Download - WAYS OF STUDYING HERITAGE LANGUAGES
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WAYS OF STUDYING HERITAGE LANGUAGES
Sixth Heritage Language InstituteJune 18-22, 2012UCLA
Maria PolinskyHarvard University
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MAIN POINT
Heritage languages amplify phenomena and principles present and operational in the baseline
Therefore, studying heritage languages is critical to our understanding of natural language design
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SETTING THE STAGE
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STARTING POINT: HLS AND BASELINE LANGUAGES Heritage languages bear significant
resemblance to the languages from which they were formed (the baseline) They tend to amplify certain trends that
are already present in these languages
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STARTING POINT:HLS ARE LIKE HAPPY FAMILIES Heritage languages deviate from the
baseline in a number of ways Contrary to expectations, they do not
look enough like the baseline Heritage languages bear significant
resemblance to each other They deviate from the baseline in similar
ways which call for a principled explanation
Is that transfer?
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STARTING POINT: HLS AND LIMITATIONS OF TRANSFER While there are some parallels
between structures/forms in the heritage language and in the dominant language, such parallels are not exhaustive What prevents heritage languages from
transferring all they need from the dominant language?
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HERITAGE LANGUAGES AS A SOURCE OF LINGUISTIC DATA Viewpoint A: Learning about heritage
languages Arriving at a comprehensive description of
heritage languages, understanding their structure, processing, and origins
Viewpoint B: Learning from heritage languages Using heritage languages as a new source
of data feeding into theory construction
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WHY BOTHER WITH HERITAGE LANGUAGES? New material for understanding
language in time and space
− Language origins− Language acquisition
Better theory of acquisition, development, and evolution
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WHY BOTHER WITH HERITAGE LANGUAGES? New angle on the core of human
language capacity Hence, new window on Universal
Grammar
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WHY BOTHER WITH HERITAGE LANGUAGES? New data for testing our theories of
language structure and language processing− Language universals
− Language structure
Better theory of language
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OUTLINE FOR THE REST
Getting the relevant data: What populations to compare
Getting the relevant data: Methodologies for studying heritage languages
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GETTING THE RELEVANT DATA: COMPARING POPULATIONS
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COMPARISON POPULATIONS
Four- way comparison: HL adults HL children Monolingual adults Monolingual children
This allows us to separate attrition from incomplete acquisition
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DISTINGUISHING INCOMPLETE ACQUISITION FROM ATTRITION Do child learners (future heritage
speakers) and adult heritage speakers have the same morphosyntactic deficits? If a child and an adult deviate from the
baseline in the same way, the feature has not been acquired
If a child and an adult perform differently, the feature has been acquired but lost/reanalyzed
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INCOMPLETE ACQUISITION: A CHILD IN THE HEAD
Adult heritage language = fossilized child language, with the level of fossilization roughly corresponding to the age of interruption?
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RUSSIAN NOUNS IN PALATAL CONSONANT (CJ) Feminine: cerkov’ ‘church’, tetrad’
‘notebook’, krovat’ ‘bed’, sol’ ‘salt’, ten’ ‘shadow’
Masculine: put’ ‘way’, dožd’ ‘rain’, portfel’ ‘briefcase’, kalendar’ ‘calendar’
Standard child language error: feminine nouns are interpreted as
masculine, up to age 7;0 (Gvozdev 1961) independent of frequency
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RUSSIAN: CORRECT AGREEMENT WITH FEMININE AND MASCULINE NOUNS IN CJ
Masculine correct
Feminine corect
Masculine incorrect
Feminine incorrect
0102030405060708090
L1 (N=12, av. age 7;2)HL children (N=18, av. age 8;1)HL adults (N=27, av. age 27)
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RUSSIAN NOUNS IN PALATAL CONSONANT (CJ) Gender of feminine nouns in palatal
consonant is acquired late and poses a problem for monolingual and heritage children alike
This incompletely acquired feature then persists in HL adults
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ADULT HERITAGE GRAMMAR IS DIFFERENT
Adult incomplete grammar undergoes attrition and is different from the “initial state” represented by heritage child grammar
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RELATIVE CLAUSES
Acquired early (2;0-2;6) Universal preference for subject
relatives Error rate (wrong head choice), ages
4-6: English : 10%-13% (multiple studies) Indonesian: 11% (Tjung 2006) Mandarin Chinese: 3.9% (Hsu et al.
2006, 2009) Turkish: 4% (Slobin 1985) Russian: 3.7%-4.2% (Fedorova 2005,
Polinsky 2008, 2011)
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OBJECT RELATIVE CLAUSE COMPREHENSION: % TOKENS CORRECT, KOREAN
Adults (C/H): 17/21, age 24; children (C/H): 6/23, age 7
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RELATIVE CLAUSES
HL children perform on par with age-matched monolingual controls and significantly outperform HL adults
The syntax of relative clauses undergoes a reanalysis across the lifespan and presents a case of attrition
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SEPARATING THE EFFECTS
Same HL with a different dominant language: minimize the effect of transfer
Structuring the tests in such a way that we could go against the transfer (Russian relative clauses, Polinsky 2011)
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SEPARATING THE EFFECTS
Distinguish heritage speakers from heritage language learners
So far, no direct comparison between heritage speakers “in the wild” and HL re-learners Many subjects of HL studies are drawn
from HL classes (a self-selected group)
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COMPARISON POPULATIONS
Are heritage speakers like L1 or like L2?
To answer this question, we need to compare advanced L2 learners with heritage speakers
An outstanding question: how to match the two groups? Level of L2 vs HL Criteria to be used
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GETTING THE RELEVANT DATA: METHODOLOGIES
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THE VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODOLOGIES Assessment Behavioral studies Neuroimaging
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ASSESSMENT
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APPROACHING VARIANCE
Extreme variation with regard to proficiency in heritage speakers C.f. three-stage model (Polinsky & Kagan 2007) (i) Acrolectal HS: high proficient, near-native
speakers of Russian, maximally close to competent monoling
(ii) Mesolectal HS: clear deficencies if compared to monolingual
(iii) Basilectal HS: lowest-proficiency speaker, maximally removed from native attainment, may have never acquired literacy in Russian
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RATE OF SPEECH (RoS) CORRELATIONS Does the rate of speech (measured
in words per minute) correlate with any other independent properties of heritage language?
An ongoing project, but some results are already available
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RoS ILLUSTRATION: RUSSIAN GENDER Baseline Russian: three genders (M,
F, N) Heritage Russian: three or two
genders (two groups of HS) Three gender group: phonological
reorganization Two gender group: Neuter nouns are re-
analyzed as feminine
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END-STRESSED NEUTERS
Two strategies: Neuter retained Neuter reanalyzed as a feminine
Can the strategy be predicted based on other properties of an individual speaker?
Yes: strong correlation between rate of speech and neuter retention: Higher RoS ~ three genders (neuter
retention) Lower Ros ~ two genders
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Correlation between the use of strategy and rate of speech NNEU: average rate 86.1 w/min (N=15) NFEM: average rate 45.4 w/min (N=16) Baseline controls: average rate 104.2 w/min
(N=20)
2-Gender 3-Gender baseline0
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60
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END-STRESSED NEUTERS
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RATE OF SPEECH CORRELATIONS Rate of speech (measured in words per
minute) may serve as a predictor of heritage speakers’ overall language proficiency
Advantages: Does not rely on literacy skills A very simple measure
Disadvantages: More proof of the concept needed Unclear what RoS actually reflects
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BEHAVIORAL METHODS
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PRODUCTION
Production can be used for preliminary data mining
In assessing production, aim for a controlled setting Video descriptions Maps Sentence completion Elicited imitation
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HERITAGE ENGLISH
Work conducted in Israel by Arun Viswanath (Harvard) and in France by Benjamin Gittelson (Columbia U)
14-year old speaker describing a cartoon episode… (Israeli English)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM8qgX3vbuI
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HERITAGE ENGLISHHe wante- he go- he took from zeh garbage a cigarette, and, and zen he saw zeh police, said hello, and zen he, just, em, just, frew zeh garbage can- can, zen, eh, zeh rabbit, em, how it’s called…flowered his flowers, and zen hewanted to eat him, so he took a rope and went up, an- and zeh rabbit saw him, and he was wif scissors, so he cut ze- cut zeh rope, and zen he fell into zeh police…’s car. (So how did he notice the rabbit in the first place?)Because eh, zeh rabbit wan- eh, wer- because he flowered zeh, his flowers, uh, one, on- two drops went on him. (So where did the drops go?)One on his cigarette, and zeh, zeh fire, eh…not burned…blew out? And one on his nose.
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FRUIT CARTS
Speaker describes a map to a confederate who moves objects on the screen (Gómez Gallo et al. 2007)
Speakers produce spontaneous instructions to the confederate
Confederate does not give verbal feedback
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HOW IT WORKS
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CONTROLLED PRODUCTION: CHINESE FRUITCARTS Mandarin Chinese, baseline: Beijing
dialect 13 native speakers and 17 heritage
speakers of advanced proficiency in spoken Mandarin However, five HL speakers do not have
the knowledge of formal registers
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BASIC FACTS ABOUT WORD ORDER IN MANDARIN
Basic word order is SVO, but attributes including relative clauses precede the head noun
Nouns occur with classifiers Use of numerals with nouns is
associated with indefiniteness Locative expressions: in most cases,
locative PPs appear before the VP Serial verbs are widely used, and some
serialization correlates with the presence of the ba-construction
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PROXY
Proxy: noun filling the gap after the relative clause when the real head precedes the relative clause. For instance:
把 小 三角形 [RC角上 有 圆点的 ] 图形 移 到 北京ba small triangle corner have ball
de figure move to Beijing REAL HEAD RELATIVE CLAUSE PROXY
‘Move the small triangle with a ball on its corner to Beijing.’
NO PROXIES IN HL PRODUCTION
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NUMERAL PHRASES
In Mandarin, numeral phrases include numerals and classifiers: 一 个 三角形 ‘ a triangle’yi ge sanjiaoxingNUM CLF NOUN
Generally, numeral phrases are considered indefinite In our corpus, native controls used numerals less, esp. when the theme expression had modifiers (hence, was more likely to be definite)
Heritage speakers show lack of awareness of this subtle semantic feature
NUMERALS
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WORD ORDER
Controls use the ba-construction, which is problematic for heritage speakers
Controls use prenominal relative clauses, heritage speakers use postnominal relatives
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RELATIVE CLAUSE PLACEMENT:NATIVE SPEAKERS Relative clauses (RC) precede the
head noun Most native speakers strictly follow
this rule[RC角上 有 菱形 的 小 ] [Head Noun正方形 ] corner has a diamond ADN
small square‘a small square that has a diamond at its corner’
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RELATIVE CLAUSE PLACEMENT:HERITAGE SPEAKERS Heritage speakers tend to put the
relative clause after the head noun在 北京,放一个大的三角形 边上 有一个点的In Beijing, put a big triangle the hypotenuse has a dot ADNIn Beijing, put a big triangle that has a dot on its hypotenuse Possible reasons:
Late planning in production, due to the overall complexity of the theme description
Interference from English
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VERBS VS. VERB COMPOUNDS Another difficulty contributing to the
lack of ba-construction in heritage speakers: use of verb compounds
Heritage speakers show a strong tendency to use simplex verbs in all their constructions
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COMPOUND VERBS: CONTROL VS. HSs
Native speakers Heritage speakers
Proxy construction Yes No
Numerals Less likely More likely
Word order 1) ba-construction2) Attributes before
head noun
1) Rigid SVO2) Attributes after
head noun
Verb complexity Verb compound Single verb
NATIVE SPEAKERS VS. HERITAGE SPEAKERS
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“PROOF OF THE CONCEPT”
The Fruit Cart experimental design is an effective method if eliciting production form heritage speakers in such a way that their output is well constrained
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OUTLINE OF THE SECTION
Comparison populations Data obtained from heritage
speakers Production Comprehension
Methodologies Where next?
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COMPREHENSION
Allows researchers to focus on the areas that may cause difficulty
Borrow from the playbook of other fields: L1, L2, clinical populations, fieldwork experiments Types of phenomena Methodologies
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ON METHODOLOGY
Grammaticality Judgment Tasks (GJTs) Points of general concern:
What is the exact nature of grammaticality? Dichotomous or gradient? What is the role of extragrammatical factors?
Point of methodological concern: Absence of rigorous control techniques
An additional worry: Heritage speakers show a notoriously high rate of
null responses on GJT (Polinsky 2006)
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ON METHODOLOGY
Avoiding GJT (Schütze 1996, Tremblay 2005)
Alternatives: Response time Rating or magnitude estimation Eye tracking (Irina Sekerina’s work)
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SOME GENERAL TIPS
Optimize the comprehension conditions for heritage speakers Allows us to make sure we are not
dealing with bottleneck effects Speed/add distractions to
comprehension conditions for the controls
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COMPREHENSION RESEARCH: A COMMON PARADIGM Self-paced reading (SPR), an
established tool (Just et al. 1982, Mitchell 2004)
Timing is regular except for areas of difficulty
Problem: HL speakers have difficulty reading, even if the alphabet is the same
How can one extend the SPR paradigm to populations that do not read?
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POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
Taking lessons from researchers for whom reading is irrelevant, inappropriate, or an unwelcome confound Sign language research Child language acquisition research Research on clinical populations Phonological investigations
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ANOTHER COMMON PARADIGM IN COMPREHENSION Sentence-picture matching (SPM),
also well-established (Bamber 1969, Carey & Lockhart 1973,
Clark & Chase 1972, Frost 1972, Seymour 1974, Shepard 1967, a.o.)
Present acoustic stimuli and record response time for a stimulus-to-picture matching task
Common in the fields of aphasiology and child language acquisition
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COMPARING SPR AND SPM
An unknown: Do SPR and SPM produce comparable results?
Test case: Relative clause processing
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RELATIVE CLAUSE PROCESSING Subject relatives are easier to process
(SPR: Traxler et al. 2002; ERP: King & Kutas 1995; PET: Stromswold et al. 1996; fMRI: Just et al. 1996; Eye-tracking: Traxler et al. 2002…)
Cross-linguistic advantage of subject relatives (Dutch: Frazier 1987; German: Mecklinger et
al. 1995; Hebrew: Arnon 2005; Japanese: Miyamoto & Nakamura 2003; Korean: Kwon et al. 2006; Russian: Polinsky 2011…)
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COMPARING SPR AND SPM: RUSSIAN Subject preference in the processing
of relative clauses in Russian (Levy et al. 2007, submitted; Polinsky 2011, 2012)
Subject and object RCs can have the same word order
NPi [whichNOM __i Verb NPACC] = Subject Relative
NPi [whichACC __i Verb NPNOM] = Object Relative
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RUSSIAN: SELF-PACED READING
Tim
e in
ms
Subject Object
Polinsky 2012; Polinsky & Fedorova in prep.
*
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RUSSIAN: SENTENCE-PICTURE MATCHING Subjects see two pictures on
computer screen followed by a sound file
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RUSSIAN: SENTENCE-PICTURE MATCHING
Tim
e in
ms
Subject Object
*
Polinsky & Fedorova in prep.
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INTERIM SUMMARY
Heritage studies can re-appropriate well-established paradigms from other experimental fields Picture matching in lieu of SPR Possible use of self-paced listening, also
used in L1 and L2 research (Marinis 2003)
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INTERIM SUMMARY
Heritage studies can re-appropriate well-established paradigms from other experimental fields
Using visual world paradigms in general will provide rich results: more need for eye-tracking in HL studies
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WHERE NEXT AND WHY?
From behavior to brain From modules to interfaces From homogenous sub-populations
to assessing variance
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FROM BEHAVIOR TO BRAIN
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OUTLINE OF THE SECTION
General observations: Short term exposure A case study Emerging imaging results (so far for L2)
Some practical thoughts: Tools for developing metalinguistic awareness
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A CASE STUDY: POLISH RE-LEARNING Heritage Polish subject, SP
Born in Los Angeles, Polish only till 4;5, rapid switch to English by 5;2 (self-reported)
Comprehension only at 21; impeded as tested in lexical decision, picture matching, and rating tasks
Re-exposure at 24: went to Warsaw for a year
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RE-LEARNING UP… AND DOWN
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ADOLESCENT SHORT-TERM L2 LEARNERS (Stein et al. 2010) 10 English-speaking learners of
German in Switzerland 16.5 – 18 years old (mean 17.5)
Tested After three weeks (following an
introductory course) Five months later
Test performance correlated with increase in gray matter density
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ADOLESCENT SHORT-TERM L2 LEARNERS (Stein et al. 2010) Increase in gray matter density over
five months correlated positively with difference in proficiency (measured by improved test scores) in Left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) Left anterior temporal lobe (ATL)
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ADOLESCENT SHORT-TERM L2 LEARNERS (Stein et al. 2010)
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SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS (Stein et al. 2010)
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WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS FINDING? Gray matter density in language-
related areas increases in as little as five months of instruction in country (even with a huge dialect difference)
This increase correlates with the amount learned
This again suggests brain growth stimulated by effective interaction with the second language
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WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS FINDING? Even a small amount of input in the target
language changes its neurological representation and may also have behavioral consequences
By focusing on HL learners we do not always tap into the depths of language attrition/incomplete acquisition
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FROM BEHAVIOR TO BRAIN
ERP measures: brain/behavior dissociations
Grammar University students learning Spanish
for the first time
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TOKOWICZ & MACWHINNEY (2005) Violations of tense (similar to English) Su abuela *cocinando/cocina muy bien His grandmother *cooking / cooks very well Violations of gender (no parallel in English) Ellos fueron a *un/una fiesta They went to a party Violations of number (English has it, but not
here) *El/los niños están jugando The boys are playing
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TOKOWICZ & MACWHINNEY (2005): ACCURACY DATA AT CHANCE (FOR UNACCEPTABLE)
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TENSE (SIMILAR TO ENGLISH)
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TOKOWICZ & MACWHINNEY (2005): ACCURACY DATA AT CHANCE (FOR UNACCEPTABLE)
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GENDER (NO PARALLEL IN ENGLISH)
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TOKOWICZ & MACWHINNEY (2005) SUMMARY University students again showed a
brain/behavior dissociation: Their acceptability judgment responses
were at chance But their brain responses reliably
differentiated grammatical from ungrammatical sentences
In this respect, their brain responses looked like those of native speakers
- Given cognitive and linguistic advantage enjoyed by HLLs, it is natural to capitalize on these benefits in the classroom
- Capitalizing on linguistic/metalinguistic benefits: introduce linguistic reasoning in the HLL classroom
BUILDING ON HLLS’ ADVANTAGES
Precedent: Linguistic problem sets have been used in the past to teach other subjects Honda & O’Neil (1995) use linguistic exercises
to teach the scientific method to middle- and high-school students.
O’Connor (1980) uses linguistic-based phonology exercises to improve the English pronunciation of non-native English speakers by giving them a fuller sense of the underlying rules governing the patterns and distributions of sounds.
LINGUISTIC PROBLEM SETS IN HLL CLASSROOMS
- To develop and enhance analytical thinking about their language, in and outside the classroom
- To serve as a lead-in to the naturalistic literature, which is crucial in HL classrooms
- To play to the HLLs’ strengths in metalinguistic awareness
- To help HLLs overcome deficits by including them in the exercise material
LINGUISTIC PROBLEM SETS IN HLL CLASSROOMS: GOALS
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LINGUISTIC PROBLEM SETS IN THE TEACHING OF HERITAGE SPANISH Leslie, Siena. 2012. The use of
linguistics to improve the teaching of heritage language Spanish. BA Thesis, Harvard University.
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~herpro/site/Research.html
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WHAT WORKS
Re-exposure Explicit metalinguistic instruction How well do they work?
Even short term exposure seems to have an effect
The perseverance of language improvement is yet to be explored
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WHERE NEXT?
Ask a question that is relevant for linguistic theory
Use heritage populations to answer this question: Compare adults and children,
monolinguals, L2s, and HLs Use proven methodologies—they are
there for you! Feed the results back to the theory
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THANK YOU
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
People: Abbas BenmamounOlga KaganRobert Kluender Oksana LalekoBeth LevinLauren MitchellSilvina MontrulOmer PremingerNina RadkevichIrina SekerinaArun ViswanathMing XiangBoyan Zhang
Funding: NSF, National Heritage Language Resource Center (UCLA), Department of Education, Davis Center (Harvard), Rockefeller Center (Harvard), Center for Research in Language (UCSD), Max Planck Institute