• Corpus ID: 53977911

The acquisition of clitic pronouns by European Portuguese heritage speakers

@inproceedings{Flores2011TheAO,
  title={The acquisition of clitic pronouns by European Portuguese heritage speakers},
  author={Cristina Flores and Pilar P. Barbosa},
  year={2011}
}

• Cristina Flores, Pilar P. Barbosa
• Published 2011
• Linguistics

For the last 30 years, a large body of research on bilingual language acquisition has studied bilingual speakers who acquire both languages in parallel from birth. These (simultaneous) bilinguals show evidence of making a clear distinction between their two languages early in life, showing a successful autonomous development of the two languages from early on (Meisel, 2001). Another well-studied group is that of bilingual speakers who acquired their L2 later in life (successively in childhood, as adolescents or adults). Research in this subfield aims at investigating whether these L2 speakers acquire their L2 in a different way from L1 acquirers (see Ellis, 1985, for an overview). A third group shares some common issues with the first two types of bilingual speakers, even though it may be defined as unique. This is the group of heritage speakers (HS), who have received particular attention in the field of language acquisition only in recent years (Montrul 2002, 2004, 2008, 2010; Pires & Rothman, 2009; Pires, 2011; Polinsky, 1997, 2006, 2008; Polinsky & Kagan, 2007; Rothman, 2007, 2009; Schoenmakers-Klein, 1989, 1997; Silva-Corvalan, 1994; Valdes, 1995, 2000). HSs are typically second and third generation migrants, who grow up in the country of migration. The host language develops commonly as their dominant language, while the language of origin, their parents‘ language, is their heritage language (HL). HSs acquire their HL like monolinguals and simultaneous bilinguals, i.e., through their inborn faculty of language, triggered by naturalistic early exposition to the HL; nevertheless, they differ from the other two groups with respect to the quantity and quality of the input they receive from their HL. As Polinsky and Kagan say, ―their heritage language begins in the home, and often stops there‖ (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007: 369). Commonly, these speakers have no (or very limited) formal education in their heritage L1 and show low literacy skills. In opposition, the majority language is the language of schooling and socialization. Most daily interaction occurs in the majority language. Some studies on bilingual acquisition assume that HSs are incomplete acquirers given that their competence is described as diverging from the linguistic competence of monolinguals with the same age, social group and cognitive development (for a discussion, see Pires, 2011). The second and third generations of Hispanic-descendents resident in the EUA have been the most studied group of HS from a linguistic and educational perspective (cf. Montrul, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2010; Silva-Corvalan, 1994; Valdes, 1995). Since Portugal is a country with a strong emigration tradition, we also find Portuguese communities living all over the world, being a valuable source for the research in the field of heritage b ilingualism. Portuguese HS live, for example, in the US, Canada, Venezuela, South Africa or in the European countries that have traditionally hosted Portuguese migrants in the last fifty years: France, Switzerland and, in our study, Germany.