The Notion Of The Native Speaker Put To The Test Recent Research Advances

The Notion of the Native Speaker Put to the Test: Recent Research Advances

Heritage Languages at the Crossroads: Cultural Contexts, Individual Differences, and Methodologies

This Research Topic focuses on heritage languages at the crossroads by approaching heritage language bilingualism in an interdisciplinary way. A language qualifies as a heritage language if it is a minority language spoken at home in a majority language context. Any language can be the societal majority language in one context and the heritage language in another. While the number of empirical studies on language acquisition and processing in heritage language bilingualism has increased in recent years, heritage language bilinguals are an understudied subgroup of bilinguals. When examined as adults, heritage-speaker bilinguals tend to show significant differences in their heritage language performance (use) and competence (grammatical knowledge) from one another. This variation is particularly unusual because heritage speakers, like monolinguals, are native speakers of the heritage language.

Current Perspectives on Generative SLA - Processing, Influence, and Interfaces

This volume comprises studies and keynote addresses presented at the 16th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference hosted by The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, in Trondheim in 2022. The selection of cutting-edge studies presented covers a wide array of topics within generative linguistics, including the acquisition of grammatical features, challenges of functional morphology, the impact of the native language on subsequently acquired languages, and interfaces between linguistic domains. Other chapters address how non-native language processing differs from native processing, while the volume also highlights internal and external factors affecting bi- and multilingual development and points to important avenues for further generative research on second language acquisition.