Prolegomena to Heritage Linguistics

Linguistic theory and experimental studies of language development rest heavily on the notion of the adult, perhaps linguistically stable, native speaker. Native speaker competence and performance are typically the result of normal first language acquisition in a predominantly monolingual environment, with optimal and continuous exposure to the language. The question we pose in this article is what happens when access to input and opportunities to use that native language are less than optimal during language development. We present and discuss the case of heritage speakers, i.e., bilingual speakers of an ethnic or immigrant minority language whose first language does not typically reach native-like attainment in adulthood. By examining the linguistic knowledge of these individuals, we question long-held ideas about the stability of language before the so-called critical period for language development, and the nature of the linguistic system as it develops under reduced input conditions. We present an overview of heritage speakers’ linguistic system and discuss several competing factors that shape this system in adulthood. We also call attention to the tremendous potential this population offers for linguistic research, the language teaching profession, and for society in general. HERITAGE LINGUISTICS 2 Acknowledgments This paper is the result of several years of thinking, research studies (some of which were complete dead ends), and joint conversations the three authors have held together at various conferences and, most importantly, at the Heritage Language Summer Institutes which inspired this work. The Institutes, the first of which was held at UC Davis in 2007, were funded by the National Heritage Language Resource Center at UCLA, and we are very grateful to the Center for the generous support we have received. This paper is just a small token of our gratitude. Elabbas Benmamoun’s work has also been supported by NSF grant BCS 0826672. Silvina Montrul’s work has been supported by the University of Illinois Campus Research Board and by NSF grant BCS-0917593, ARRA (to Silvina Montrul, Rakesh, Bhatt and Roxana Girju). Maria Polinsky’s work has been supported by the Center for Research in Language at UCSD, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and by the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. We are also grateful to our postdoctoral fellows and all the graduate, undergraduate research assistants who have worked on many of the research projects discussed in this paper. We have benefited enormously from discussing this work with many colleagues all over the world and presenting it at different venues; it would be impossible for us to name everyone here, but we are thankful for their help and insight. Last but not least, we are thankful to the heritage speakers who participated in the observations and studies reported here, time and again reluctantly, sometimes with cheer, more often with puzzlement. This work would not have been possible without you, and we hope that it is a small step towards giving you a louder voice. HERITAGE LINGUISTICS 3