The historical sociolinguistics of heritage languages Joseph Salmons with Joshua Bousquette, Christine Evans, Benjamin Frey, Alyson Sewell, Samantha Litty,

The historical sociolinguistics of heritage languages Joseph Salmons with Joshua Bousquette, Christine Evans, Benjamin Frey, Alyson Sewell, Samantha Litty, Mark Livengood, Felecia Lucht, Daniel Ntzel, Michael Putnam, Miranda Wilkerson, Brent Allen and many others 7th HiSoN Summer School, Metochi, Greece August 2013

Today: Issues and case studies Questions from last time? Language shift and substrate influences Demographics of rapid shift Structural effects and how they get transferred Complexity in heritage languages Syntax Morphology Your questions 2

SHIFT AND ITS EFFECTS 3

German in Wisconsin, Hustisford 4

All across the U.S., hordes of immigrants are chattering away in their native language and have no intention of learning English the all-but-official language of the United States . They are being enabled to defy the age-old custom of immigrants to our shores who made it one of their first priorities to learn to speak English and to teach their offspring to do likewise. It was a case of sink or swim. If you couldnt speak English, you couldnt get by, go to school, get a job, or become a citizen and vote.

Were these true of Wisconsin Germans? Did they always learn English? One of the first priorities? Who were monolinguals? What was their basic demographic profile? Were they economically marginal? Were they Isolated in rural areas or in neighborhoods in town? How did they fit into the social structure? Did they belong to separate churches? Did they attend school? If so, how did they not learn English?

Punchline Eastern Wisconsin, esp. the village of Hustisford, is a place where monolinguals might be expected to be marginal: Founded by Anglo-Americans (Yankees) Always had clear and elite English-speaking presence Yet evidence strongly suggests a profoundly bilingual community that did not exclude Germans.

1910 Census: Else Kobow

Hustisford 1910: Some basics LanguageKnew English96576% Only German31024% Monolinguals GenderM12741% F18359% Place of birthUS10835% Foreign-born20265% Immigration date Pre-188011159% Unknown179% 9

1910 German Monolinguals 10

1871: Resolution that all subjects in the church school be taught in German 1872: Permission granted allowing instruction in reading and writing in English for the upper grades of the school 1893: First mention of a sermon delivered in English (isolated event) 11

Names from confirmation classes 1899 Lillie Stewart 1901 Adelheide Stewart 1911 Walther Dyer 1913 Chester Randall 1918 Mabel Baldwin

Home Language 13 CategoriesDescriptions 1. Exclusively Monolingual German All adult members of the household were reported German monolinguals. 2. German-Speaking German was the only common language among adult members of the household. 3. Presumed Bilingual At least one member of the household was a reported German monolingual. 4. Possibly Bilingual German was likely spoken alongside English although no member of the household was a reported German monolingual. This category represents potential bilinguals as based on kinships with reported German monolinguals. 5. Presumed Monolingual English All adult members of the household were presumed English monolinguals.

Where did they live? 14

Imposition and borrowing Speaker preserves components of L1 in using L2, imposing features of L1 on L2. Typically more stable components, like phonetics, phonology, core syntax. Speaker transfers features of L2 into L1, borrowing them. Typically less stable components, especially vocabulary. 16

Table 1: Apparent substrate features 17 FEATUREEXAMPLESOURCESTRAJECTORYAWARENESS Imposition Final fortition beer[s] German, Dutch, Polish spreadingstigmatized earlier Stoppingdem, dere, dose many immigrant languages recessive stigmatized in most groups Pluralia tantum a scissorsGerman, Dutchstableapparently not Discourse marking come here once German (Dutch) stableapparently not Verb- particle wanna come with? Pan-Germanicspreadinglittle or none Borrowing Content lexicon brat, berliner, oma, kaput, dummkopf German recessive, a few spreading yes Tag questions ainna?, not? various lgs, these ex German recessiveyes Exclamatio ns etc. ach ya, halts maul, sieh mal, macht nichts Germanrecessiveyes

18 Household Language Categories 19101920 N%N% 1. Exclusively Monolingual German 4913%113% 2. German-Speaking4011%216% 3. Presumed Bilingual12834%349% 4. Possibly Bilingual13235%27773% 5. Presumed Monolingual English 267%328% TOTAL375100%37899% Table 2: Rapid shift

Figure 2: Learning English? Hustisford 1910 19 Wilkerson & Salmons in preparation

Figure 3: And 1920? 20

Children? (1910 vs. 1920) 21

But it doesnt stop with shift 22

Final laryngeal contrast 23 American English: bed bet bed: more glottal pulsing, longer vowel (widely seen as the most important for voicing in American English.) bet: no pulsing, shorter vowel Many other cues German: Bad = bat Bad bath, bat asked for 3.sg.pret. Likely complete neutralization, but Kharlamov (2012) Wisc. English: incipient neutralization? Earlier discussions have been about phonetics, not contrast.

Southwestern chee[z]e (Richland Center) 24

Southeastern cheese /z/ > [s] (Muskego) 25

Trading relations: Purnell et al. 26

Change in cues, stable contrast in one eastern community 27

Wisconsin immigration 28 More German More German Less German Less German

What about fortition? Brieflicher Sprach und Unterricht fuer das Selbststudium Erwachsener: Englisch. von Dr. Carl van Dalen "Ganz besonders haben sich Deutsche bei der Aussprache stimmhafter [weicher] Endkonsonanten in Englischen zu ueberwachen. Im hochdeutschen klingt Gelb wie gelp... Im Englischen jedoch werden b,d,g,v,z,j, immer stimmhaft [weich] ausgesprochen also auch in Auslaute. Es sind also sorgfaeltig zu unterscheiden: bound -- (baun d), cub (koe b)"... 29

Ahn "Aehnlich und doch ganz anders werden die, dem f, p entsprechenden konsonanten hervorgebracht. Spreche ich w, b richtig aus, so fuehlen zugleich die an den Kehlkopf gelegten Fingerspitzen, dass der Kehlkopf leise erzittert. Dieses Erzittern ruehrt her von den Schwingungen der in Kehlkopf angespannten Stimme erzeugenden Stimmbaender. Ich hoere gleichzeitig mit w einen dumpfen vokalischen Laut: ich hoere, dass diese Konsonanten Stimmhaft sind. Ebenso stehen b,d,g, p,t,k sich gegenueber. Bei den stimmhaften Konsonanten b,d,g fuehle ich das Erzittern des Kehlkopfes, ich hoere die sie begleitende Stimme- bei den Stimmlosen p,t,k dagegen nicht" 30

Conclusions 31 Demographics of community formation: Examination of households, neighborhoods, and institutions reveals late monolingualism rapid shift from German to English. Historical patterns of language use: ChildrenGerman or Yankeewere getting more non-native adult input than native-English input. Leads to German-influence English in the community. Doesnt stop after shift: features introduced into the pool can take off later. CLASSIC historical sociolinguistics case: Cant understand structural without social, social without structural, past without present, present without past.

COMPLEXITY 32

The point Common claim: Languages in contact, obsolescent languages, heritage languages, creoles are all subject to simplification or at most maintain existing complexity. Our argument: Even an obsolescent heritage language in intense contact in a community where many people havent spoken it in decades shows clear increases in complexity. That holds, it seems, however you define complexity. Even examples of simplification often have unexpected explanations. 33

A closely related point The rhetoric about contact languages of virtually any sort creoles, heritage languages, obsolescent languages is about deficiency: attrition, incomplete acquisition, loss, not to mention interruption, lack, failure, absence, inability, and on and on. But language is about human cognition and were dealing with full and complete systems. DeGraff (2001:291): Creoles are reflections of our (species-uniform and species-specific) human biology, among the most beautiful and most wonderful [forms that] have been, and are being, evolved 34

Complexity Crystal (2003): Complexity includes both the formal internal structuring of linguistic units and the psychological difficulty in using or learning them. However, it has not yet proved feasible to establish independent measures of complexity defined in purely linguistic terms. Nettle (2012): The complexity of different components of the grammars of human languages can be quantified. For example, languages vary greatly in the size of their phonological inventories, and in the degree to which they make use of inflectional morphology. DeGraff (2001): Complexity is no simple matter. Roberge (1994): warns us to avoid simplistic hypotheses about contact and change. 35

Some views on contact languages Boas argues that obsolescent languages may simultaneously exhibit both simplifications and preservation of linguistic structures. (2009:4-5) Isnt something missing here? Complexification under language contact by additive borrowing Trudgill (2010a:301-309, 2010b:20-24) high-contact, long-term contact situations involving childhood language contact are likely to lead to complexification through the addition of features from other languages. 36

Some testable points in here Has Wisconsin Heritage German simplified over time? Or has it preserved complexity? Or has it gained complexity? If the last, is it (only) by addition of features from contact languages or dialects?

NEW INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY Complementizer agreement in Wisconsin Heritage German 38

Complementizer agreement Standard German wenn du willst if you want to.2sg wennihr wollt if yall want to.2pl Dialectal German (esp. Southern, also W. Frisian, Dutch) wennst du willst if.2sgyou want to.2sg wenntihr wollt if.2pl yall want to.2pl 39

Complexification: New inflection In what sense is C-agr more complex? Additional inflection Inflection is the one area where everybody seems to agree that loss comes with contact. Where did it come from? Probably present in a few input dialects, but certainly not all; pops up all over West Germanic Sources Joshua Bousquette. 2013. Complementizer Agreement in Modern Varieties of West Germanic: A model of reanalysis and renewal. Ph.D. dissertation, UWMadison. Joshua Bousquette. Forthcoming. Complementizer Agreement in Heritage Varieties of Wisconsin German. 40

The point C-agr has developed independently Discontinuous communities and different languages in Europe Diasporic communities like the Siebenbrger communities in Transylvania and Cimbrian in Italy C-agr in Wisconsin shares SOME similarities with Continental varieties, but not ALL different morphological distribution (WI restricted to 2-sg) Wisconsin attestations more closely resemble one another; they do not directly match any specific input dialect, which includes the dialects of their first generation ancestors Speakers acquire C-agr in Wisconsin when their European ancestors dialects did not have C-agr Independent, parallel development? Result of dialect mixing? 41

Example 1 Wennsdu rauchen dust If-you smoking do If you smoke (Speaker J, Sheboygan, WI) 42

Example 2 Wennsdu zu mein Haus kommst, dann kannst du Cake haben. If you come to my house, then you can have cake. 43

Kannst du mir sagen afsdu morgen komms? Can you tell me if you will be arriving tomorrow? (Speaker R, Fond du Lac County, WI) 44

Take home on C agreement Additional inflection, more synthetic. More redundancy. Subject marking on complementizers and other elements = non-prototypical inflection. Very incomplete paradigm. Highly unlikely that it was in input dialect for most speakers. Clearly no role for standard language (where this is very foreign) 45

NULL ELEMENTS Multiple gap constructions in Wisconsin Heritage German 46

Parasitic gaps: English vs. German 47 [Which book] 1 did you sell t 1 without reading pg 1 ? Sheboygan 1 is a city that people like t 1 when they visit pg 1. Welches Buch hast Du verkauft, ohne es/*pg zu lesen? Which book did you sell t 1, without it to read Sheboygan ist eine Stadt, die Leute gern haben, wenn sie sie/*pg besuchen. Sheboygan 1 is a city that people like t 1 when they it visit.

Gaps, dependencies in heritage lgs 48 heritage speakers have difficulty maintaining syntactic dependencies pertaining to a more abstract level of syntactic representation, what was traditionally termed deep structure. Especially low-proficiency heritage speakers have significant difficulties producing null elements. Polinsky & Kagan (2007:382) heritage speakers seem to have difficulty in establishing dependencies between items, especially if these dependencies are at a distance (Benmamoun et al. 2010: 36 )

Overuse of overt elements, Polinsky & Kagan 49 a heritage speaker of Russian, 23 years old, acquisition of Russian as L1 interrupted at about age 5. malcik # on imel sobaka i ljaguka. boy 3sg had dog.dc and frog.dc the boy he had a dog and a frog # on ljubit ego ljaguka 3sg likes his frog.dc he likes his frog

Wisconsin Heritage German Gap Sheboygan [is e] Stadt die Leit gleichen wennse visit No gap Sheboygan ist eine stadt die de leute die da besuchen sehr gern haben

Complexification: New gaps German: no true parasitic gaps; English: gaps aplenty In what sense is it more complex? Null elements harder to process, especially at a distance Where did it come from? In some sense surely from English Sources Michael Putnam, Joshua Bousquette, Nick Henry, Ben Frey, Daniel Ntzel, Joseph Salmons & Alyson Sewell. 2013. How deep is your syntax? Filler-gap dependencies in heritage language grammar. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 19.21-30. Various related forthcoming papers and manuscripts by our team. 51

52 Absence of p-gaps in heritage German would be consistent with previous work on HLs. Presence of p-gaps would be strikingly different. Further, if gaps occur, we expect them to be licensed in syntactically differentiated ways.

Engdahls Accessibility Hierarchy 53

Test sentences for p-gaps 54 Manner 1. Which book did you sell without reading? Manner 2. Is that the girl he kissed without looking at? Temporal 1. Sheboygan is a city that people like when they visit. Temporal 2. This is the food that you have to cook before eating. Relative. This is the book that people who read really like.

Do gaps follow Engdahls AH? 55 GappingNo gapping % gapping Manner 119773.10% Manner 217965.40% Temp 12218.70% Temp 2112134.40% Relative1175.60%

Do gaps follow Engdahls AH? 56

controls manner adv. temporal adv. conditional relative conj. clause WiG-Eng bilinguals Eng monolinguals (G. sett.) Eng monolinguals (non-G. sett)

58 blue is younger (1980-1994), n=6 green is older (1949-1966), n=3

Take home on gaps Heritage speakers of German produce p-gaps in translation tasks contrast with European varieties contrast with claim that heritage speakers have difficultly producing null elements Our speakers produce gaps far more at the more accessible end of Engdahls hierarchy they tend to restructure more at the less accessible end This looks like an effect of L2 on L1, not the inability to produce null elements due to their heritage status BUT tightly structured and indirect. 59

CONCLUSIONS 60

Conclusions The complexity wars have raged hottest in creole studies, but they lurk everywhere in language contact. Theres a lot of work on and many more claims about simplicity metrics. Were looking not for overall measures, but change in particular areas. Choose your metric for simplicity or simplification, and weve got counterexamples from Wisconsin Heritage German. They arent just from English or directly from English. Even where they are from English or German dialects in some sense, they are quite different from English. 61

Conclusions We didnt actually set out to look for issues of complexity or simplicity, but the issues weve explored so far show a surprisingly clear directionality. Not all patterns probably work this way: MLU, passivization, etc. The contact > simplification game is just dumb; please stop. These varieties are full products of human cognitive abilities and function as such. 62

Big picture Hertiage languages can provide incredibly rich data for historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, historical sociolinguistics and structural linguistics. Requires integrating different sets of data carefullly. Dative case: story isnt what it seems Dialect mixing: more and EARLIER than claimed Shift: story not what it seems, but facts support path for German influence Complexification: Plenty of it in a situation where simplification is claimed. 63

YOUR QUESTIONS? 64

THANK[s]! Thanks to Luke Annear, Emily Claire, Alicia Groh, Mary Simonsen, Trini Stickle, Nick Williams. 65

Documents

The historical sociolinguistics of heritage languages Joseph Salmons with Joshua Bousquette, Christine Evans, Benjamin Frey, Alyson Sewell, Samantha Litty,