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Case marking and word order in Greek heritage children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2020

Vasiliki CHONDROGIANNI  and
Richard G. SCHWARTZ
Vasiliki CHONDROGIANNI*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, UK
Richard G. SCHWARTZ
Affiliation:
Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA
*
*Corresponding author: School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, 3 Charles Street, EdinburghEH8 9AD. Tel.: (+44)(0)131-650-4020; E-mail: v.chondrogianni@ed.ac.uk
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Abstract

This study examined the linguistic and individual-level factors that render case marking a vulnerable domain in English-dominant Greek heritage children. We also investigated whether heritage language (HL) children can use case-marking cues to interpret (non-)canonical sentences in Greek similarly to their monolingual peers. A group of six- to twelve-year-old Greek heritage children in New York City and a control group of age-matched monolingual children living in Greece participated in a production and a picture verification task targeting case marking and (non-)canonical word order in Greek. HL children produced syncretic inflectional errors, also found in preschool monolingual children. In the comprehension task, HL children showed variable performance on the non-canonical OVS but ceiling performance on the SVO conditions, which suggests influence from English. Linguistic factors such as case transparency affected comprehension, whereas child-level factors such as proficiency and degree of (early) use of Greek influenced performance on both modalities.

Keywords

heritage language childrenbilingual childrenGreekcaseword order
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , July 2020 , pp. 766 - 795
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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