The historical sociolinguistics of heritage languages Joseph
Salmons with Joshua Bousquette, Christine Evans, Benjamin Frey,
Alyson Sewell, Samantha Litty, Mark Livengood, Felecia Lucht,
Daniel Ntzel, Michael Putnam, Miranda Wilkerson, Brent Allen and
many others 7th HiSoN Summer School, Metochi, Greece August
2013
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Today: Issues and case studies Questions from last time?
Language shift and substrate influences Demographics of rapid shift
Structural effects and how they get transferred Complexity in
heritage languages Syntax Morphology Your questions 2
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SHIFT AND ITS EFFECTS 3
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German in Wisconsin, Hustisford 4
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All across the U.S., hordes of immigrants are chattering away
in their native language and have no intention of learning English
the all-but-official language of the United States . They are being
enabled to defy the age-old custom of immigrants to our shores who
made it one of their first priorities to learn to speak English and
to teach their offspring to do likewise. It was a case of sink or
swim. If you couldnt speak English, you couldnt get by, go to
school, get a job, or become a citizen and vote.
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Were these true of Wisconsin Germans? Did they always learn
English? One of the first priorities? Who were monolinguals? What
was their basic demographic profile? Were they economically
marginal? Were they Isolated in rural areas or in neighborhoods in
town? How did they fit into the social structure? Did they belong
to separate churches? Did they attend school? If so, how did they
not learn English?
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Punchline Eastern Wisconsin, esp. the village of Hustisford, is
a place where monolinguals might be expected to be marginal:
Founded by Anglo-Americans (Yankees) Always had clear and elite
English-speaking presence Yet evidence strongly suggests a
profoundly bilingual community that did not exclude Germans.
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1910 Census: Else Kobow
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Hustisford 1910: Some basics LanguageKnew English96576% Only
German31024% Monolinguals GenderM12741% F18359% Place of
birthUS10835% Foreign-born20265% Immigration date Pre-188011159%
Unknown179% 9
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1910 German Monolinguals 10
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1871: Resolution that all subjects in the church school be
taught in German 1872: Permission granted allowing instruction in
reading and writing in English for the upper grades of the school
1893: First mention of a sermon delivered in English (isolated
event) 11
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Names from confirmation classes 1899 Lillie Stewart 1901
Adelheide Stewart 1911 Walther Dyer 1913 Chester Randall 1918 Mabel
Baldwin
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Home Language 13 CategoriesDescriptions 1. Exclusively
Monolingual German All adult members of the household were reported
German monolinguals. 2. German-Speaking German was the only common
language among adult members of the household. 3. Presumed
Bilingual At least one member of the household was a reported
German monolingual. 4. Possibly Bilingual German was likely spoken
alongside English although no member of the household was a
reported German monolingual. This category represents potential
bilinguals as based on kinships with reported German monolinguals.
5. Presumed Monolingual English All adult members of the household
were presumed English monolinguals.
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Where did they live? 14
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15
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Imposition and borrowing Speaker preserves components of L1 in
using L2, imposing features of L1 on L2. Typically more stable
components, like phonetics, phonology, core syntax. Speaker
transfers features of L2 into L1, borrowing them. Typically less
stable components, especially vocabulary. 16
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Table 1: Apparent substrate features 17
FEATUREEXAMPLESOURCESTRAJECTORYAWARENESS Imposition Final fortition
beer[s] German, Dutch, Polish spreadingstigmatized earlier
Stoppingdem, dere, dose many immigrant languages recessive
stigmatized in most groups Pluralia tantum a scissorsGerman,
Dutchstableapparently not Discourse marking come here once German
(Dutch) stableapparently not Verb- particle wanna come with?
Pan-Germanicspreadinglittle or none Borrowing Content lexicon brat,
berliner, oma, kaput, dummkopf German recessive, a few spreading
yes Tag questions ainna?, not? various lgs, these ex German
recessiveyes Exclamatio ns etc. ach ya, halts maul, sieh mal, macht
nichts Germanrecessiveyes
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18 Household Language Categories 19101920 N%N% 1. Exclusively
Monolingual German 4913%113% 2. German-Speaking4011%216% 3.
Presumed Bilingual12834%349% 4. Possibly Bilingual13235%27773% 5.
Presumed Monolingual English 267%328% TOTAL375100%37899% Table 2:
Rapid shift
Final laryngeal contrast 23 American English: bed bet bed: more
glottal pulsing, longer vowel (widely seen as the most important
for voicing in American English.) bet: no pulsing, shorter vowel
Many other cues German: Bad = bat Bad bath, bat asked for
3.sg.pret. Likely complete neutralization, but Kharlamov (2012)
Wisc. English: incipient neutralization? Earlier discussions have
been about phonetics, not contrast.
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Southwestern chee[z]e (Richland Center) 24
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Southeastern cheese /z/ > [s] (Muskego) 25
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Trading relations: Purnell et al. 26
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Change in cues, stable contrast in one eastern community
27
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Wisconsin immigration 28 More German More German Less German
Less German
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What about fortition? Brieflicher Sprach und Unterricht fuer
das Selbststudium Erwachsener: Englisch. von Dr. Carl van Dalen
"Ganz besonders haben sich Deutsche bei der Aussprache stimmhafter
[weicher] Endkonsonanten in Englischen zu ueberwachen. Im
hochdeutschen klingt Gelb wie gelp... Im Englischen jedoch werden
b,d,g,v,z,j, immer stimmhaft [weich] ausgesprochen also auch in
Auslaute. Es sind also sorgfaeltig zu unterscheiden: bound -- (baun
d), cub (koe b)"... 29
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Ahn "Aehnlich und doch ganz anders werden die, dem f, p
entsprechenden konsonanten hervorgebracht. Spreche ich w, b richtig
aus, so fuehlen zugleich die an den Kehlkopf gelegten
Fingerspitzen, dass der Kehlkopf leise erzittert. Dieses Erzittern
ruehrt her von den Schwingungen der in Kehlkopf angespannten Stimme
erzeugenden Stimmbaender. Ich hoere gleichzeitig mit w einen
dumpfen vokalischen Laut: ich hoere, dass diese Konsonanten
Stimmhaft sind. Ebenso stehen b,d,g, p,t,k sich gegenueber. Bei den
stimmhaften Konsonanten b,d,g fuehle ich das Erzittern des
Kehlkopfes, ich hoere die sie begleitende Stimme- bei den
Stimmlosen p,t,k dagegen nicht" 30
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Conclusions 31 Demographics of community formation: Examination
of households, neighborhoods, and institutions reveals late
monolingualism rapid shift from German to English. Historical
patterns of language use: ChildrenGerman or Yankeewere getting more
non-native adult input than native-English input. Leads to
German-influence English in the community. Doesnt stop after shift:
features introduced into the pool can take off later. CLASSIC
historical sociolinguistics case: Cant understand structural
without social, social without structural, past without present,
present without past.
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COMPLEXITY 32
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The point Common claim: Languages in contact, obsolescent
languages, heritage languages, creoles are all subject to
simplification or at most maintain existing complexity. Our
argument: Even an obsolescent heritage language in intense contact
in a community where many people havent spoken it in decades shows
clear increases in complexity. That holds, it seems, however you
define complexity. Even examples of simplification often have
unexpected explanations. 33
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A closely related point The rhetoric about contact languages of
virtually any sort creoles, heritage languages, obsolescent
languages is about deficiency: attrition, incomplete acquisition,
loss, not to mention interruption, lack, failure, absence,
inability, and on and on. But language is about human cognition and
were dealing with full and complete systems. DeGraff (2001:291):
Creoles are reflections of our (species-uniform and
species-specific) human biology, among the most beautiful and most
wonderful [forms that] have been, and are being, evolved 34
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Complexity Crystal (2003): Complexity includes both the formal
internal structuring of linguistic units and the psychological
difficulty in using or learning them. However, it has not yet
proved feasible to establish independent measures of complexity
defined in purely linguistic terms. Nettle (2012): The complexity
of different components of the grammars of human languages can be
quantified. For example, languages vary greatly in the size of
their phonological inventories, and in the degree to which they
make use of inflectional morphology. DeGraff (2001): Complexity is
no simple matter. Roberge (1994): warns us to avoid simplistic
hypotheses about contact and change. 35
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Some views on contact languages Boas argues that obsolescent
languages may simultaneously exhibit both simplifications and
preservation of linguistic structures. (2009:4-5) Isnt something
missing here? Complexification under language contact by additive
borrowing Trudgill (2010a:301-309, 2010b:20-24) high-contact,
long-term contact situations involving childhood language contact
are likely to lead to complexification through the addition of
features from other languages. 36
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Some testable points in here Has Wisconsin Heritage German
simplified over time? Or has it preserved complexity? Or has it
gained complexity? If the last, is it (only) by addition of
features from contact languages or dialects?
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NEW INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY Complementizer agreement in
Wisconsin Heritage German 38
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Complementizer agreement Standard German wenn du willst if you
want to.2sg wennihr wollt if yall want to.2pl Dialectal German
(esp. Southern, also W. Frisian, Dutch) wennst du willst if.2sgyou
want to.2sg wenntihr wollt if.2pl yall want to.2pl 39
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Complexification: New inflection In what sense is C-agr more
complex? Additional inflection Inflection is the one area where
everybody seems to agree that loss comes with contact. Where did it
come from? Probably present in a few input dialects, but certainly
not all; pops up all over West Germanic Sources Joshua Bousquette.
2013. Complementizer Agreement in Modern Varieties of West
Germanic: A model of reanalysis and renewal. Ph.D. dissertation,
UWMadison. Joshua Bousquette. Forthcoming. Complementizer Agreement
in Heritage Varieties of Wisconsin German. 40
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The point C-agr has developed independently Discontinuous
communities and different languages in Europe Diasporic communities
like the Siebenbrger communities in Transylvania and Cimbrian in
Italy C-agr in Wisconsin shares SOME similarities with Continental
varieties, but not ALL different morphological distribution (WI
restricted to 2-sg) Wisconsin attestations more closely resemble
one another; they do not directly match any specific input dialect,
which includes the dialects of their first generation ancestors
Speakers acquire C-agr in Wisconsin when their European ancestors
dialects did not have C-agr Independent, parallel development?
Result of dialect mixing? 41
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Example 1 Wennsdu rauchen dust If-you smoking do If you smoke
(Speaker J, Sheboygan, WI) 42
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Example 2 Wennsdu zu mein Haus kommst, dann kannst du Cake
haben. If you come to my house, then you can have cake. 43
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Kannst du mir sagen afsdu morgen komms? Can you tell me if you
will be arriving tomorrow? (Speaker R, Fond du Lac County, WI)
44
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Take home on C agreement Additional inflection, more synthetic.
More redundancy. Subject marking on complementizers and other
elements = non-prototypical inflection. Very incomplete paradigm.
Highly unlikely that it was in input dialect for most speakers.
Clearly no role for standard language (where this is very foreign)
45
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NULL ELEMENTS Multiple gap constructions in Wisconsin Heritage
German 46
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Parasitic gaps: English vs. German 47 [Which book] 1 did you
sell t 1 without reading pg 1 ? Sheboygan 1 is a city that people
like t 1 when they visit pg 1. Welches Buch hast Du verkauft, ohne
es/*pg zu lesen? Which book did you sell t 1, without it to read
Sheboygan ist eine Stadt, die Leute gern haben, wenn sie sie/*pg
besuchen. Sheboygan 1 is a city that people like t 1 when they it
visit.
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Gaps, dependencies in heritage lgs 48 heritage speakers have
difficulty maintaining syntactic dependencies pertaining to a more
abstract level of syntactic representation, what was traditionally
termed deep structure. Especially low-proficiency heritage speakers
have significant difficulties producing null elements. Polinsky
& Kagan (2007:382) heritage speakers seem to have difficulty in
establishing dependencies between items, especially if these
dependencies are at a distance (Benmamoun et al. 2010: 36 )
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Overuse of overt elements, Polinsky & Kagan 49 a heritage
speaker of Russian, 23 years old, acquisition of Russian as L1
interrupted at about age 5. malcik # on imel sobaka i ljaguka. boy
3sg had dog.dc and frog.dc the boy he had a dog and a frog # on
ljubit ego ljaguka 3sg likes his frog.dc he likes his frog
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Wisconsin Heritage German Gap Sheboygan [is e] Stadt die Leit
gleichen wennse visit No gap Sheboygan ist eine stadt die de leute
die da besuchen sehr gern haben
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Complexification: New gaps German: no true parasitic gaps;
English: gaps aplenty In what sense is it more complex? Null
elements harder to process, especially at a distance Where did it
come from? In some sense surely from English Sources Michael
Putnam, Joshua Bousquette, Nick Henry, Ben Frey, Daniel Ntzel,
Joseph Salmons & Alyson Sewell. 2013. How deep is your syntax?
Filler-gap dependencies in heritage language grammar. Penn Working
Papers in Linguistics 19.21-30. Various related forthcoming papers
and manuscripts by our team. 51
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52 Absence of p-gaps in heritage German would be consistent
with previous work on HLs. Presence of p-gaps would be strikingly
different. Further, if gaps occur, we expect them to be licensed in
syntactically differentiated ways.
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Engdahls Accessibility Hierarchy 53
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Test sentences for p-gaps 54 Manner 1. Which book did you sell
without reading? Manner 2. Is that the girl he kissed without
looking at? Temporal 1. Sheboygan is a city that people like when
they visit. Temporal 2. This is the food that you have to cook
before eating. Relative. This is the book that people who read
really like.
controls manner adv. temporal adv. conditional relative conj.
clause WiG-Eng bilinguals Eng monolinguals (G. sett.) Eng
monolinguals (non-G. sett)
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58 blue is younger (1980-1994), n=6 green is older (1949-1966),
n=3
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Take home on gaps Heritage speakers of German produce p-gaps in
translation tasks contrast with European varieties contrast with
claim that heritage speakers have difficultly producing null
elements Our speakers produce gaps far more at the more accessible
end of Engdahls hierarchy they tend to restructure more at the less
accessible end This looks like an effect of L2 on L1, not the
inability to produce null elements due to their heritage status BUT
tightly structured and indirect. 59
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CONCLUSIONS 60
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Conclusions The complexity wars have raged hottest in creole
studies, but they lurk everywhere in language contact. Theres a lot
of work on and many more claims about simplicity metrics. Were
looking not for overall measures, but change in particular areas.
Choose your metric for simplicity or simplification, and weve got
counterexamples from Wisconsin Heritage German. They arent just
from English or directly from English. Even where they are from
English or German dialects in some sense, they are quite different
from English. 61
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Conclusions We didnt actually set out to look for issues of
complexity or simplicity, but the issues weve explored so far show
a surprisingly clear directionality. Not all patterns probably work
this way: MLU, passivization, etc. The contact > simplification
game is just dumb; please stop. These varieties are full products
of human cognitive abilities and function as such. 62
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Big picture Hertiage languages can provide incredibly rich data
for historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, historical
sociolinguistics and structural linguistics. Requires integrating
different sets of data carefullly. Dative case: story isnt what it
seems Dialect mixing: more and EARLIER than claimed Shift: story
not what it seems, but facts support path for German influence
Complexification: Plenty of it in a situation where simplification
is claimed. 63
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YOUR QUESTIONS? 64
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THANK[s]! Thanks to Luke Annear, Emily Claire, Alicia Groh,
Mary Simonsen, Trini Stickle, Nick Williams. 65