Volume 5, Issue 2 - Special Issue: Maintaining Language and Developing Multilingualism

This paper analyses data from a multiple-method study exploring intergenerational heritage language practices in Spanish-speaking families in Britain. The paper harnesses interdisciplinary perspectives (human geography, childhood studies and socio-linguistics) to explore families' accounts of their intergenerational language practices within the home specifically, due to the dearth of work in this area in Britain. There is an urgent need to examine the multiple intersections between language, home and identity, particularly from intergenerational and/or life course perspectives. Currently, little is known about the ways in which members of migrant families evaluate their heritage language practices socially and linguistically in the home in European contexts, or how their heritage language practices are informed by their identities (often multiple) in European migrant-receiving countries. Specifically, the paper explores: the comparative geographical patterns of Spanish in Britain, using data from Census 2011; how and why children's and parents' heritage language practices differ in the home space (and beyond); and the ways in which these practices are rooted in senses of identity and belonging.

By way of migration, large numbers of German-speaking settlers arrived in Pennsylvania between roughly 1700 and 1750. Pennsylvania German, as a distinct variety, developed through levelling processes from L1 varieties of these migrants who came mainly from the southwestern regions of the German speaking area. Pennsylvania German is still spoken today by specific religious groups (primarily Amish and Menonnite groups) for many of whom it is an identity marker. My paper focuses on those Pennsylvania Germans who are not part of these religious groups but have the same migration history. Due to their being closer to the cultural values of American mainstream society, they were integrated into it, and during the 20th century their use of Pennsylvania German was continually diminishing. A revival of this heritage language has occurred over the past c. three decades, including language courses offered at community colleges, public libraries, etc., where ethnic Pennsylvania Germans wish to (re-)learn the language of their grandparents. Written Pennsylvania German data from four points in time between the 1860s and the 1990s were analysed in this study. Based on these linguistic analyses, differences between the data sets are shown that point towards a diachronic change in the language contact situation of Pennsylvania German speakers. Sociolinguistic and extralinguistic factors are considered that influence the role of PG and make their speakers heritage speakers much in the sense of recent immigrant heritage speakers, although delayed by 200 years.

Language is a very dynamic entity, so language change is inevitable, especially in contact settings. Most contact studies are based on recordings of spontaneous speech. Useful as this has been, such data cannot tell us everything: for one thing, they do not tell us much about the degree to which the attested changes are entrenched in bilinguals' linguistic competence, and whether the changes are manifested mostly in bilingual speech, i.e. when the speakers are codeswitching at the same time. This paper aims to look for converging evidence , a fairly recent notion (Schönefeld, 2011:1), by employing two experimental techniques to explore a single issue: Dutch influence on the word order of immigrant Turkish in the Netherlands. More specifically, the focus is on the position of the matrix verb in complex clauses. Dutch and Turkish differ in their word orders, specifically in the position of the verb. Although Turkish can be claimed to have a relatively free word order, it is canonically verb-final. Dutch, on the other hand, is a verb-medial language, at least in main clauses. This study discusses findings as to whether immigrant Turkish verb positioning differs from TR-Turkish practice, and whether the differences are more pronounced when speakers are in a bilingual mode. It studies data from three groups of participants; 1) Bilinguals in bilingual mode, 2) Bilinguals in monolingual mode and 3) Monolinguals. One method employs elicited ‘production’ data reflecting bilingual ‘performance’ and the other one ‘judgments’ reflecting ‘comprehension’ or ‘linguistic knowledge’ (i.e. converging evidence ). Unconventionalities, changes in preferences and frequency differences in these data are interpreted subtypes of a contact-induced change in this paper. Interestingly, the data from the two different sources did not converge completely: for the structures caught up in change, the ‘judgment’ data showed full acceptability of both the changed and the non/changed structures, while the ‘production’ data showed a clear preference for the former. The paper finally focuses on the question what kind of change mechanism may be responsible for the changes. The findings point to restructuring (Heine & Kuteva), which overlaps with Johanson's frequential copying and Matras' ‘ other outcomes of pivot matching ’. In conclusion, the results show that word order in Dutch Turkish is changing.

The present study examines five types of dative constructions in heritage Spanish in the Netherlands. Elicited production data from first generation bilinguals and heritage speakers were analyzed and compared to those of monolingual controls. The results indicate that the first generation is not different from the monolingual baseline in their use of datives. The heritage group showed a remarkable subdivision: those with a history of relatively high exposure to Spanish in childhood, move away significantly from the use of dative experiencers and datives of interest, while they are native-like regarding the other constructions. Those who grew up with only one Spanish speaking parent and/or did not productively use Spanish in childhood, however, appear to avoid or restructure all dative constructions. Moreover, the observed innovations correlate with speech rate. It is hypothesized that, whereas influence of Dutch may be one of the factors at play, particularly in the case of dative experiencers and datives of interest, a principal underlying factor to all observed innovations is a Spanish-internal optimization mechanism of omitting dative verbal clitics, which serves to free up processing resources in the less-automatized systems of those who had low childhood exposure to Spanish.

This article introduces a measuring method, with which linguistic deficits of first-year students can be recognized. Many problems which lead to extended study times, to difficulties or even to giving up studies are linguistically induced. The testing tools introduced here focus on the (written) language skills of first-years students of degree programs for future teachers. The aim is to precisely identify linguistic deficits and to subsequently develop and offer training programs alongside studies. In the first test-stage modified C-tests are used to allow a general assessment of students' academic language skills. In the second stage the students have to deal with a writing task on an educational topic, which forms the basis for describing the students' linguistic deficits in qualitative terms. This study is based on the test data of 2891 students in teacher-training programs from three different universities in North Rhine-Westphalia and provides first results, especially with regard to a differentiated comparison of the language skills of students with and without migration background.

Over the last decades, the amount of research on heritage language (HL) use and maintenance has increased exponentially, and a picture is beginning to emerge of the developmental patterns that are seen to take place and of the main factors that impinge on HL use and maintenance in increasingly multilingual settings. The present paper aims at providing a short account of relevant findings in this area and situating the studies in this special issue against that background. More specifically, we will consider the difficulties associated with HL maintenance at home, the impact of the different linguistic and cultural experiences HL learners go through on their identity, cross-linguistic influence between HLs and other languages present in the community, and issues related to HL education, particularly teacher language competencies.