and modality disappeared when the data were corrected for Dutch proficiency. Correction for Dutch proficiency elevated non-native speakers’ scores on the auditory tasks, without altering the non-natives’ digit-span rank order. Despite considerable differences in mean length of the digit names zero to nine in the non-natives’ first languages, these differences were not significantly correlated with their visual digit-span scores. While further research is needed on the sources of variation in digit-span performance, we recommend the use of the visual digit-span task (forward or backward) for cross-linguistic research and advise researchers to be aware of the association between language proficiency and verbal working-memory performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First language attrition refers to the changes which a first language (L1) undergoes when a second language (L2) is acquired in a context in which L1 use is reduced (Cook, 2003; Köpke, 2004). To date, some studies have focused on complete loss of an L1, for example in the case of children whose contact with their initial language ceased after adoption (Pallier et al., 2003; Ventureyra, Pallier, & Yoo, 2004). Others have investigated more subtle cases in which changes to the L1 occur, although intelligibility remains largely, or completely, unaffected (de Leeuw, Schmid, & Mennen, 2007; Flege, 1987; Flege & Eefting, 1987; Major, 1992; Mennen, 2004). The study at hand belongs to the latter category, comprising a fine phonetic analysis of prosody in 10 late consecutive German–English bilinguals. In general, the results indicate L1 attrition in the intonational alignment of the prenuclear rise. However, interpersonal variation was also evidenced: two bilinguals performed clearly within the English monolingual norm in their German while one bilingual evidenced no L1 attrition. Intrapersonal variation occurred in the form of the start of the prenuclear rise appearing to undergo more L1 attrition than the end. The results are discussed in relation to previous studies suggesting that L1 attrition is less likely to occur in late consecutive bilinguals than in early consecutive bilinguals and, more generally, with regard to transfer and interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do we reacquire or relearn latent native languages? How can we tell? The language used by a 4-year-old ‘language reactivator’ in his preschool setting was audio recorded for several weeks upon return to the language community of his latent native language. Through a sociocultural lens focusing particularly on the use of code-switching and mixing during the language reactivation process, we analyzed how this young boy spoke, how that gradually changed over time and how he used the social and linguistic resources around him to facilitate that. The type and content of the boy’s code-switching and mixing showed time- and proficiency-related patterns that were both similar to and different from what one would expect of bilingual and of non-native language learners. Furthermore, the boy showed resourcefulness in how he used the linguistic resources around him — interacting primarily with interlocutors who had some competence in both his active and latent native languages early on until he developed sufficient proficiency to interact in the reactivated target language with his monolingual peers thereafter. This suggests a degree of learner mindfulness that distinguishes the language reactivation process from what one might expect were the process purely a matter of reacquiring bilingual proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction to the special issue on Romance languages as heritage languages, I aim to contextualize the scope of this issue and the contribution it makes to the emerging field of linguistic studies to heritage language bilingualism. Key issues pertaining to the empirical study and epistemology of heritage language bilingualism are presented as well as a critical introduction to the individual articles that comprise this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of early bilingual acquisition in heritage languages continues to be a valuable source of theoretical and empirical evidence for both general linguistic theory and acquisition theory. The articles featured in this special issue corroborate this by providing new data and analysis in a number of key morphosyntactic and prosodic areas of Romance languages, offering new insights to long-standing issues in bilingual acquisition. Specific areas include, interface vulnerability as a source of problems in bilingual children's acquisition, incomplete acquisition as an explanation for heritage speaker's non-target language, the effects of quality and frequency of input exposure in bilingual children and the effects of language contact on language acquisition. In this commentary, the main findings, contributions and merits of the articles are discussed in the context of language development and bilingual acquisition; links with existing relevant discussions and debates are highlighted; and possible paths for future research are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings to light an important variable involved in explaining a type of competence divergence in an instance of bilingual acquisition: heritage speaker (HS) bilingualism. We present results of experiments with European Portuguese (EP) heritage speakers (HSs), showing that they have full morpho-syntactic and semantic competence of inflected infinitives, similar to EP monolinguals. We show this constitutes clear evidence of competence mismatches between heritage speakers of European and Brazilian Portuguese, comparing our results to Rothman's (2007) experimental evidence that Brazilian Portuguese (BP) heritage speakers lack knowledge of inflected infinitives. These comparative results are especially relevant because inflected infinitives were argued (Pires, 2002, 2006) to have been lost in colloquial BP dialects, although educated monolinguals demonstrate target competence. Neither incomplete acquisition nor attrition hinders the acquisition of inflected infinitives by European Portuguese HSs, raising questions regarding how to explain the competence divergence between HSs of the two dialects. We argue for a more fine-grained approach to incomplete acquisition, proposing a type of missing-input competence divergence by which insufficiency of input from a standard dialect can affect acquisition, and heritage speakers of different dialects can show systematic mismatches in their adult knowledge if syntactic changes differentially affect the properties of the colloquial dialects to which these speakers are exposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most interesting features of language contact situations involves the appearance of systematic patterns that are not manifested in either of the two languages in contact. A full analysis of such patterns may require constraint rankings that differ from those of both the native and the target languages. I examine possible sources of these constraint rankings with respect to the devoicing of final obstruents in learners whose native language contains either no final consonants or no final obstruents, and whose target language contains both voiced and voiceless final obstruents. I conclude that the interlanguage ranking follows from the frequency of different input structures, given the assumption that constraint rankings are stochastic (Boersma & Hayes, 2001), and that final devoicing is an effect of positional markedness constraints. I then consider possible alternative explanations of interlanguage final devoicing: as a reflection of native language rankings of positional faithfulness constraints; as an effect of perceptual filtering; and / or as a function of articulatory difficulty of sustaining voicing in final position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]