Colloquium

Cross-national Perspectives on Heritage Language Acquisition: The case of Heritage Greek in North and South America

Dr. Evangelia Daskalaki, Linguistics, University of Alberta

Date: Friday, November 22, 2024

Time: 3:00-4:15pm, MST

Place: CAB 2-43 or online

Zoom link: https://ualberta-ca.zoom.us/j/93962294814?pwd=6JtwTgMpPnM9LfStAw4cJSMQdcz6DH.1

Meeting ID: 939 6229 4814

Passcode: 613137

Most research examining heritage language (HL) development focuses on contexts where English is the majority language (ML). These studies show that child heritage speakers tend to overproduce strong referential forms (pronominal/lexical) and preverbal subjects in contexts where reduced forms and postverbal subjects would be preferred or required. To determine the extent to which these patterns are the result of cross-linguistic influence (CLI), as opposed to other factors related to the children’s bilingual experience (e.g., reduced HL input), different language combinations need to be studied. Existing cross-national studies, though, are scarce and they usually focus on a single language domain (Torregrossa et al., 2021; Zuban et al., 2021). 

In this presentation, I will discuss three related studies from the Heritage Greek Project, a project that I carried out in collaboration with colleagues from Europe, North America, and South America. Study 1 and study 2 examine the role of typological proximity by comparing a group of Greek-Spanish bilingual children who speak Greek as an HL in South America (SA) (Chile; Argentina; Uruguay) with a group of Greek-English bilingual children who speak Greek as an HL in North America (NA) (US; Canada) (Daskalaki, Chondrogianni, Blom, 2022; Daskalaki, Giannakou, Haska, Chondrogianni, in preparation). Study 3 focuses on the NA group and shows that above and beyond the typological properties of the majority language, environmental factors may explain heritage children’s variable performance in their HL (Chondrogianni & Daskalaki, 2023).