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Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages
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Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages

A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 September 2022) | Viewed by 28824

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Cristina Guardiano

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Dipartimento di Comunicazione ed Economia, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, 42121 Reggio Emilia, Italy
Interests: parametric comparison and the history of language diversity; syntactic variation, contact and change; comparative syntax of the nominal domain; dialectal and diachronic variation across Greek and Romance
Dr. Giuseppina Silvestri

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Interests: morphosyntax and syntax of nonstandard, minority, endangered, and heritage languages; sociolinguistics of migrants’ languages; language contact, variation, and change of Romance and Greek varieties; syntactic typology and parametric comparison; phonology–syntax and semantics–syntax interfaces

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect reflections and proposals concerning the contribution of heritage grammars to our understanding of syntactic variation and change.

The grammar of heritage speakers appears as the ideal system to test central questions about fundamental aspects of human languages (Benmamoun, Montrul, Polinsky 2013), such as the nature of the linguistic nativeness of L1 speakers, the correlation between age of acquisition and competence, the characterization of linguistic competence and its development, the interplay between languages in contact.

The definition of heritage speakers/grammars revolves around at least three focal points (Rothman 2009): the reality of incomplete acquisition (Polinsky 2006), the role of attrition (Köpke and Schmid 2004) and the mechanism of dominant language transfer (Montrul 2010). In particular, in the domain of syntax, heritage grammars have been shown to exhibit attrition effects on phenomena ascribable to the syntax–semantics–pragmatics interface (Laleko and Polinsky 2016; Sorace 2005; Sorace and Serratrice 2009), as well as to specific configurations such as null pronouns or syntactic dependencies (wh-questions passives, raising, relative clauses; Hu, Costa, Guasti 2020). By contrast, clausal configurations depending on the word order prove more resilient to incomplete acquisition (Håkansson 1995).

Concerning the interplay of languages in contact, the definition of a “model of the nature of heritage-language grammar” (Polinsky and Scontras 2019) inevitably entails the assessment of the impact of structural similarity among the relevant varieties (especially emerging in “micro-contact” situations; D’Alessandro 2021) as well as “the quantity and quality of the input from which the heritage grammar is acquired” (Polinsky and Scontras 2019). The latter is contingent on the specificity of the linguistic landscapes shaped by heritage speakers (Polinsky 2018) who typically are second-generation immigrants and display a great range of variation in their proficiency (Montrul, Polinsky, Karayayla 2019). Moreover, they usually lack literacy in the heritage language and belong to minority and endangered linguistic communities (Aalberse, Backus, Muysken 2019). This, in turn, poses important challenges concerning data collection and handling (Leivada, D’Alessandro, Grohmann 2019).

This Special Issue welcomes works based on broad and diverse research experiences with heritage varieties: from micro- to macro-contact, from field methods to the investigation of language obsolescence and death, from experimental work on language acquisition to the development of formal models for language structure and transmission.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to both Guest Editors (cristina.guardiano@unimore.it, g.silvestri@ucla.edu) or to the Languages Editorial Office (languages@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring a proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Tentative completion schedule:

  • Abstract submission deadline: 15 October 2021
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: 20 November 2021
  • Full manuscript deadline: 15 June 2022

References

Aalberse, S.P., A. Backus, P. Muysken. 2019. Heritage languages: a language contact approach. Studies in Bilingualism. Vol. 58. John Benjamins.

Benmamoun, E., S. Montrul, and M. Polinsky. 2013. Heritage languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistics. Theoretical Linguistics 39: 129 181.

D’Alessandro, R. 2021. Syntactic change in contact. Romance. Annual Review of Linguistics 7:309-328.

Håkansson, G. 1995. Syntax and morphology in language attrition: A study of five bilingual expatriate Swedes. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5, 153 171.

Hu, S., F. Costa, and M. Guasti. 2020. Mandarin-Italian dual-language children’s comprehension of head-final and head-initial relative clauses. Frontiers in Psychology 11.

Köpke, B. and M. S. Schmid. 2004. First language attrition: The next phase. In M. S. Schmid, B. Köpke, M. Keijzer, & L. Weilemar (Eds.), First language attrition: Interdisciplinary perspectives on methodological issues (pp. 1–43). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Laleko O. and M. Polinsky. 2016. Between syntax and discourse: Topic and case marking in heritage speakers and L2 learners of Japanese and Korean. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 6: 396 439.

Leivada, E., R. D'Alessandro, K. K. Grohmann. 2019. Eliciting big data from small, young, or non-standard Languages: 10 experimental challenges. Frontiers in Psychology 10: 313.

Montrul, S. 2010. Dominant language transfer in adult second language learners and heritage speakers. Second language research 26/3: 293-327.

Montrul, S., M. Polinsky, T. Karayayla (eds). 2019. Heritage languages. In: M.S. Schmid, B. Köpke (eds) The Oxford handbook of language attrition, Part VI. Oxford: OUP.

Polinsky, M. 2006. Incomplete acquisition: American Russian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 14: 161-219.

Polinsky, M. 2018. Heritage languages and their speakers. Cambridge: CUP.

Polinsky, M. and G. Scontras. 2019. Understanding heritage languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 23 (1), 4-20.

Rothman, J. 2009. Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism 13(2), 155-163.

Sorace, A. 2005. “Syntactic optionality at interfaces”. In L. Cornips, K. Corrigan (eds.), Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 46-111.

Sorace, A. and L. Serratrice. 2009. Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism 13(2), 195-210.

Prof. Dr. Cristina Guardiano
Dr. Giuseppina Silvestri
Guest Editors

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • heritage grammars and speakers
  • syntax
  • attrition in syntactic structures
  • contact
  • interfaces

Published Papers (12 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 4046 KiB  
Article
The Strange Case of the Gallo-Italic Dialects of Sicily: Preservation and Innovation in Contact-Induced Change
by Alessandro De Angelis
Languages 2023, 8(3), 163; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030163 - 30 Jun 2023
Viewed by 1631
Abstract
The Gallo-Italic dialects widespread within central–eastern Sicily represent the result of the medieval immigration of settlers from southern Piedmont and Liguria, after the Norman conquest of the island (1061–1091). As far as the language spoken by these communities is concerned, an oddity arises: [...] Read more.
The Gallo-Italic dialects widespread within central–eastern Sicily represent the result of the medieval immigration of settlers from southern Piedmont and Liguria, after the Norman conquest of the island (1061–1091). As far as the language spoken by these communities is concerned, an oddity arises: most of their lexical and syntactic features developed further through contact with neighboring varieties (such as, most notably, Sicilian), whereas, at a phonetic/phonological level, they have remained very conservative, largely maintaining their original northern characteristics. In the present paper, the possible causes underlying such a split are discussed: if the transfer of syntactic structures can be triggered by the presence of bilingual speakers who become progressively dominant (that is, more proficient) in Sicilian as L2, the preservation of the main phonetic/phonological features can represent a tool employed to the ends of emphasizing the identity of these new settlers from both an ethnic and linguistic perspective. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
21 pages, 426 KiB  
Article
Agreement Asymmetries with Adjectives in Heritage Greek
by Artemis Alexiadou, Vasiliki Rizou and Foteini Karkaletsou
Languages 2023, 8(2), 139; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8020139 - 30 May 2023
Viewed by 1081
Abstract
Research on different populations of heritage speakers (HSs) has demonstrated that these speakers (i) frequently produce fewer adjectives, and (ii) produce more errors in nominal concord than in subject–verb agreement. The first point, (i), has been attributed in the literature to the optionality [...] Read more.
Research on different populations of heritage speakers (HSs) has demonstrated that these speakers (i) frequently produce fewer adjectives, and (ii) produce more errors in nominal concord than in subject–verb agreement. The first point, (i), has been attributed in the literature to the optionality of adjectives and to the fact that adjectives characterize the literary language and HSs lack familiarity with this register. The second point, (ii), is viewed by other researchers as supporting theories that treat nominal concord as being different from subject–verb agreement. In this paper, we contribute data on production of adjectives and agreement asymmetries with adjectives from heritage Greek. We show that these cannot be viewed as supporting claims with respect to (i) but conclude that nominal concord and subject–verb agreement involve different mechanisms. We furthermore explore ways to account for a slight contrast we observe between prenominal and postnominal agreement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
42 pages, 17808 KiB  
Article
The Syntax–Pragmatics Interface in Heritage Languages: The Use of anche (“Also”) in German Heritage Speakers of Italian
by Jan Casalicchio and Manuela Caterina Moroni
Languages 2023, 8(2), 104; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8020104 - 07 Apr 2023
Viewed by 1465
Abstract
This paper deals with the use of anche (“also”) by German heritage speakers of Italian (“IHSs”). Previous research showed that anche and its German counterpart auch share many features but also display language-specific characteristics. According to previous research on bilingualism, heritage speakers show [...] Read more.
This paper deals with the use of anche (“also”) by German heritage speakers of Italian (“IHSs”). Previous research showed that anche and its German counterpart auch share many features but also display language-specific characteristics. According to previous research on bilingualism, heritage speakers show cross-linguistic influence (“CLI”) when a linguistic phenomenon is at the syntax–pragmatics interface and there is a partial overlap in the two languages at stake. Therefore, we expect the use of anche in IHSs to be influenced by CLI. By analysing data from a semi-spontaneous corpus, we investigate the production of anche in order to understand which factors shape the grammar of the IHSs. Our results indicate that a subset of IHSs uses anche in the same way as in homeland Italian. The other informants display CLI effects of different types: on the one hand, they have two positions in the clausal structure for anche dedicated to different syntactic–pragmatic contexts, as in German, and they overextend the use of anche as a modal particle. On the other hand, the intonational properties of anche are not affected by CLI. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
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36 pages, 1090 KiB  
Article
Phenomena of Contact and Mixing in the Arbëresh Dialects of San Marzano di San Giuseppe in Salento and Vena di Maida in Calabria
by Leonardo Maria Savoia and Benedetta Baldi
Languages 2023, 8(1), 87; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010087 - 17 Mar 2023
Viewed by 4077
Abstract
In this work, we will investigate hybridization, borrowing, and grammatical reorganization phenomena in the Arbëresh dialects of San Marzano (Apulia) and Vena di Maida (central Calabria). The data from the Arbëresh of S. Benedetto Ullano (northern Calabria) will be useful to provide a [...] Read more.
In this work, we will investigate hybridization, borrowing, and grammatical reorganization phenomena in the Arbëresh dialects of San Marzano (Apulia) and Vena di Maida (central Calabria). The data from the Arbëresh of S. Benedetto Ullano (northern Calabria) will be useful to provide a comparative frame. Arbëresh is the name of the Albanian varieties spoken in the villages/cities generally formed in the late fifteenth century by communities fleeing from Albania as a consequence of the Ottoman occupation. The long-time contact with neighboring Romance varieties is reflected in the extended mixing phenomena which characterize the lexicon and the morphosyntactic organization of Arbëresh as a heritage language. This is particularly evident in the two dialects that we investigate in this contribution, where relexification and grammatical reorganization phenomena provide us with an interesting testing ground to explain language variation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
30 pages, 497 KiB  
Article
Interactions between Differential Object Marking and Definiteness in Standard and Heritage Romanian
by Monica Alexandrina Irimia
Languages 2023, 8(1), 63; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010063 - 23 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1197
Abstract
The observation that not all grammatical realizations in heritage languages can be attributed to transfer from a dominant language has been emphasized in several recent works. This paper provides further arguments in this direction from heritage Romanian. As opposed to standard Romanian, the [...] Read more.
The observation that not all grammatical realizations in heritage languages can be attributed to transfer from a dominant language has been emphasized in several recent works. This paper provides further arguments in this direction from heritage Romanian. As opposed to standard Romanian, the heritage Romanian data examined here do not exhibit a restriction which blocks overt definiteness on a differentially marked object (DOM), when the latter is unmodified but interpreted as definite. Moreover, in heritage Romanian there appear to be differences between the differential marker and (other) prepositions when it comes to interactions with overt definiteness. It is shown that the preservation of overt definiteness cannot be reduced to transfer; some of the dominant languages at stake, namely Serbian and Russian are determinerless, with nominals being used bare regardless of their syntactic function. The heritage data in turn give support to a theory under which the differential marker must be structurally set aside from (other) prepositions. If the latter spell out a P projection, the differential marker is the spell out of complex internal structure of certain classes of objects, which must project at least a DP. This structural complexity for DOM is transparent in other Romance languages, where definiteness is equally obligatory on the surface, if a definite interpretation is intended. Thus, the DOM-overt definiteness setting in the heritage data follows from predictable paths of language variation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
36 pages, 3130 KiB  
Article
Linguistic Repertoires: Modeling Variation in Input and Production: A Case Study on American Speakers of Heritage Norwegian
by Kristin Melum Eide and Arnstein Hjelde
Languages 2023, 8(1), 49; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010049 - 06 Feb 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2510
Abstract
Heritage Norwegian in the American Midwest is documented through a corpus of recordings collected and compiled over a time span of 80 years, from Einar Haugen’s recordings in the 1940s via the CANS corpus up to the present-day in the authors’ own recordings. [...] Read more.
Heritage Norwegian in the American Midwest is documented through a corpus of recordings collected and compiled over a time span of 80 years, from Einar Haugen’s recordings in the 1940s via the CANS corpus up to the present-day in the authors’ own recordings. This gives an unprecedented opportunity to study how a minority language changes in a language contact situation, over several generations and under gradually changing circumstances. Since we also have thorough historical knowledge of the institutions and societal texture of these communities, this privileged situation allows us to trace the various sources of input available to the heritage speakers in these communities in different relevant time slots. We investigate how the quality and quantity of input at different times are reflected in the syntactic production of heritage speakers of the corresponding generational cohorts, focusing on relative ratios of specific word orders (topicalization and verb second, prenominal and postnominal possessive noun phrases) and productive morphosyntactic paradigms (tense suffixes of loan verbs). Utilizing a model of relations between input and output, receptive and productive competence, to show how input–output effects will accumulate throughout the cohorts, we explain the observed linguistic change in individuals and society. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
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10 pages, 1214 KiB  
Article
Feature Borrowing in Language Contact
by Alessandra Tomaselli, Ermenegildo Bidese and Andrea Padovan
Languages 2022, 7(4), 288; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7040288 - 09 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1984
Abstract
In this paper, we consider mood selection in embedded clauses by focusing on a German-based minority language, Cimbrian, which is spoken in a northern Italian enclave. Mood selection in Cimbrian relies on the presence of two different complementizers, az and ke (the latter [...] Read more.
In this paper, we consider mood selection in embedded clauses by focusing on a German-based minority language, Cimbrian, which is spoken in a northern Italian enclave. Mood selection in Cimbrian relies on the presence of two different complementizers, az and ke (the latter being borrowed from Romance varieties), each of which selectively require a specific mood. Az selects the mood subjunctive in modal sentences introduced by non-factive verbs, whereas ke co-occurs with the indicative in purely declarative clauses introduced by factive and semi-factive verbs. However, this binary distribution is challenged in the two following contexts, and it is precisely at this point that feature borrowing comes into play: (i) with the verb gloam ‘to believe/to think’, the expected binary pattern appears (irrealis az + subjunctive and the realis ke + indicative), but, crucially, a third construction emerges, namely ke + subj.; (ii) surprisingly, az + subj. displays some ‘gaps’ in its paradigm, specifically in the first person, which appeared in the data we collected via translation tasks from Italian into Cimbrian. Both phenomena shed light on how language contact works, not in terms of structural borrowing but rather in terms of the transfer of the specific features of a given lexical item. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
26 pages, 4430 KiB  
Article
Micro-Contact in Southern Italy: Language Change in Southern Lazio under Pressure from Italian
by Valentina Colasanti
Languages 2022, 7(4), 286; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7040286 - 09 Nov 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4711
Abstract
This paper explores a novel case of contact-induced change due to micro-contact within Italy, where various Italo-Romance languages coexist (Standard Italian, Italiano Regionale ‘regional Italian’, and numerous local languages). Although morphosyntactic change due to micro-contact is probably widespread across Italy, it has received [...] Read more.
This paper explores a novel case of contact-induced change due to micro-contact within Italy, where various Italo-Romance languages coexist (Standard Italian, Italiano Regionale ‘regional Italian’, and numerous local languages). Although morphosyntactic change due to micro-contact is probably widespread across Italy, it has received almost no attention in the literature. This case study involves the complementizer system of the local language Ferentinese (Southern Lazio), which underwent restructuring over a very brief period. I claim that this change is a case of downward reanalysis from Force to Fin within the split CP, triggered by the regression of the subjunctive and its subsequent replacement by a new complementation strategy. In turn, I argue that this change was the by-product of an increase in the number of complementizers in the language, from two to three, due to micro-contact between Ferentinese and Italiano Regionale. Crucially, the latter furnished a complementizer form (che) identical to one already present in the Ferentinese system, leading to reanalysis. Thus, in addition to reporting on a novel case of micro-contact in Italy, this paper illustrates one pathway to the genesis of a rare three-way complementizer system and sketches an initial typology of how related complementizer systems have changed in diachrony. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
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22 pages, 663 KiB  
Article
Stability and Change in the C-Domain in American Swedish
by Ida Larsson and Kari Kinn
Languages 2022, 7(4), 256; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7040256 - 01 Oct 2022
Viewed by 1355
Abstract
This article introduces American Swedish (AmSw) into the discussion of the C-domain in heritage Scandinavian. The study is based on spontaneous speech data from the Swedish part of the Corpus of American Nordic Speech (CANS), compared to a baseline of homeland Swedish dialect [...] Read more.
This article introduces American Swedish (AmSw) into the discussion of the C-domain in heritage Scandinavian. The study is based on spontaneous speech data from the Swedish part of the Corpus of American Nordic Speech (CANS), compared to a baseline of homeland Swedish dialect speakers. We show that the C-domain in AmSw is primarily characterized by stability; this is evidenced by a relatively robust V2 syntax and left dislocation patterns that resemble the homeland baseline. However, we also show that AmSw diverges in some respects: there are some V2 violations and a stronger preference for SV clauses (subject-initial main clauses) at the expense of XVS clauses (non-subject-initial main clauses). These results are similar to previous findings from American Norwegian. We argue that the diverging patterns exhibited by AmSw speakers are not indicative of any fundamental change in their Swedish grammar. The occasional V2 violations are attributed to parallel activation of English and Swedish, and speakers sometimes failing to inhibit English, which is their dominant language. The increase of SV clauses is analyzed as a preference for the canonical word order of the dominant language, but within the limits of what the heritage grammar permits. The patterns in AmSw can be described as cases of attrition and cross-linguistic influence; however, we argue for a nuanced use of these terms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
23 pages, 2138 KiB  
Article
Shifting and Expanding Clause Combining Strategies in Heritage Turkish Varieties
by Onur Özsoy, Kateryna Iefremenko and Christoph Schroeder
Languages 2022, 7(3), 242; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030242 - 16 Sep 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2411
Abstract
Turkish is a language described as relying predominantly on non-finite subordination in the domain of clause combining. However, there are also strategies of finite subordination, as well as means of syndetic and asyndetic paratactic clause combining, especially in the informal settings. Clause combining [...] Read more.
Turkish is a language described as relying predominantly on non-finite subordination in the domain of clause combining. However, there are also strategies of finite subordination, as well as means of syndetic and asyndetic paratactic clause combining, especially in the informal settings. Clause combining is and has been one of the focal points of research on heritage Turkish (h-Turkish). One point is particularly clear: In comparison with the monolingual setting, finite means of clause combining are more frequent in h-Turkish in Germany, the U.S., and the Netherlands, while non-finite means of clause combining are less frequent. Overall, our results confirm the findings of earlier studies: heritage speakers in Germany and the U.S. prefer paratactic means of clause combining using connectors, as opposed to monolingual speakers. Our results also reveal that age (adolescents vs. adults) and register (informal vs. formal) significantly modulate the use of connectors. Moreover, we find that the shift in preferences in means of clause combining triggers an expansion in the system of connectors and leads to the development of new narrative connectors, such as o zaman and derken. The system of syndetic paratactic clause combining is expanding in heritage Turkish. This expansion calls for multifaceted modeling of change in heritage languages, which integrates language-internal factors (register), dynamics of convergence with the contact languages, and extra-linguistic factors (age and language use). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
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18 pages, 2006 KiB  
Article
Demonstrative Systems Are Not Affected by Contact: Evidence from Heritage Southern Italo-Romance
by Silvia Terenghi
Languages 2022, 7(3), 201; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030201 - 01 Aug 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2384
Abstract
Deictic information is present in every language; yet, there are significant differences as to how exactly such information is encoded, yielding different indexical systems across languages. The availability of cross-linguistic variation in indexical systems provides a window into the role of contact in [...] Read more.
Deictic information is present in every language; yet, there are significant differences as to how exactly such information is encoded, yielding different indexical systems across languages. The availability of cross-linguistic variation in indexical systems provides a window into the role of contact in shaping grammars: this work contributes to the discussion by investigating whether contact plays any role in determining the grammar of indexicality in heritage varieties. This study has a two-fold aim. Empirically, it investigates ternary demonstrative systems in heritage southern Italo-Romance varieties: on the basis of comprehension and production data, these systems are shown to be in the process of undergoing change. Theoretically, it underscores the insights that the combined microcontact and diachronic perspective provides for the understanding of variation and change in heritage languages: while, at face value, the elicited heritage data seem to indicate that demonstratives are affected by contact, pairwise comparisons across heritage varieties and diachronic observations lead to rejecting a plain contact-induced explanation and to conclude, instead, that deictic elements are largely unaffected by contact and that their change in heritage varieties is, rather, endogenous. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
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17 pages, 539 KiB  
Article
Structural Change in Relative Clauses and the Autonomy of Heritage Grammars
by Alberto Frasson
Languages 2022, 7(2), 106; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020106 - 25 Apr 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1881
Abstract
This paper addresses the question of structural change in relative clauses in heritage speakers of two varieties of Venetan, a northern Italo-Romance language. It will be shown that appositive and restrictive relative clauses are not structurally distinguished in Brazilian Venetan, while they display [...] Read more.
This paper addresses the question of structural change in relative clauses in heritage speakers of two varieties of Venetan, a northern Italo-Romance language. It will be shown that appositive and restrictive relative clauses are not structurally distinguished in Brazilian Venetan, while they display different structural properties in Italian Venetan. It will be proposed that the phenomenon described in the paper does not depend on transfer from another language and it is not exclusively a matter of processing. The approach presented here aims to account for structural change in syntactic terms, without resorting to extra-linguistic factors. Heritage grammars are autonomous systems and follow predictable paths of language variation, as such, variation may take place at an interface level and at a syntactic level alike. This does not exclude possible influences from the dominant language, which, however, do not need to be taken as the only triggers of change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Syntactic Variation and Change of Heritage Languages)
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