Heritage Languages and their Speakers

Heritage Languages and their Speakers

This book introduces heritage languages and their speakers, analyzing grammar components and structural properties across multiple languages.


This book provides a pioneering introduction to heritage languages and their speakers, written by one of the founders of this new field. Using examples from a wide range of languages, it covers all the main components of grammar, including phonetics and phonology, morphology and morphosyntax, semantics and pragmatics, and shows easy familiarity with approaches ranging from formal grammar to typology, from sociolinguistics to child language acquisition and other relevant aspects of psycholinguistics. The book offers analysis of resilient and vulnerable domains in heritage languages, with a special emphasis on recurrent structural properties that occur across multiple heritage languages. It is explicit about instances where, based on our current knowledge, we are unable to reach a clear decision on a particular claim or analytical point, and therefore provides a much-needed resource for future research.

 

More information on the volume can be found on the Routledge website.

 

Table of Contents 

 

Summary

i

 

Series page

ii

 

Title page

v

 

Copyright page

vi

 

Dedication

vii

  Contents ix
  Preface xiii
  Acknowledgements xix
  Abbreviations xxi

1

Who Are These Speakers, Where Do They Come From, and How Did They Get to Be the Way They Are?

1

2

Heritage English

38

3

How to Study Heritage Speakers

76

4

Phonetics and Phonology

114

5

Morphology and Morphosyntax

164

6

Syntax

222

7

Semantics and Pragmatics

291

8

Heritage Languages and Their Speakers in Unexpected Places

329

 

Conclusions 349
 

References

354

  General Index 405
  Language Index 408
published icon

Published: Thursday, August 2, 2018