Learning from Heritage Languages

Co-sponsored by FAHSS and Department of Linguistics
Date: Friday, November 21st, 2014, 10:00 AM
Location: SBS Building, Room S147 (MIC Conference Room)

Watch: Learning from Heritage Languages

Lecture Abstract

Now that we have learned a fair amount about heritage languages, time has come for linguists to learn from
them about the overall design of natural language. Both linguistic theorizing and experimental studies of
language development rest heavily on the notion of the adult, perhaps linguistically stable, native speaker.
Native speaker competence and use are typically the result of normal first language acquisition in a predominant
monolingual environment, with optimal and continuous exposure to the language. In this talk, I present an
overview of heritage speakers’ linguistic system and discuss several competing factors that shape this system in
adulthood. The examination of the linguistic knowledge of heritage speakers allows us to 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 developing under reduced input conditions.

About the Speaker: Maria Polinsky

Professor, Harvard University

Maria Polinsky is Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Language Science Laboratory at Harvard University. She has expertise in theoretical syntax, where her work spans Austronesian languages, languages of the Caucasus, and a number of other lesser studied languages. She has done extensive fieldwork, and has worked on bringing the research questions of lab-based psycholinguistics to the domain of understudied languages. She also has a long-standing interest in research on Heritage Languages, and she directs annual Heritage Language Institutes organized by the National Heritage Language Research Center at UCLA.