2018 Friday Poster 6553

Friday, November 2, 2018 | Poster Session I, Metcalf Small | 3pm

Effects of Parental Input Quality in Child Heritage Language Acquisition
E. Daskalaki, E. Blom, V. Chondrogianni, J. Paradis

Research has demonstrated that heritage speakers typically show patterns in their heritage language that differ from those of age-matched monolinguals. Various, non-mutually exclusive factors have been proposed to explain these observed differences, including the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of heritage language input (Montrul, 2016). While the effect of input quantity in heritage language development is relatively well-researched, the nature and effect of input quality has received less attention (Paradis & Navarro, 2003). In this study, we tested subject placement among children and their adult parents who speak Greek as a heritage language in Western Canada (WC). Subject placement was selected because it is problematic for various Greek-English bilingual populations (Argyri & Sorace, 2007). Three questions were addressed: (i) Are child heritage Greek learners in WC less accurate with subject placement than monolingual children in Greece? (ii) Are Greek speaking adults in WC less accurate with subject placement than monolingual adults in Greece? and (iii) Does maternal accuracy with subject placement predict subject placement in child heritage speakers? We predicted that if  input quality plays a role in heritage language development, then we would expect an association between the accuracy of heritage children and the accuracy of their mothers, which are often the main source of input.

Four groups of Greek speakers participated: 34 heritage children residing in WC (mean age: 11;7), 27 Greek-speaking monolingual children from Greece (mean age: 11;11), 33 heritage adults (fathers and mothers; 1st generation: 9; 2nd generation: 24) from WC (mean age: 43), and 30 Greek-speaking monolingual adults (fathers and mothers) from Greece (mean age: 47). All four groups completed an elicited production task, which targeted Greek Wide Focus structures (WF), where subjects are preferably postverbal, and Greek wh-embedded interrogatives (EI), where subjects are obligatorily postverbal. Participants were shown pictures of animated characters, and were asked questions that prompted the production of WF (1) and EI (2) (Appendix).

Results revealed a significant main effect of group, showing that heritage children were less accurate than monolingual children (F(1, 59)=70.74, p<.001, ηp2= .55), and a significant main effect of condition, showing that accuracy was lower in WF than in EI (F(1, 59)= 31.20, p<.001, ηp2= .35). The same monolingual-heritage contrast was replicated with the adult parents: Thus, heritage adults were significantly less accurate than monolingual adults (F(2, 60)=12.72, p<.001, ηp2= .30), with their accuracy being lower in WF than in EI (F(1, 60)= 11.23, p=.001, ηp2= .16). Finally, a mixed logistic regression analysis, focusing on child-mother dyads, showed that the heritage mothers’ accuracy in WF was a significant predictor of the children’s accuracy in WF (Table 1). However, the children’s accuracy in EI was predicted neither by the mothers’ accuracy in EI (which was at ceiling) nor by the mothers’ accuracy in WF (Figure 1). Overall, our results supported the hypothesis that the input of heritage children is qualitatively different from the input of their monolingual peers, and indicated that, at least in some conditions, heritage input quality influences child heritage language acquisition.