Heritage bilingualism

The area of heritage bilingualism has received increased attention in recent years as previous assumptions about heritage language have been challenged. Our research shifts away from the comparative framework between heritage and monolingual/L2 speakers and seeks to elucidate the unique patterns of heritage language development and use; in particular, we aim to contribute to a greater understanding of the grammatical, cognitive, and social facets of heritage bilingualism. In service of these goals, our investigation focuses on the following questions:

  1. How do heritage bilinguals use their existing linguistic systems in third language acquisition and development?
  2. What speaker-internal and external factors (e.g., language dominance, proficiency, phonological short-term memory, typological proximity, established social networks) underlie heritage bilingualism and drive subsequent language acquisition?
  3. How are sounds produced and perceived by heritage bilinguals in each of their languages at both the segmental and suprasegmental levels?
  4. How do heritage speakers process input at the phonological, morphosyntactic, lexical, and sentential levels, and how do these systems interface?

Research & Publications Heading link

Project: Perception and production of lexical stress in heritage speakers of Spanish

Investigators: John Escalante Martínez, Jennifer Cabrelli

Status: Ongoing

This project aims to replicate Kim (2020) by examining the perception and production of lexical stress by Spanish heritage speakers. Additionally, we explore the effects that proficiency, dominance, and phonological short-term memory have on the perception and production of the phenomenon.

Publications:

  • Escalante Martínez, J.A. & Cabrelli, J. (2022). Perception and production of lexical stress in heritage speakers of Spanish (Unpublished qualifying research paper.) University of Illinois Chicago.

Project: Lateral phonological development in early English/Spanish bilinguals

Investigators: Megan Marshall, Jennifer Cabrelli

Status: Ongoing

Project: Bilingual phonological interaction in early-acquired grammars: The case of Spanish /ɲ/ and English /nj/

Investigators: Sara Stefanich (Klett World Languages), Jennifer Cabrelli

Status: Completed

This project examines phonetic interactions in early Spanish/English bilinguals to see if they have established a representation for the Spanish palatal nasal /ɲ/ (e.g., /kaɲon/ cañón ‘canyon’) that is separate from the similar, yet acoustically distinct English /n+j/ sequence (e.g., /kænjn̩/ ‘canyon’). We measured duration and formant contours of the following vocalic portion as acoustic indices of the /ɲ/~/n+j/ distinction. Duration and formant contour data alike showed distinction in the Spanish /ñ/ and English /n+j/, suggesting separate representations of these similar sounds.

Publications:

  • Stefanich, S., & Cabrelli, J. (2020). Shared or separate representations? The Spanish palatal nasal in early Spanish/English bilinguals. Languages, 5, 50.

Project: A cross-module comparison of heritage speaker morphosyntax and phonology

Investigators: Jess Ward, Jennifer Cabrelli

Status: Ongoing

Most accounts of heritage speaker bilingualism are built around morphosyntax, with minimal consideration thus far of the applicability of these accounts to other modules of grammar. Even less work is available that examines multiple modules of grammar within a single sample. To better understand the ways in which morphosyntax and phonology pattern (dis)similarly, we tested 35 early Spanish/English bilinguals. We examined two morphosynactic phenomena, differential object marking and subject-to-subject raising across a dative experiencer, and the phonological phenomenon of intervocalic stop lenition. Preliminary analysis indicates that the bilinguals maintain distinct phonological representations in English and Spanish, while the morphosyntactic data point to substantial variability.

Project: CLLD in heritage Spanish production and judgment data

Investigators: José Sequeros Valle (University of Nebraska – Omaha), Bradley Hoot (DePaul University), Jennifer Cabrelli

Status: Completed

This project examines whether Spanish heritage speakers distinguish when it is discursively appropriate to use Spanish Clitic-doubled Left Dislocation (CLLD) in a speeded production task. It compares these production results with judgment data to adjudicate between processing limitations and representational deficits as potential sources of Spanish target divergence. The sample of heritage speakers patterned with the baseline in production, which indicates that the sample knew the discursive distribution of CLLD. The judgment data differed from the baseline and showed evidence of overextension of CLLD into non-anaphoric contexts, which we posited to be due to a task effect related to the metalinguistic quality associated with judgment tasks.

Publications:

  • Sequeros-Valle, J., Hoot, B., & Cabrelli, J. (2020). Clitic-doubled left dislocation in heritage Spanish: Judgment versus production data. Languages, 5, 47.

Project: Individual differences in code-switching patterns

Investigators: Sara Stefanich (Klett World Languages), Jennifer Cabrelli, Rama Izar

Status: Ongoing

This project, funded by the National Science Foundation (BCS 1823909), uses a corpus of code-switching speech transcribed from guided interviews (Stefanich et al., in preparation) to examine the ways in which individual differences shape early English/Spanish bilinguals’ code-switching patterns. The first phase of this project focuses on the role of relative English/Spanish dominance (as measured by the Bilingual Language Profile, Birdsong et al., 2012, and its correlation with switch frequency. Pilot data from 15 speakers reveal a lack of correlation, contrary to our prediction that more balanced bilinguals would code-switch more frequently due to similar usage patterns in the two languages.

Project: Phonological aspects of word-internal phonological code-switches

Investigators: Sara Stefanich (Klett World Languages), Jennifer Cabrelli

Status: Completed

This project, funded by the National Science Foundation (BCS 1823909), takes a laboratory phonology approach to intraword code switching (CS) to determine the minimum morphological unit within which a bilingual can combine elements from their two phonological systems. Previous research considers two potential types of intraword codeswitches: morphological and phonological. Morphological switches are common (e.g. MacSwan 2000), while phonological switch between a root and its affixes is posited to not be possible (e.g., Bandi-Rao & DenDikken, 2014; MacSwan, 2000). This project examines CS in early Mexican Spanish/English bilinguals via production and judgment tasks to inform whether bilinguals produce and/or accept phonologically switched words as licit outputs in a CS grammar. Data support the prediction that the phonology of a CS word is the phonology of the language of the word’s affix(es) and suggests that a bilingual’s phonological systems do not interact at the word level.

Publications:

Coming soon.