Poster Session 1
1. Heritage Language Teaching in the Uyghur Diaspora
- Abduweli Ayup, Uyghur Hjelp
- Katie Fiddler, UyghurLA
- Michael Fiddler, University of California, Santa Barbara
Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken by 10-15 million people, primarily in northwest China, but increasingly in small diaspora communities worldwide. In the last few years, Uyghur language and culture have come under intense persecution by the Chinese government at a level that has been described as genocidal, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the long-term survival of the language may hinge on its ability to thrive in multilingual diaspora communities. Community language classes have been started in dozens of locations around the world aiming to help Uyghur children immersed in a dominant language improve their language skills and connect with Uyghur as their heritage language.
Uyghur language classes face a range of challenges, some common to heritage languages worldwide and others unique to the Uyghurs’ situation. Some of the children are fluent speakers who are aiming mainly at literacy skills, while others have very minimal proficiency and are essentially learning Uyghur as a second language. Most of the teachers are not trained educators, and levels of parental involvement and commitment vary. An issue more unique to the Uyghur situation is that a wealth of curricular materials exists in the homeland, but due to political repression and travel restrictions, diaspora communities are unable to access it and are having to start from scratch. Additionally, transnational repression from China’s government creates dilemmas for parents weighing desire to participate in the language classes against the potential for their participation to be reported and bring retaliation against family members back home.
Our poster presentation on Uyghur community language classes draws on our collective experience with Uyghur community schools in the Los Angeles area, Europe, and Australia. The first author, a linguist, works on description and documentation of Uyghur, including a collection of recorded conversations that will hopefully serve as a resource for learners and curriculum developers. The second author is a Uyghur language activist and curriculum author who has researched the current state of affairs of Uyghur language schools in multiple locations. The third author has served as a classroom teacher for one of the LA language schools and also as a member of the teaching team responsible for planning lessons and developing teaching materials to support native-speaker teachers. All three were involved in a 2024 workshop which fostered conversations among Uyghur diaspora language teaching practitioners about how to approach the task of teaching Uyghur as a heritage language. Our presentation will introduce the situation of the Uyghur diaspora community language schools, situate it in context of native language vs. heritage language vs. foreign language education, and explain the challenges faced by the community and potential solutions that are starting to surface. We expect that both academics and practitioners will be interested in the Uyghur diaspora as a newly emerging heritage language situation involving a small community, a lesser-known language, and high stakes relating to the identity of the Uyghur people in diaspora and the survival of the language itself.
2. Voices from Home: Intergenerational Learning in Heritage Language Education
- Brianna Butera, University of Memphis
Family plays a crucial role in shaping heritage language learners’ linguistic and cultural identity, yet many academic spaces overlook its potential as a site of language maintenance and identity formation. As heritage speakers navigate linguistic and cultural tensions between home and school, integrating family participation into heritage language education can help bridge this divide, fostering a sense of belonging and reinforcing the value of students’ bilingual and bicultural experiences. This poster session explores how structured family-engaged projects in Spanish heritage language education can enhance students’ cultural pride, strengthen intergenerational relationships, and validate community-based knowledge within academic settings.
Drawing on a semester-long project implemented in a university-level Spanish for Heritage Speakers course, this study examines the effects of student-led cultural investigations, in which students research and present family traditions, customs, or practices to their relatives at a university-hosted showcase. The project’s design encourages students to conduct interviews, engage in intergenerational dialogue, and document personal and family narratives, promoting reflection on the significance of cultural heritage in their identity formation. The showcase serves as a public affirmation of the students' work, creating a space where families witness their adult child’s academic growth and linguistic skills, while also strengthening cultural ties within the university community.
This project investigates how integrating home-based cultural inquiry into heritage language education influences students' linguistic confidence, cultural identity, and sense of belonging in academic spaces. Through reflections and survey data, the study will explore how engaging with home traditions and intergenerational storytelling impacts students’ perceptions of their bilingual abilities and their connection to their linguistic heritage. Findings will provide insight into the role of home knowledge in mitigating linguistic insecurity and fostering a more inclusive, affirming approach to heritage language education.
This presentation situates these findings within the broader context of culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris & Alim, 2017), which emphasize the need for educational practices that sustain, rather than erase, students' linguistic and cultural identities. It also draws on research on intergenerational learning and community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) to underscore how family narratives, traditions, and oral histories serve as valuable linguistic and cultural assets in the HL classroom.
Attendees will gain insights into the transformative potential of family involvement in heritage language classrooms and walk away with practical strategies to implement intergenerational learning in their own programs. These include guiding students through family interviews, designing culturally relevant assignments, and organizing community-oriented events that position families as active participants in their children’s language education. By reframing heritage language education as a collaborative effort that includes families as key stakeholders, this research underscores the need for inclusive, student-centered approaches that validate and sustain linguistic and cultural diversity.
Through this presentation, participants will be encouraged to rethink traditional classroom structures and explore innovative pedagogical approaches that foster stronger connections between students’ academic and cultural lives, ultimately enhancing student retention, motivation, and long-term engagement in heritage language learning.
References
Paris, D., & Alim, H.S. (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.
Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A Critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69-91. DOI: 10.1080/1361332052000341006
3. Addressing the Silent Problem: Heritage Speakers’ Interpretation of Anaphora under Verbal Ellipsis
- Esra Eldem-Tunc, University of Southern California
- Zuzanna Fuchs, University of Southern California
- Elsi Kaiser, University of Southern California
The Silent Problem (Laleko & Polinsky, 2017) suggests that heritage speakers (HSs) typically struggle with target-like production and comprehension of null grammatical elements in the heritage language. Evidence for the Silent Problem is mainly provided by studies examining null subjects, commonly showing that HSs tend to prefer overt subjects even when both their heritage language (HL) and dominant language (DL) are null-subject languages (e.g., Sorace & Serratrice, 2009). Furthermore, Polinsky (2016) demonstrated that Russian-English HSs diverge from monolinguals in their interpretation of anaphora under verb-stranding VP-Ellipsis in Russian. However, questions persist regarding the generality of the Silent Problem, as the crosslinguistic status and specific types of null grammatical elements that HSs have difficulty interpreting still remain unclear (Polinsky & Scontras, 2020).
To investigate whether HSs have non-target-like interpretation of verbal ellipsis type structures in different languages, as the Silent Problem predicts, this study examines Turkish HSs’ interpretational preferences for verbal ellipsis-type structures in their DL, English (1), and their HL, Turkish (2).
(1) Johni defended hisi friend, and Noahj did defend hisi/j friend too.
(2) Alik proi arkadas-i-ni savun-du,
Ali friend-POSS.3-ACC defend-PAST.3
Mertl de prok/l arkadas-i-ni savun-du.
Mert too friend-POSS.3-ACC defend-PAST.3
Lit. “Ali defended his friend, and Mert did defend his friend too.”
Verbal ellipsis-type structures (1)-(2) involve ambiguity between strict (Noah defended John’s friend; Mert defended Ali’s friend) and sloppy (Noah defended Noah’s friend; Mert defended Mert’s friend) interpretations. We employed picture choosing tasks to test how Turkish HSs interpret strict/sloppy ambiguity in Turkish and English, compared to baseline Turkish (TSs) and baseline English speakers (ESs) in their respective languages. We also controlled for verb semantics and possession type (Ong & Brasoveanu, 2014; Storbeck & Kaiser, 2018) that prior studies on baseline speakers failed to incorporate (e.g., Matsuo, 2007), thereby yielding inconclusive results.
TSs (n=21) and ESs (n=20) completed the task in their native language. HSs (n=37; average age of English exposure=3;3) were assigned either the Turkish or English task. Participants heard elided (John defended his friend, and Noah did too) or unelided sentences (John defended his friend, and Noah defended his friend too) and saw one picture depicting the strict interpretation and one depicting the sloppy interpretation. Participants chose which picture they thought best matches the sentence. A post-experimental vocabulary task assessed HSs’ familiarity with target stimuli and served as a proxy for lexical proficiency.
Results show that all groups preferred sloppy interpretation for unelided sentences. For elided sentences, ESs preferred the strict interpretation, and TSs preferred the sloppy interpretation. HSs diverged from baseline speakers for elided sentences, not only in the HL—offering novel evidence for the Silent Problem—but also in the DL, pointing to a complex interplay between languages. Consistent with previous research demonstrating HSs’ inclination to prefer overt subjects, this study indicate HSs diverged from baseline speakers in their interpretational preferences for the elided form only—with notable individual differences. These results suggest HSs may struggle to establish referential discourse dependencies when ambiguity increases in the absence of overt linguistic elements.
4. "I Don’t Wanna Go to Korean School": Impact of Community Language Schools on Heritage Korean Youth Identities and Language
- Sunny Park-Johnson, DePaul University
Heritage speakers do not often receive heritage language (HL) reinforcement in the mainstream school system in the US. One solution to this lack of opportunity to develop the HL has been Community Language Schools established by the heritage communities. Offered on weekends, Community Language Schools serve as supplemental academic outlets for students the opportunity to develop academic proficiency in the HL and learn about culture relevant to the ethnic community (Chinen & Tucker, 2005; Lee & Shin, 2008). While there are many previous studies on Community Language Schools’ pedagogy, curriculum design, and the perspective of parents and teachers, there is little emphasis on the experience from the students’ perspective. The aim of the present study is to address this gap in the research, with the goal of gaining a holistic understanding of the experience from the immediate stakeholders themselves, Korean heritage speakers who attended Korean Community Language Schools (Korean School, henceforth). Students reflect on their Korean language proficiency, the relationship between Korean School and identity development, and past and present perspectives on the Korean School experience. The research questions guiding the study are as follows:
- How do university students perceive their Korean language proficiency as influenced by their experiences in Korean School?
- In what ways did attending Korean School contribute to the development of their Korean cultural identity?
- What are the most salient aspects of the Korean School experience that university students identify as shaping their current understanding of Korean language and culture?
Eight Korean-American undergraduate university students participated in 30-45 minute semi-structured interview on zoom. These second-generation Koreans grew up in the US in Korean-speaking homes, and attended Korean School for at least two years. The interviews revealed three key themes across the participants. First, most participants valued their Korean School experience primarily for the relationships formed with fellow Korean-American peers, many of whom remain close friends and even live together in college. It was clear that the strongest outcome of Korean School was the social connections made with peers that share a similar background and culture, a feature that was not available in their mainstream schools. Secondly, all participants felt immense gratitude toward their parents for sending them to Korean School, even though they disliked attending at the time. The third theme highlights participants' strong sense of belonging at Korean School, in contrast to mainstream schools. Korean School allowed them to express their Korean identity freely, without pressure to assimilate or conceal differences, and served as a space for “being Korean” without fear of judgment or discrimination. Interestingly, reports of how Korean School helped enhance their Korean language proficiency were mixed; while participants did say it was helpful in developing literacy skills, it was not perceived as a significant source of HL development. Overall, the study enriches our understanding of the role of Community Language Schools for heritage speakers a safe designated space for fostering social connections and strengthening their sense of cultural identity.
5. Perception and production of gender-marking vowels in heritage Russian
- Anna Runova, University of Southern California
- Zuzanna Fuchs, University of Southern California
Background: Speech perception and production differences remain understudied as a source of divergent grammatical gender systems in heritage languages. Only two production studies on heritage Spanish have investigated phonetic differences in heritage speakers’ realizations of gender-marking vowels, suggesting that phonetic-level differences may contribute to divergent gender patterns (Colantoni et al., 2020; Pérez-Leroux et al., 2023). However, this work did not incorporate speech perception, where divergence between heritage and dominant speakers may originate. Additionally, Spanish has word-level gender cues (e.g. the masculine article el). Russian lacks word-level gender cues, indicating gender agreement as suffixes on adjectives and past-tense singular verbs (e.g. stojal(stood)-a(FEM)). The vowels as /a/ and /o/, indicate feminine and neuter agreement in nominative case, respectively.). Additionally, both /a/ and /o/ reduce to /ə/ in unstressed contexts, making gender cues non-transparent.
Aims: We investigate differences between Russian-dominant and Russian heritage bilinguals in production and perception of gender-marking vowels. The perception study tests whether these groups perceive fully-realized and reduced gender-marking vowels /a/ and /o/ with the same sensitivity to vowel reduction.
Production study: We extracted utterances containing gender-marked words from socio-linguistic interviews with Russian-dominant (n = 4) and Russian heritage (n = 4) bilinguals in the Heritage Language Variation and Change Project (Nagy, 2011). We measured F1 and F2 values for /a/, /o/, and / ə/.
Results: Linear mixed effect models were fit predicting F1 and F2 values by group, with random intercepts grouped by subject. Separate analyses were run for /a/, /o/, and /ə/. The /a/ model found an effect of group on F2 (β=- 0.11, SE 0.04, t=-2.884, p=0.035). The /o/ model found an effect of group on F1 (β=0.20, SE=0.03, t=6.49, p < 0.001). The /ə/ model found an effect of group on F1 (β=- 0.08, SE=0.03, t=-2.73, p=0.006).
Perception study: We will conduct an ABX speech perception task. Participants (Russian-dominant and Russian heritage bilinguals, target n = 25 per group) hear three CV sequences per trial, where sequences A and B always include fully realized /a/ and /o/, respectively, while sequence X ranges from fully-realized (/a/ or /o/) to a fully-reduced (/ə/) vowel. We manipulate F1 and F2 values to synthesize five vowels along the fully-realized to fully-reduced continuums (from /a/ to /ə/ and from /o/ to / ə/), such that the endpoint vowels are identical to fully-realized /a/, /o/, and /ə/, while the middle tokens are ambiguous.
Predictions: We predict different categorization patterns for the two groups. We expect the Russian-dominant group to categorize manipulated vowels as the vowel closer to the given stimulus (e.g. categorize reduced /a/ tokens as /a/) for tokens close to the endpoint vowel, but perform at chance on the fully ambiguous tokens. We expect the heritage group to perform at chance (e.g. be equally likely to categorize all manipulated /a/ tokens as /a/ or /o/, regardless of the amount of reduction).
Implications: The combined results of our studies will show the impact of vowel reduction in vowels crucial for grammatical gender on Russian heritage and Russian-dominant bilinguals.
6. Structural Properties of Western Armenian as Heritage Language
- Annika Topelian, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
Modern Armenian is a pluricentric language with two standard varieties. While Eastern Armenian (EA) is the dominant language in Armenia, Western Armenian (WA) is predominantly, if not exclusively, spoken as a minority language in diaspora communities across the globe. Most WA speakers therefore fit the profile of heritage language (HL) speakers (Valdés, 2000). Modern WA remains understudied within linguistics, especially regarding its use among bilinguals in contemporary diaspora communities. This poster presents research on structural properties of WA as an HL, specifically case marking, word order, and wh-questions, based on data from three experiments.
The first experiment investigates WA heritage speakers’ knowledge of morphological case through an acceptability judgment task (AJT) and an elicited production task (EPT). The AJT consisted of items with nouns declined using standard case morphology (distributed across 5 declension classes, 3 case forms), and nouns using non-standard case morphology (distributed across 4 conditions: overgeneralization, omission, and two types of replacement). The EPT asked participants to describe a series of pictures eliciting nouns across 3 declension classes in 3 different case forms. Results reveal that participants accept and produce non-standard case morphology, with overgeneralization of the most productive noun class morphology occurring most frequently. However, knowledge of case form distinctions appears relatively stable. Additionally, an unexpected result in production was the occurrence of dative-marked animate direct objects, a potential indication of differential object marking, which to our knowledge is not yet formally attested in WA.
The second experiment investigates WA heritage speakers’ knowledge of unmarked declarative word order through an AJT testing all six possible word order conditions for simple transitive sentences. Results indicate a strong preference for SOV, consistent with previous descriptions of base word order in the language (e.g., Donabedian-Demopoulos, 2018; Riggs, 1856), as well as marginal acceptability of SVO, which varied by individual and may indicate cross-linguistic influence from the dominant language English, or even EA.
The final experiment investigates WA heritage speakers’ knowledge of word order in wh-questions through an AJT, which tested simple wh-questions distributed across 2 question types (subject, object) and 4 word order conditions. Results indicate a strong preference for orders in which the wh-phrase immediately precedes the verb. Additionally, speakers were quite systematic in their judgments despite the dispersed nature of WA as a diasporic HL.
Taken together, the results of these experiments paint a complex picture of WA as an HL. Some aspects of the language (morphological noun class distinctions) appear to be more affected while others (case form distinctions, wh-question formation) appear more stable, and others still (declarative word order) show more mixed results and variation among individuals. We consider the potential role of cross-linguistic influence and the nature of the specific phenomena under study to explain these results. Furthermore, given that WA has been developing outside its original homeland in multilingual diaspora communities for more than a century and has no monolingual/home country counterpart, future research comparing these phenomena across speakers from different geographic communities with different dominant languages could offer greater insights.