Upcoming Events

Date: Mon, Jan 27
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Room: GFS 330

Journal club

Date: Tue, Jan 28
Time: 9:30am – 10:30am
Room: GFS 330

Jason Rothman (Lancaster University, UK): “Systematicity and Individual Differences in Heritage Language Bilingualism”

Abstract:
Heritage Language (HL) bilinguals—native learners of a language spoken at home that is not the shared, common language of the larger society in which they grow up —acquire their HLs naturalistically in early childhood. Despite HL bilinguals being native speakers, studies over the past three decades typically document significant differences to L1-dominant homeland users as well as high degrees of variation at the individual heritage bilingual speaker level. While individual differences are also present across L1-dominant users of language—e.g. not all native speakers of American English speak the same way—the spectrum of individual differences in HL bilinguals is significantly wider. Although Individual differences are governed by a unique set of dynamic variables we do not yet fully understand, shifting focus to understanding individual differences better has great theoretical and practical value. The present talk revolves around two central points falling out from investigating the systematicity behind individual differences: (i) the determinism of various internal and external factors—as well as their interactions—contributing to the acquisition and processing of HLs specifically is not random and, as such, is crucial for understanding language in the mind more generally and (ii) related research significantly questions the utility, if not appropriateness, of using so-called monolingual comparisons as a default baseline for bilingual research.

Date: Wed, Jan 29
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Room: GFS 330

Fulang Chen: “Causation and Affectedness in the Mandarin ba-Construction”

Date: Fri, Jan 31
Time: 10:00am – 11:20am
Room: THH B9

Yasha Sapir (PHIL): “Vague assertion”