Cross-Linguistic Influence of Competing Knowledge (CLICK): Comparative Morphosyntactic Variations in Heritage Language Development

Project Information

CLICK

Grant agreement ID: 892210

DOI

10.3030/892210

Project closed

EC signature date 11 March 2020

Start date 1 October 2020

End date 30 September 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 202 158,72

EU contribution

€ 202 158,72

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITETET I TROMSOE - NORGES ARKTISKE UNIVERSITET
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CLICK (Cross-Linguistic Influence of Competing Knowledge (CLICK): Comparative Morphosyntactic Variations in Heritage Language Development)

Reporting period: 2020-10-01 to 2022-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project aimed to test the hypotheses that (i) the underlying HL competence do not differ in HSs in different language contact situations (ii) a co-registered methodology that combines offline and online methods in the same task can better document the differences in HSs’ underlying grammars as a result of CLI from different societal languages. In general, CLICK is guided by two key research objectives (ROs):
RO1. To determine whether HSs in different language contact situations differ from each other in their interpretation of overt and null pronouns as a result of CLI from the societal languages and/or general effects of bilingualism. Furthermore, we seek to investigate whether or not the difference can be meaningfully teased apart by bringing together typologically different languages of the sort included in CLICK.
RO2. To establish if a novel methodology which combines online and offline measures in the same task offers a promising test battery to better capture underlying grammars of HSs in different language contact situations.
More specifically, we focused on three main areas of theoretical and methodological relevance: i) the interpretation of intrasentential anaphora in the context of HLB in an understudied HL; Persian in distinct language pairings with French, Spanish, English, Norwegian and German. ii) offer new insights related to CLI as a language-external factor on HL outcome in different language contact situations and subsequently contribute to teasing apart generalized bilingual effects from CLI-specific ones. It should be noted that whatever the two groups share in common might be viewed as generalized bilingual effects iii) contribute to the methodological trend of combining offline and online procedures to have a stronger profile of results to address the differences in HLB. Taken together, this project provides enduring and cutting-edge discoveries of the underlying representation of HL grammars and the influence of competing grammatical representations.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

• Publications
o Published
Gharibi, K., & Mirvahedi, S. H. (2021). ‘You are Iranian even if you were born on the moon’: family language policies of the Iranian diaspora in the UK. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1-16.
When I started my MSCA, this article from my British Academy project (06/2018-09/2020) was published in a high impact journal.

Rothman, J., Bayram, F., DeLuca, V., Di Pisa, G., Dunabeitia, J. A., Gharibi, K., Hao, J., Kolb, N., Kubota, M., Kupisch, T., Laméris, T., Luque, A., van Osch, B., Miguel Pereira Soares, S., Prystauka, Y., Tat, D., Tomić, A., Voits, T., Wulff, S. (2022). Monolingual comparative normativity in bilingualism research is out of “control”: Arguments and alternatives. Applied Psycholinguistics, 1-14.
Our team in the PoLaR Lab published a pioneering paper on why we should not use monolingual control groups in studies of bilingualism. This has been a step forward in applying the right methodology in studying heritage speakers.

Gharibi, K. Applying Research. In S, Benson, & N. Madarbakus-Ring. (Eds). Modern English Teacher, 31(1), 77 https://www.modernenglishteacher.com/applying-the- research-1
This was a collaboration with some of my colleagues in New Zealand.

o Forthcoming
Gharibi, K., Bayram, F., & Guajardo, G. (forthcoming). Lexical and Morphosyntactic Variation in Persian Heritage Language Outcomes. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism.
This article is also based on my British Academy project and PhD project which will be published soon in collaboration with my colleagues at AcqVa Aurora research group at UiT.

Martín-Villena, F., Gharibi, K. & Rothman, J. (forthcoming). Null and Overt Pronouns. In T. Ionin, S. Montrul and R. Slabakova (Eds). The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, Morphosyntax and Semantics.
My MSCA mentor Jason Rothman, my colleague and I wrote this chapter in the handbook on the literature and discussion of null an overt pronouns and anaphora resolution in different language pairings. This has been a learning curve for me as it was related to my MSCA project which is focused on anaphora resolution in heritage speakers in different language contact situations.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

CLICK is the first study that tried to find the developmental trajectories of the same heritage language in different language contact situations. It is also the first study that applied anaphora resolution in an eye tracking experiment to explore the development of the same heritage language in contact with different typologically related or unrelated societal languages. In addition, CLICK is the first study that strived to find if the online processing of anaphora resolution in these heritage speakers are different from their offline responses. In comparing the gaps between the HSs’ offline and online results in all language contact situations, the preliminary analysis showed their eye movements match, but their offline results do not. This finding would indicate that differences are more superficial than have been claimed and could result from performance pressures and variables influencing HS performance. Therefore, it seems like we need to not only reassess the validity of the behavioural responses as indications of participants’ underlying grammatical competence (particularly regarding HSs’), but also we can argue that HSs in different language contact situations have more similar underlying grammatical representation than previously thought. Regarding the parents’ offline and online data in both groups in comparison with the results of HSs in the UK, France, Germany, Norway and Spain, it seems like there is more similarity between parental generation’s data than the HSs’ results, since the parental generation all have reached monolingual competence by the time of emigration.


Note: we are trying different analyses. in a few months, I will have more data and will be able to present more concrete results.

Khadij Gharibi