Heritage speakers can actively shape not only their grammar but also their processing

Authors

Irina A. Sekerina, CUNY College of Staten IslandFollow
Anna K. Laurinavichyute, National Research University Higher School of EconomicsFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-5-2019

Abstract

In this commentary, we provide psycholinguistic evidence that supports Polinsky and Scontras’ idea of how important it is for psycholinguistics and the linguistic theory of heritage languages to feed each other. We show that (a) heritage speakers’ processing can diverge from the baseline in online but not offline measures, (b) transfer from the dominant language does not always happen, and (c) heritage speakers can actively shape their processing that can contribute to heritage language restructuring in a chain reaction fashion.

Comments

This work was originally published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728919000440