What About the Input?: The Diachronic Connection to Early Bilingual Outcome Differences

1. What About the Input?: The Diachronic Connection to Early Bilingual Outcome Differences Jason Rothman University of Iowa University of Newcastle upon Tyne March 18th, 2009

2. What I want to do… MAIN GOAL: Go over some of some of my and collaborative work on the acquisition of Inflected Infinitives in different contexts, highlighting the role ‘the input’ (here quality as opposed to quantity) as a source of “competence” outcomes/ differences. IN DOING SO: Problematize the concept of the ‘monolingual language X’ as well as the use of ‘monolingual’ comparative norms for the case of bilingualism. Add to a more precise conceptualization of what “incomplete acquisition” is. Suggest how the study of child L1 and heritage language acquisition is a nice crossroads for sub-disciplinary collaboration within linguistic inquiry.

3. Background: Who are Heritage Speakers?: • Simultaneous bilinguals who speak a family and a societal majority languages well as adults (maybe even equally) • Simultaneous bilinguals who are clearly dominant in the majority language, but have some (maybe good) knowledge of the family language. • Sequential bilinguals who acquire the majority language L2 as young children, retaining their L1 well and speaking the L2 well. • Sequential bilinguals who acquire the majority language L2 as young children, loosing most of their L1(perhaps entirely), but speak the L2 well. • Sequential bilinguals who acquire the majority language L2 as adolescent/young adults, retaining their L1 well and speaking the L2 well. • Sequential bilinguals who acquire the majority language L2 as adolescent/young adults, loosing some proficiency in their L1 and speaking the L2 well. • Monolingual child acquirers of the majority language who have parents or grandparents who are speakers of a heritage language and they have strong cultural/emotional ties to the family language, but do not speak the family language at all. • Monolingual child acquirers of the majority language who have parents or grandparents who are speakers of a heritage language, but they have little (perhaps no) overt connection to the heritage language/culture.

4. Introduction: Facts (see Montrul 2008 and works cited within) • Heritage language grammatical performance/knowledge differs from monolingual norms to various degrees and in various domains. • Heritage Speakers often show ‘incomplete’ or partial knowledge as opposed to an utter lack of knowledge. • Heritage language competences can differ significantly from one another, whereby some are much more proficient holistically (and in various domains) than others.

5. Introduction: Why? • Attrition: Non-pathological attrition—the erosion of previously acquired linguistic properties—is often cited as the likely cause of these differences. • Incomplete Acquisition: Montrul and others offer another explanation of ‘ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT’ that, in a way, sidesteps the attrition problem: Heritage speaker children acquire the majority language, but fail to acquire the home minority language completely.

6. Introduction: Assessing Previous ‘Whys’ • Without longitudinal data, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate a posteriori between attrition and incomplete acquisition since they both have similar consequences for heritage language competence. • Both attrition and incomplete acquisition make explicit and implicit assumptions about the type of input to which heritage speakers are exposed.

7. Introduction: Emerging Questions (a) Is SOME of the ‘incompleteness’ of heritage speaker knowledge due to differences (dialectal, contact convergence/leveling, etc.) in the input TYPE they receive (i.e. not amount)? (b) If so, (how) can this be differentiated from outcomes as a result of true ‘incomplete acquisition’ (which subsumes attrition)? (c) Should it just be subsumed under the label ‘incomplete acquisition’?

8. INCOMPLETE ACQUISTION

9. Incomplete Acquisition: A Broad Definition “In my view, incomplete acquisition and L1 attrition are specific cases of language loss across generations. What I broadly refer to as incomplete acquisition (for lack of a better term) is a mature linguistic state, THE OUTCOME OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THAT IS NOT COMPLETE OR ATTRITION IN CHILDHOOD. Incomplete acquisition occurs in childhood when some specific properties of the language do not have a chance to reach age-appropriate levels of proficiency after intense exposure to the L2 begins.” (Montrul, 2008).

10. Incomplete Acquisition: What is included and what is not? • Does the broad definition include ‘incompleteness’ delimited by input differences? YES, if its main focus is that of a comparative outcome, then any type of divergence from the established comparative norm qualifies as ‘incomplete’. This does not mean that all causes of ‘incomplete acquisition’ are thus assumed to be the same. Input differences would merely qualify as one contributing factor to the same outcome. Maybe? . . . butfor those who fail to see the ‘incompleteness’ in such acquisition outcomes, the label is misleading (for some properties, one is talking about the complete acquisition of properties that are dialectally different). Although this amounts to a terminological difference, there are many sociolinguistic implications that such a label ignores. “Incomplete acquisition occurs in childhood, when some specific properties of the language do not have a chance to reach age-appropriate levels of proficiency AFTER INTENSE EXPOSURE TO THE L2 BEGINS.” (Montrul, 2008).

11. Incomplete Acquisition: Differentiating the sources of the same outcome • Attrition:tends to not affect the core grammar (e.g. narrow syntactic knowledge). • Incomplete Acquisition: can affect the core grammar as well (representationally and in the sense that some of the related syntactic properties were never fully acquired), but vestigial knowledge is still expected (increased variability/optionality at least at certain proficiency levels). Greatest effects, however, at interfaces. • Input Differences: if input does not provide the triggers for particular grammatical properties, then we should see clear effects in the narrow syntax of these properties, resulting in, at best, chance knowledge of these properties and no production.

12. Incomplete Acquisition: A Narrower Definition (Pires and Rothman 2008; to appear) Incomplete Acquisition: is the outcome of child bilingual language acquisition that is comparatively different from normal monolingual acquisition when the input provides the triggers for full convergence of the properties being comparatively examined. This would then subsume attrition and much of what is considered already considered ‘incomplete’ acquisition. Missing-Input Competence Divergence: is the outcome of child heritage bilingual language acquisition that is comparatively different from ‘normal’ monolingual acquisition when the input DOES NOT provide the triggers for full convergence of the properties being examined.

13. Incomplete Acquisition: The Power of a Label • Although the outcomes are the same, there are important reasons to assign different labels on linguistic and sociolinguistic grounds: For the latter case, the word ‘incomplete’ is misleading as there is nothing ‘incomplete’ about the lack of convergence on properties whose triggers are absent from the input available to heritage speakers. • If so, this requires a re-evaluation of why monolingual baselines are used when heritage speakers do not receive the same input: how could the outcomes be the same? • To call this case incomplete acquisition has important sociolinguistic consequences; it would mean that language contact-dialects which are emerging, if not established varieties already, are somehow inherently ‘incomplete’ as opposed to simply different. • Since this is not limited to properties in contact dialects, but also obtains due to differences in monolingual vernacular dialects (as opposed to standard) (e.g. Rothman 2007; Pires and Rothman to appear), such a label would also apply to monolinguals who lack particular knowledge compared to a normative sample (always an educated one), even though that is the only variety they speak.

14. Diachronic Change and Heritage Language Acquisition

15. Diachronic Change and HS Acquisition • Language change is a natural phenomenon. • In the case of contact situations, the process is accelerated and shifts occur in the direction of the dominant language (Romaine 1988, 1995; Labov 1994. 2001). • In all cases, language change occurs on the basis of incomplete acquisition in a sense; first at the level of the input available to children who grammaticalize/solidified the changes as they naturally acquire the new forms (see Lightfoot 1999 and others).

16. Diachronic Change and HS Acquisition • General Implications for Heritage Speaker acquisition: The emergence of new varieties in contact situations means that the input heritage speakers are exposed to is likely to be grammatically different than that of monolinguals, at least in particular domains. Such differences are not likely to be uniform between Heritage Languages (Spanish vs. Russian, Portuguese and Arabic in the US), nor will all cases of contact be the same, even between the same two languages (Spanish contact outcomes in Chicago are likely different than in LA, New York, Miami, etc.). Under all accounts of acquisition (as logic dictates), one can only acquire the variety of the language one is exposed to. (This is compatible for different reasons with cognitive and socio approaches.)

17. Diachronic Change and HS Acquisition • This scenario makes the study of Heritage Language Acquisitiona promising locus for studying empirically the latent acquisition predictions of diachronic proposals that are complicated by monolingual recovery of ‘lost’ properties via schooling. • Additionally, it highlights the possibility that SOME of the domains for which Heritage Speakers show a lack of knowledge compared to monolingual counterparts is best understood as resulting from differences in the environmental input they receive (as opposed to attrition, for example). • In such a case, the fact that they are not educated in the Heritage Language would mean that they have no recourse to recover/acquire some properties via exposure to the standard dialect (and/or schooling).

18. Diachronic Change and HS Acquisition • Rothman (2007) sought to test this hypothesis examining the syntactic and semantic knowledge of inflected infinitives in heritage speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, comparing their competence to native educated Brazilian monolingual controls and advanced L2 learners. • Pires and Rothman (2008, to appear) looked at the same properties (with a modified protocol) in monolingual Brazilian Portuguese children from the ages of 6-18 in an effort to corroborate Rothman’s (2007) conclusions. • Pires and Rothman (in press) used the modified methodologies from Rothman (2007) by testing European Portuguese heritage speakers, since there is no question that all dialects of European Portuguese actively have inflected infinitives.

19. TWO EXAMPLE STUDIES

20. Verbal Paradigm of Portuguese Normal Infinitive

21. Uninflected Infinitives • Portuguese has two types of infinitives: Non-finite Morphological Infinitives: Falar/Beber/Sair • Have no tense/mood specification nor do they have person/number specifications. • Subject to properties of obligatory control • Cannot be used as matrix clause predicates, incompatible with the complementizer ‘que’ • Can appear as embedded questions and relative clauses • Possible with A-movement only (subject raising and passives, but NOT wh-movement and topicalization)

22. Inflected Infinitives • Have no tense/mood specification, but they do have person/number specifications (Raposo 1987, Quicoli 1996, Pires 2006) • Subject to properties of non-obligatory control (Pires 2001, 2006) • Cannot be used as matrix clause predicates, incompatible with the complementizer ‘que’ • Cannot appear as embedded questions and relative clauses • Possible with A’-movement only (wh-movement and topicalization, but not subject raising and passives)

23. Non-finite vs. Psuedo-finite * Obligatory control restricts interpretation *Non-obligatory control restricts interpretation - tense/mood + person/number - matrix predicates - after ‘que’ - A-movement + A’-movement - (+non)obligatory control + compliments of PP +*compliments of factive and epistemic predicates - compliment of volitional predicate - tense/mood - person/number - matrix predicates - after ‘que’ + A-movement - A’-movement + obligatory control + compliments of PP +*compliments of factive and epistemic predicates + compliment of volitional predicate

24. Finite vs. Psuedo-Finite - tense/mood + person/number - matrix predicates - after ‘que’ - A-movement + A’-movement + compliments of PP +compliments of factive and epistemic predicates - compliment of volitional predicate + tense/mood + person/number + matrix predicates + after ‘que’ - A-movement + A’-movement - compliments of PP +compliments of factive and epistemic predicates - compliment of volitional predicate

25. Why study Inflected Infinitives? • Pires (2006) (see also Lightfoot 1991 and others) maintain that the grammatical properties of these forms are no longer part of BP colloquial dialects. • If exposure to/education in the standard dialect is a deterministic variable, then studying adult HS BP knowledge: • Provides an empirical test case for the diachronic proposal • Can demonstrate nicely how some HS and monolingual competence differences are delimited by input one might otherwise take for granted is available to both.

26. Rothman (2007) • Rothman and Iverson (2007) tested for the syntactic distribution of inflected infinitives (i.e. how they differ from finite forms and regular infinitival forms) and preformed a Context Sentence Matching experiment, which tested for properties of control (Hornstein, 1999; Pires 2001, 2006) that differentiate inflected from uninflected infinitives. They demonstrated across a GJT (with correction), that advanced adult L2 learners of BP and educated native monolinguals had full syntactic and semantic knowledge of inflected infinitives to the same degree. • Rothman (2007) used the same tests to gauge BP Heritage Speaker performance and thus knowledge of inflected infinitives.

27. Rothman (2007) • L2 AS Participants (n=17) • NS Participants (n=19) (from Rothman and Iverson 2007) • HS Participants (n=11): • All were highly proficient speakers • None received ample formal education in BP (although one did attend one year of school in Brazil) • 8 of 11 were born in Brazil (all moved to the US before 8 most before 4; range= 1-8) • Both parents were Brazilian and BP was the preferred language of familial communication

28. GJT with Correction (n=5 each type) • Inflected infinitives as complements of factive matrix verbs • Inflected infinitives as complements of declarative matrix verbs • *Inflected & uninflected infinitives as embedded interrogatives / relative clause • *Inflected infinitives in matrix clauses • *Inflected infinitives w/the complementizer ‘que’

29. Results

30. Individual Results

31. Context Sentence Matching Task (n=10) Ellipsis Contexts Sloppy reading = Uninflected, *Inflected Strict reading = *Uninflected, Inflected Spilt Antecedent Interpretations: with Pro= not grammatical with pro=grammatical

32. Results

33. Individual Results

34. Discussion • For the most part, BP Heritage Speakers have no knowledge of the syntax and semantics of inflected infinitives. In many cases, it appears as if they treat them as finite forms, allowing them in matrix clauses, after ‘que’ and as embedded interrogatives. • So, they do not allow agreement morphology to specify person and number independently from tense. • As expected, they have full knowledge of uninflected infinitival use (syntactic distribution and semantic interpretations). • These results are consistent with the diachronic proposals of loss of inflected infinitives that cannot be verified by testing adult BP speakers (see Pires and Rothman, to appear, for how this bears out in child monolingual BP) • Provides evidence in favor of the position that some competence differences between monolingual adults and heritage speakers has to do with input type.

35. But….. • Is it possible that inflected infinitives are acquired and attrited? • Is it possible that they are available in the input, but for some reason not acquired (due to the majority language influence that does not allow person/number to be distinct from tense?). • If so, why do they demonstrate no knowledge as opposed to partial knowledge?

36. Pires and Rothman (2008) • Tested European Portuguese Heritage speakers (n=16) to a group of native EP monolinguals (n=10) • Modified version of Rothman’s (2007) tasks. • GJCT (adjusted for dialect and additional properties added such as compliments of PP and more contexts with finite morphology to ensure they make a three way contrast: between finite forms, inflected and uninflected infinitives) • Context Matching Task : context for obligatory and non-obligatory c-commanding antecedents were added.

37. GJT with Correction (n=4 each type)

38. Context Interpretation Task (n=3)

39. Discussion • The HS performed exactly like the native controls at the group and individual level • Like the BP HSs they were not educated in Portuguese. • This evidence is further corroboration for Rothman’s (2007) conclusions (a) HSs seem to be a good experimental test case for dynamic diachronic change proposals (b) incomplete acquisition outcomes in particular domains can result from the complete acquisition of properties different in the input to which HSs are exposed.

40. Implications and Future Direction

41. What About the Input? • Viewed purely as an outcome of comparative difference, the term ‘incomplete acquisition’ already covers this. • However, this label is not clearly appropriate for the present case in that it does not sit well with the established idea that….. Incomplete acquisition occurs in childhood, when some specific properties of the language do not have a chance to reach age-appropriate levels of proficiency AFTER INTENSE EXPOSURE TO THE L2 BEGINS.” (Montrul, in press). In this case the “intense exposure to the L2” is not the deterministic factor that results in the outcome of comparative incompleteness, but HSs who largely lack formal training in the heritage language have no way to recover the properties lost in colloquial dialects that form their primary linguistic data.

42. What About the Input? Everyone grows up hearing many different languages. Sometimes they are called ‘dialects’ or ‘stylistic variants’ or whatever, but they are really different languages. It is just that they are so close to each other that we don’t bother calling them different languages. So everyone grows up in a multilingual environment. Sometimes the multilingual environment involves systems are so unlike that you call them different languages. But that is just a question of degree; it is not a question of yes or no. (Chomsky, 2000:59) • What about literacy/schooling? • If one way that we come to acquire different grammars (stylistic variants, registers, dialects) is via exposure to standard dialects imparted in schooling, then it stands to reason that HS will lack knowledge of the properties that form part of those dialects. • Not differentiating between the monolingual dialects we are tapping or assessing, some HS competence differences will emerge, not because of attrition and incomplete acquisition as a result of ‘intense exposure to the L2’, but because vernacular input does not have all the properties exemplified that we expect in the competence of monolinguals who are in fact multidialectal speakers of their native language. • So, SOME comparatively incomplete knowledge can result in HS not having the same internal grammars (not being able to tap a different stylistic grammar) at their disposal to accomplish some experimental tasks like educated monolinguals.

43. What About the Input? • Pires and Rothman (2008; to appear) highlight how using a criteria of outcome difference compared to educated monolingual competence expectations forces us to use the label incomplete acquisition for cases of monolinguals that fail to acquire these structures as well (uneducated BP speakers should also shown similar patterns, yet they speak only Portuguese). They offer the label: input-delimited competence divergence for this case.

44. What About the Input? • This is NOT to suggest that attrition or true incomplete acquisition do not conspire to explain many (most?) of the differences observed in Heritage Speaker competence. • Input-delimited competence divergence cannot explain obvious optionality and variability. It cannot account for gradient knowledge correlated to overall proficiency.

45. What About the Input? • To be fair, Portuguese as a heritage language is in a privileged position to tease apart these variables (considering the dialectal differences within the monolingual forms). • Although this would be much more difficult for Spanish, it is not impossible. • Trying to map the properties of the emerging US dialects that serve as the primary linguistic data of Heritage Speakers is a necessary first step. E.G. Do HSs use subject pronouns differently due to individual attrition of discourse pragmatic features (for processing or whatever reasons), does intense exposure to English arrest the pragmatic development of HS Spanish despite input that exemplifies otherwise or has English influence already caused a shift in US emerging Spanish dialects themselves such that the input provided to HSs leaves no other possible outcome than comparative divergence as compared to monolinguals?

46. What About the Input? • Future research that does just that will benefit from tapping resources from different sub-fields of empirical linguistic inquiry such as diachronic, sociolinguistic and formal acquisition methodologies. • Gathering production corpora from the actual sources of HS input (across several generations of contact if possible), as well as empirically testing the Spanish use/competence of the properties we investigate from the input sources (not taking for granted that the sources continue to provide input that matches what is known of monolingual varieties) can help us to determine the best source for different instances of “incomplete acquisition”. • This is especially important for interface properties like pronominal subject distribution, since: we do not fully understand how they are grammatically represented or come to be acquired even under optimal conditions, they seem to be subject to 1st generation attrition ( rapidly and pervasively). • While grammatical attrition for 1st generation speakers is largely thought to be rare, if occurring at all, for narrow syntactic properties, it might be possible (cf. Cazzoli-Goeta, Rothman and Young-Scholten 2008; submitted; Domínguez, in press; Domínguexz and Rothman 2009; Pérez-Leroux et al. to appear; ).

47. What About the Input? • If we can identify the properties that have changed in emerging heritage languages, what does this mean for intervention? • Do we attempt to recover these properties through education? • Do we allow the natural process of language change to take place and embrace the differentness as opposed to incompleteness of emerging heritage language forms?

48. Thank you for enduring! Special thanks to: Martha Young-Scholten for the invitation Thanks to colleagues who have offered significant feedback and in some cases helped in data collection (and whether or not I liked it!) Acirsio Pires Silvina Montrul Joyce Bruhn de Garavito Elena Valenzuela Laura Domínguez Martha Young-Scholten Marcela Cazzoli-Goeta Liliana Sánchez Masha Polinsky Kim Potowski Roumyana Slabakova Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes Bill VanPatten Glaúcia Silva And to my students without whose help I could not possibly do this: Michael Iverson, Tiffany Judy, Jeff Renaud, Lauren Reynolds, Gonzalo Campos, Jennifer Cabrelli-Amaro

49. Selected References CHOMSKY, N. (2000)The Architecture of Language. New Delhi: Oxford University Press • DOMÍNGUEZ. L. (in press). L1 attrition and modified input: Spanish in contact in two different communities • LIGHTFOOT, D. (1991). How to set parameters: Arguments from language change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. • LIGHTFOOT, D. (1999). The development of language: Acquisition, change and evolution. Oxford: Blackwell. • MONTRUL. S. (in press). Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism: Re-examining the Age Factor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. • PIRES, A. (2001) The syntax of gerunds and infinitives: Subjects, Case and control. PhD Thesis, University of Maryland, College Park. • PIRES, A. (2006). The minimalist syntax of defective domains: Gerunds and infinitives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. • PIRES, A, & ROTHMAN, J. (in press). Disentangling Sources of Incomplete Acquisition: An Explanation for Competence Divergence across Heritage Grammars. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13, 3 • PIRES, A. & ROTHMAN, J. (to appear). Acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese in late childhood: Implications for syntactic theory and language change. In A. Pires & J. Rothman (Eds.), Minimalist inquiries into child and adult language acquisition: Case studies across Portuguese. Berlin/New York: Mouton DeGruyter. • POLINSKY, M. (2006). Incomplete acquisition: American Russian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 14, 191-262. • QUICOLI, A. C. (1996) Inflection and parametric variation: Portuguese vs. Spanish. In R. Freidin (Ed.), Current issues in comparative grammar (pp. 46-80). Dordrecht: Kluwer. • RAPOSO, E. (1987) Case theory and Infl-to-Comp: The inflected infinitive in European Portuguese. Linguistic Inquiry,18, 85-109. • ROTHMAN, J. (2007). Heritage speaker competence differences, language change and input type: Inflected infinitives in heritage Brazilian Portuguese. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(4), 359-389. • ROTHMAN, J. and IVERSON, M. (2007) To inflect or not to inflect is the question indeed: Infinitives in non-native Portuguese. The Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 6 (2), 5-30.