Heritage Language Learners: Incomplete Acquisition of Grammar in Early Childhood

• Jürgen M. Meisel ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Hamburg

     University of Hamburg

     Hamburg, Freie und Hansestadt, Alemania

     
• Localización: Perspectives in the Study of Spanish Language Variation: Papers in Honor of Carmen Silva-Corvalán / coord. por Andrés Enrique Arias, Manuel J. Gutiérrez, María Alazne Landa Arevalillo, Francisco A. Ocampo, 2014, págs. 435-463
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The notion of ‘heritage language’ commonly refers to minority languages in bilingual settings, where they are primarily used in family-related domains. This functional restriction is said to lead to structural reduction, resulting from attrition or incomplete acquisition. From a developmental perspective, heritage language learners constitute a heterogeneous group including bilingual L1 and child and adult L2 learners. I argue that heritage language studies can only make meaningful contributions to acquisition research if they differentiate between attrition and incomplete acquisition and between learner types. Incompleteness suggests that the attained knowledge differs qualitatively from native systems, but the term is also used to refer to different yet not incomplete grammars. For acquisition theory, it is crucial to determine the conditions under which children exposed to a language from birth fail to develop native grammars. Heritage langue studies claim that insufficient exposure to a language causes this to happen. However, they do not provide adequate information about the required quantity or quality of input.