Maria Polinsky

Reanalysis in adult heritage language: A case for attrition

This study presents and analyzes the comprehension of relative clauses in child and adult speakers of Russian, comparing monolingual controls with Russian heritage speakers (HSs) who are English-dominant. Monolingual and bilingual children demonstrate full adultlike mastery of relative clauses. Adult HSs, however, are significantly different from the monolingual adult controls and from the child HS group. This divergent performance indicates that the adult heritage grammar is not a product of the fossilization of child language. Instead, it suggests that forms existing in the baseline undergo gradual attrition over the life span of a HS. This result is consistent with observations on narrative structure in child and adult HSs (Polinsky, 2008b ). Evidence from word order facts suggests that relative clause reanalysis in adult HSs cannot be attributed to transfer from English.

Heritage Languages and Their Speakers: Opportunities and Challenges for Linguistics

Abstract In this paper, we bring to the attention of the linguistic community recent research on heritage languages. Shifting linguistic attention from the model of a monolingual speaker to the model of a multilingual speaker is important for the advancement of our understanding of the language faculty. Native speaker competence is typically the result of normal first language acquisition in an environment where the native language is dominant in various contexts, and learners have extensive and continuous exposure to it and opportunities to use it. Heritage speakers present a different case: they are bilingual speakers of an ethnic or immigrant minority language, whose first language often does not reach native-like attainment in adulthood. We propose a set of connections between heritage language studies and theory construction, underscoring the potential that this population offers for linguistic research. We examine several important grammatical phenomena from the standpoint of their representation in heritage languages, including case, aspect, and other interface phenomena. We discuss how the questions raised by data from heritage speakers could fruitfully shed light on current debates about how language works and how it is acquired under different conditions. We end with a consideration of the potential competing factors that shape a heritage language system in adulthood.

Processing of Grammatical Gender in a Three-Gender System: Experimental Evidence from Russian

Four experiments investigated the effect of grammatical gender on lexical access in Russian. Adjective–noun pairs were presented auditorily, using a cued-shadowing technique in which subjects must repeat the second word (the target noun), following adjectives that are either concordant or discordant with the nouns gender. Experiment 1 demonstrates gender priming with unambiguous adjectives and phonologically transparent masculine or feminine nouns. Experiment 2 examines priming for transparent nouns against a neutral baseline (possible only for feminines and neuters), revealing that priming is due primarily to inhibition from discordant gender. Experiment 3 demonstrates gender priming with phonologically opaque masculine and feminine nouns. Experiment 4 returns to transparent masculine and feminine nouns with a different kind of baseline, using three versions of a single word root (prost—simple, in the feminine adjectival form prostaja, masculine adjectival form prostoj, and the adverbial form prosto ), and shows that gender can also facilitate lexical access, at least for feminine nouns. We conclude that Russian listeners can exploit gender agreement cues “on-line,” helping them to predict the identity of an upcoming word.

Violations of information structure: An electrophysiological study of answers to wh-questions

This study investigates brain responses to violations of information structure in wh-question-answer pairs, with particular emphasis on violations of focus assignment in it-clefts (It was the queen that silenced the banker). Two types of ERP responses in answers to wh-questions were found. First, all words in the focus-marking (cleft) position elicited a large positivity (P3b) characteristic of sentence-final constituents, as did the final words of these sentences, which suggests that focused elements may trigger integration effects like those seen at sentence end. Second, the focusing of an inappropriate referent elicited a smaller, N400-like effect. The results show that comprehenders actively use structural focus cues and discourse-level restrictions during online sentence processing. These results, based on visual stimuli, were different from the brain response to auditory focus violations indicated by pitch-accent [Hruska, C., Steinhauer, K., Alter, K., & Steube, A. (2000). ERP effects of sentence accents and violations of the information structure. In Poster presented at the 13th annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing, San Diego, CA.], but similar to brain responses to newly introduced discourse referents [Bornkessel, I., Schlesewsky, M., & Friederici, A. (2003). Contextual information modulated initial processes of syntactic integration: the role of inter- versus intrasentential predictions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 29, 871-882.].

Word Class Distinctions in an Incomplete Grammar

The acquisition of word classes and their distinctions has long attracted researchers of language, and Ruth Berman’s contribution to this topic has played an important role in first language acquisition literature (Berman 1985, 1986, and particularly 1988).1 This paper examines the knowledge of word classes under incomplete acquisition, a previously uninvestigated area of inquiry. Incomplete acquisition is defined here as the acquisition of L1 by a healthy child who starts out either monolingual or dominant in L1 but switches to another language (L2) as primary before age 10.2 Such speakers, who end up controlling two or more languages but are dominant in the language they acquired later (L2), are referred to as “incomplete learners,” or alternatively, as “heritage speakers” (Valdes, 2000).3

Defining an “ideal” heritage speaker: Theoretical and methodological challenges | Reply to peer commentaries

“Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its (the speech community’s) language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of this language in actual performance.” (Chomsky 1965: 3)

Non-canonical agreement is canonical

This paper examines the phenomenon of cross-clausal agreement, where the controller (trigger) of agreement and the agreement target seem to be in distinct local domains. It is argued that most instances of cross-clausal agreement can be reduced to properly local agreement and are thus unproblematic for theories of agreement. A typology of such apparent violations is proposed. In addition, the paper considers a more challenging instance of cross-clausal agreement where the controller and the target are indeed in distinct local domains (Long-Distance Agreement, LDA). It is demonstrated that LDA involves the relationship between the periphery of the embedded clause and the embedding verb. The attested cases of LDA argue for the syntactic conception of agreement that closely resembles government.

Processing of Grammatical Gender in Normal and Aphasic Speakers of Russian

Sensitivity to grammatical gender was investigated in 22 Russian-speaking aphasic patients, compared with young controls. Experiment 1 used a cued shadowing paradigm to assess gender priming (facilitation and/or inhibition of lexical access by a prenominal modifier with congruent, incongruent or neutral gender). Experiment 2 used a grammaticality judgment paradigm with similar stimuli. Normals showed significant interactions between gender and priming in Experiment 1 (facilitation for feminine and neuter nouns but not for masculines) and Experiment 2 (larger effects of context on feminine and neuter nouns) that we interpret as a Markedness Effect. Patients showed significant priming in Experiment 1 and above-chance accuracy in Experiment 2, but failed to show reduced effects for the least-marked masculine gender (the Markedness Effect) in either experiment. Context effects were not related to specific aphasic symptoms or subtypes in either experiment. However, canonical correlation revealed differential effects of specific aphasic symptoms on judgment accuracy (false alarms vs. misses). We conclude that knowledge of grammatical gender is spared in Russian aphasics, but gender processing is deviant. A possible model to account for these differences is discussed.

Heritage language and linguistic theory.

This paper discusses a common reality in many cases of multilingualism: heritage speakers, or unbalanced bilinguals, simultaneous or sequential, who shifted early in childhood from one language (their heritage language) to their dominant language (the language of their speech community). To demonstrate the relevance of heritage linguistics to the study of linguistic competence more broadly defined, we present a series of case studies on heritage linguistics, documenting some of the deficits and abilities typical of heritage speakers, together with the broader theoretical questions they inform. We consider the reorganization of morphosyntactic feature systems, the reanalysis of atypical argument structure, the attrition of the syntax of relativization, and the simplification of scope interpretations; these phenomena implicate diverging trajectories and outcomes in the development of heritage speakers. The case studies also have practical and methodological implications for the study of multilingualism. We conclude by discussing more general concepts central to linguistic inquiry, in particular, complexity and native speaker competence.

Resumption Still Does Not Rescue Islands

RESUMPTION STILL DOES NOT RESCUE ISLANDS Dustin Heestand Harvard University Ming Xiang University of Chicago Maria Polinsky Harvard University act x has been accomplished in a situation s (e.g., do), and (b) a separate predicate expressing that a given act x is of a particular type in a situation s (e.g., juggling). This semantic consequence, in turn, converges with well-known morphosyntactic evidence that a verb like juggle is syntactically derived from a more complex structure, one akin to a complex predicate like do juggling (e.g., Hale and Keyser 1993, Kratzer 1996). Despite these prior results, the claim that simple verbs like juggle are, at a greater level of abstraction, semantically and syntactically complex remains controversial (Fodor and Lepore 1999, Horvath and Siloni 2002). The fact that sentences like (10a) must be seen as having readings akin to (10b) provides some novel, additional support for this now popular, though still controversial, claim.