Native Speakers, Interrupted: Differential Object Marking and Language Change in Heritage Languages

by Silvina Montrul

Overview

A heritage language is the term given to a language spoken at home by bilingual children of immigrant parents. Written by a leading figure in the field, this pioneering, in-depth study brings together three heritage languages – Hindi, Spanish and Romanian - spoken in the United States. It demonstrates how heritage speakers drive morphosyntactic change when certain environmental characteristics are met, and considers the relationship between social and cognitive factors and timing in language acquisition, bilingualism, and language change. It also discusses the implications of the findings for the language education of heritage speakers in the USA and considers how the heritage language can be maintained in the English-speaking school system. Advancing our understanding of heritage language development and change, this book is essential reading for students and researchers of linguistics and multilingualism, immigration, education studies and language policy, as well as educators and policy makers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107589896
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/13/2025
Pages:	346
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Silvina Montrul is Professor in the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese and of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and directs the Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism Lab. She is co-editor of the journal Second Language Research and has authored several books, including Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism (2008) and The Acquisition of Heritage Languages (2016).

Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction; 1. On heritage speakers as native speakers; 2. Structural changes in heritage language grammars; 3. Differential Object Marking; 4. Language change and the acquisition of Differential Object Marking; 5. The vulnerability of Differential Object Marking in three heritage languages; 6. Differential Object Marking in Spanish as a heritage language; 7. Differential Object Marking in Hindi as a heritage language; 8. Differential Object Marking and clitic doubling in Romanian as a heritage language; 9. Comparing the three heritage languages; 10. Intergenerational transmission.

Editorial Reviews

‘A valuable resource for scholars interested in syntactic theory, language acquisition, language change, and multilingualism.’ Sarah Hopkyns, Language in Society

From the Publisher