Null Subjects in Heritage Languages: Contact Effects in a Cross-linguistic Context

Naomi Nagy · Nina Aghdasi · Derek Denis · Alexandra Motut

29 citations0/0 files storedScholarly Commons (University of Pennsylvania)

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Linguistic Variation and Morphology Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the first variable examined in the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto project (Nagy 2009), which strives to apply consistent methodology across multiple language-contact contexts and variables to advance our understanding of contact-induced change. It is principally comprised of sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Toronto with 40 speakers from each of six heritage languages (Cantonese, Faetar, Italian, Korean, Russian and Ukrainian). Participants are also asked about their ethnic identification, language use, and linguistic attitudes (Keefe & Padilla 1987, Hoffman & Walker 2010). Responses are translated into index scores to quantify each speakers' orientation toward their heritage language/culture and their English/"Canadian" culture.\nHere we examine the effects of a constellation of factors (linguistic, typological, demographic, social) on a single linguistic variable: (pro-drop). Our Cantonese, Italian and Russian data, ~6,000 tokens, is contrasted with a sample from the Toronto English Archive (Tagliamonte & Denis 2010). For comparability with previous studies of pro-drop, we examine the effects of continuity of reference (Cameron 1995), contextual/formal ambiguity of the subject's referent (Paredes Silva 1993), clause type (Harvie 1998), priming by the preceding subject (Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2010), person and number of the subject, and tense of the following verb. Pro-drop rates and constraint hierarchies in each HL show no relationship to any indices of generation since immigration, ethnic identity or language use, suggesting that this variable is not used to construct ethnic identity and is not undergoing change as the heritage varieties of each language develop in Toronto.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 29 citations exist upstream.

References

2010Principles of Linguistic Change 1982Issues in Italian Syntax 2008Getting off the GoldVarb Standard: Introducing Rbrul for Mixed‐Effects Variable Rule Analysis 2005Is There a Little Pro? Evidence from Finnish 2010Ethnolects and the city: Ethnic orientation and linguistic variation in Toronto English 2007Language and Dialect Contact in Spanish in New York: Toward the Formation of a Speech Community 2009Introduction: parameters in minimalist theory 2009Parametric Variation

Cited by

2015Differential Object Marking in Spanish, Hindi, and Romanian as Heritage Languages 2015Two languages, one effect: Structural priming in spontaneous code-switching 2019Variationist typology: Shared probabilistic constraints across (non-)null subject languages 2016Null and overt subjects in Italian and Spanish heritage speakers in Germany 2013Prosody, priming and particular constructions: The patterning of English first-person singular subject expression in conversation

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.