Heritage Languages
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 October 2011
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0067
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 October 2011
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0067
Introduction
Heritage languages are spoken by early bilinguals, simultaneous or sequential, whose home language (L1) is severely restricted because of insufficient input. As a result, they can understand the home language and may speak it to some degree but feel more at ease in the dominant language of their society. The study of heritage languages is a relatively new field in linguistics. It draws on research on first language and language acquisition, bilingualism (as heritage speakers are a subset of bilinguals), and language attrition. Researchers have taken two main approaches in studies of heritage language: research that examines patterns found in heritage languages from the standpoint of universal grammar, on the one hand, and research that emphasizes sociolinguistic or more applied aspects of heritage languages, on the other.
General Overviews
There is no single textbook or survey book focusing specifically on heritage speakers, because the field of inquiry is relatively new and has not yet completely separated from structural or social investigations of bilingualism. These overviews provide a helpful discussion of the range of issues involved in heritage language study. Polinsky and Kagan 2007 and Benmamoun, et al. 2010 present a broad range of topics related to heritage language study; Montrul 2008 and Cook 2003 discuss heritage languages in the more general context of bilingualism. Brinton, et al. 2008; Seliger and Vago 1991; Köpke, et al. 2007; and Schmid 2010 present a broad range of case studies that place heritage language investigation in a more general context.
Benmamoun, E., S. Montrul, and M. Polinsky. 2010. Prolegomena to heritage linguistics. White paper, Harvard Univ.
A discussion of the range of issues involved in heritage language study, from linguistics to language pedagogy.
Brinton, Donna M., Olga Kagan, and Susan Bauckus, eds. 2008. Heritage language education: A new field emerging. New York: Routledge.
A collection of articles presenting a multidisciplinary perspective on the acquisition, structure, and teaching of heritage languages.
Cook, Vivian, ed. 2003. Effects of the second language on the first. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Discussion of variance among bilinguals that addresses structural effects of second language as seen in an individual’s first language.
Köpke, Barbara, Monika S. Schmid, Merel Keijzer, and Susan Dostert, eds. 2007. Language attrition: Theoretical perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Discussion of extralinguistic and linguistic factors leading to home language (L1) restructuring in adulthood; continues a number of themes raised by Nancy C. Dorian.
Montrul, Silvina A. 2008. Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism: Re-examining the age factor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
An investigation into the relationships between attrition, incomplete acquisition, and fossilization in first language (L1) and second language (L2). These issues are discussed with regard to age-of-acquisition and critical-period theories.
Polinsky, Maria, and Olga Kagan. 2007. Heritage languages: In the “wild” and in the classroom. Language and Linguistics Compass 1.5: 368–395.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00022.x
An overview of heritage speakers (narrowly defined) from the standpoint of their linguistic characteristics and relearning potential in adulthood.
Schmid, Monika S., ed. 2010. Special issue: New perspectives on L1 attrition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 13.1.
A collection of articles documenting case studies of several heritage languages and examining the methodology of heritage language research.
Schmid, Monika S., Barbara Köpcke, Merel Keijzer, and Lina Weilemar, eds. 2004. First language attrition: Interdisciplinary perspectives on methodological issues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
This volume contains a useful annotated bibliography on language attrition (through 2004), which is relevant for heritage language study as well.
Seliger, Herbert W., and Robert M. Vago, eds. 1991. First language attrition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
A collective monograph discussing sociolinguistic and structural issues pertaining to language attrition. A collection of case studies on a number of languages.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Acceptability Judgments
- Accessibility Theory in Linguistics
- Acquisition, Second Language, and Bilingualism, Psycholin...
- Adjectives
- Adpositions
- Affixation
- African Linguistics
- Afroasiatic Languages
- Agreement
- Algonquian Linguistics
- Altaic Languages
- Ambiguity, Lexical
- Analogy in Language and Linguistics
- Anaphora
- Animal Communication
- Aphasia
- Applicatives
- Applied Linguistics, Critical
- Arawak Languages
- Argument Structure
- Artificial Languages
- Attention and Salience
- Australian Languages
- Austronesian Linguistics
- Auxiliaries
- Balkans, The Languages of the
- Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan
- Berber Languages and Linguistics
- Bilingualism and Multilingualism
- Biology of Language
- Blocking
- Borrowing, Structural
- Caddoan Languages
- Caucasian Languages
- Causatives
- Celtic Languages
- Celtic Mutations
- Chomsky, Noam
- Chumashan Languages
- Classifiers
- Clauses, Relative
- Clinical Linguistics
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Colonial Place Names
- Comparative Reconstruction in Linguistics
- Comparative-Historical Linguistics
- Complementation
- Complexity, Linguistic
- Compositionality
- Compounding
- Comprehension, Sentence
- Computational Linguistics
- Conditionals
- Conjunctions
- Connectionism
- Consonant Epenthesis
- Constructions, Verb-Particle
- Contrastive Analysis in Linguistics
- Conversation Analysis
- Conversation, Maxims of
- Conversational Implicature
- Cooperative Principle
- Coordination
- Copula
- Creoles
- Creoles, Grammatical Categories in
- Critical Periods
- Cross-Language Speech Perception and Production
- Cyberpragmatics
- Default Semantics
- Definiteness
- Dementia and Language
- Dene (Athabaskan) Languages
- Dené-Yeniseian Hypothesis, The
- Dependencies
- Dependencies, Long Distance
- Derivational Morphology
- Determiners
- Dialectology
- Dialogue
- Diglossia
- Disfluency
- Distinctive Features
- Dravidian Languages
- Ellipsis
- Endangered Languages
- English as a Lingua Franca
- English, Early Modern
- English, Old
- Ergativity
- Eskimo-Aleut
- Euphemisms and Dysphemisms
- Evidentials
- Exemplar-Based Models in Linguistics
- Existential
- Existential Wh-Constructions
- Experimental Linguistics
- Fieldwork
- Fieldwork, Sociolinguistic
- Finite State Languages
- First Language Attrition
- Formulaic Language
- Francoprovençal
- French Grammars
- Frisian
- Gabelentz, Georg von der
- Gender
- Genealogical Classification
- Generative Syntax
- Genetics and Language
- Gestures
- Grammar, Categorial
- Grammar, Cognitive
- Grammar, Construction
- Grammar, Descriptive
- Grammar, Functional Discourse
- Grammars, Phrase Structure
- Grammaticalization
- Harris, Zellig
- Heritage Languages
- History of Linguistics
- History of the English Language
- Hmong-Mien Languages
- Hokan Languages
- Honorifics
- Humor in Language
- Hungarian Vowel Harmony
- Iconicity
- Ideophones
- Idiolect
- Idiom and Phraseology
- Imperatives
- Indefiniteness
- Indo-European Etymology
- Inflected Infinitives
- Information Structure
- Innateness
- Interface Between Phonology and Phonetics
- Interjections
- Intonation
- IPA
- Irony
- Iroquoian Languages
- Islands
- Isolates, Language
- Jakobson, Roman
- Japanese Word Accent
- Jones, Daniel
- Juncture and Boundary
- Khoisan Languages
- Kiowa-Tanoan Languages
- Kra-Dai Languages
- Labov, William
- Language Acquisition
- Language and Law
- Language Contact
- Language Documentation
- Language, Embodiment and
- Language for Specific Purposes/Specialized Communication
- Language, Gender, and Sexuality
- Language Geography
- Language Ideologies and Language Attitudes
- Language in Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Language Nests
- Language Revitalization
- Language Shift
- Language Standardization
- Language, Synesthesia and
- Languages of Africa
- Languages of the Americas, Indigenous
- Languages of the World
- Learnability
- Lexemes
- Lexical Access, Cognitive Mechanisms for
- Lexical Semantics
- Lexical-Functional Grammar
- Lexicography
- Lexicography, Bilingual
- Lexicon
- Linguistic Accommodation
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Areas
- Linguistic Landscapes
- Linguistic Prescriptivism
- Linguistic Profiling and Language-Based Discrimination
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Educational
- Listening, Second Language
- Literature and Linguistics
- Loanwords
- Machine Translation
- Maintenance, Language
- Mande Languages
- Markedness
- Mass-Count Distinction
- Mathematical Linguistics
- Mayan Languages
- Mental Health Disorders, Language in
- Mental Lexicon, The
- Mesoamerican Languages
- Metaphor
- Metathesis
- Metonymy
- Minority Languages
- Mixed Languages
- Mixe-Zoquean Languages
- Modification
- Mon-Khmer Languages
- Morphological Change
- Morphology
- Morphology, Blending in
- Morphology, Subtractive
- Movement
- Munda Languages
- Muskogean Languages
- Nasals and Nasalization
- Negation
- Niger-Congo Languages
- Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages
- Northeast Caucasian Languages
- Nostratic
- Number
- Numerals
- Oceanic Languages
- Papuan Languages
- Penutian Languages
- Philosophy of Language
- Phonetics
- Phonetics, Acoustic
- Phonetics, Articulatory
- Phonological Research, Psycholinguistic Methodology in
- Phonology
- Phonology, Computational
- Phonology, Early Child
- Pidgins
- Polarity
- Policy and Planning, Language
- Politeness in Language
- Polysemy
- Positive Discourse Analysis
- Possessives, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Cognitive
- Pragmatics, Computational
- Pragmatics, Cross-Cultural
- Pragmatics, Developmental
- Pragmatics, Experimental
- Pragmatics, Game Theory in
- Pragmatics, Historical
- Pragmatics, Institutional
- Pragmatics, Second Language
- Pragmatics, Teaching
- Prague Linguistic Circle, The
- Presupposition
- Pronouns
- Psycholinguistics
- Quechuan and Aymaran Languages
- Questions
- Reading, Second-Language
- Reciprocals
- Reduplication
- Reflexives and Reflexivity
- Register and Register Variation
- Relevance Theory
- Representation and Processing of Multi-Word Expressions in...
- Salish Languages
- Sapir, Edward
- Saussure, Ferdinand de
- Second Language Acquisition, Anaphora Resolution in
- Semantic Maps
- Semantic Roles
- Semantic-Pragmatic Change
- Semantics, Cognitive
- Sentence Processing in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers
- Sign Language Linguistics
- Slang
- Sociolinguistics
- Sociolinguistics, Variationist
- Sociopragmatics
- Sonority
- Sound Change
- South American Indian Languages
- Specific Language Impairment
- Speech, Deceptive
- Speech Perception
- Speech Production
- Speech Synthesis
- Suppletion
- Switch-Reference
- Syllables
- Syncretism
- Synonymy
- Syntactic Change
- Syntactic Knowledge, Children’s Acquisition of
- Tense, Aspect, and Mood
- Text Mining
- Tone
- Tone Sandhi
- Topic
- Transcription
- Transitivity and Voice
- Translanguaging
- Translation
- Trubetzkoy, Nikolai
- Tucanoan Languages
- Tupian Languages
- Typology
- Usage-Based Linguistics
- Uto-Aztecan Languages
- Valency Theory
- Verbs, Serial
- Vocabulary, Second Language
- Voice and Voice Quality
- Vowel Harmony
- Whitney, William Dwight
- Word Classes
- Word Formation in Japanese
- Word Recognition, Spoken
- Word Recognition, Visual
- Word Stress
- Writing, Second Language
- Writing Systems
- Yiddish
- Zapotecan Languages