HCIAS Wednesday Colloquium – Perspectives on Ibero AmericaStructural Parallels Between Endangered and Heritage Languages

Indigenous ELs, languages that are not robustly transmitted to younger generations, share important characteristics with immigrant HLs (Sasse 1992): (i) the switch from early and naturalistic immersion in the ancestral language to takeover by the ambient language, e.g., in the context of Residential Schools in Canada or the USA, and (ii) the presence of socio-economic power associated with the ambient language. In both immigrant HL and indigenous EL settings, this socio-cultural dynamic gives rise to a range of bilingual outcomes. However, unlike HLs, there is no baseline because the traditional language is lost. Thus, identifying structural properties that arise due to extensive bilingualism leads to a better analysis of the current state of ELs. This is where comparisons to HLs are particularly fruitful and effective. 

The gain for linguistic theory in connecting ELs and HLs is twofold. First, examining languages that are used in the context of extreme bilingualism would allow us to better understand the nature of universal structural principles; second, some unusual phenomena that may be observed in ELs could be explained by effects of recessive bilingualism, which in turn would prevent the unnecessary exotification of such languages. In her talk, Prof. Polinsky will present and analyze particular structural parallels, which show that both types of languages observe locality, maximize the use of anaphoric dependencies, and show a bias against using displacement as a structure building mechanism.