Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: In this study, I examined heritage language speakers' acquisition of the nominal domain of Korean to see how these speakers' age of onset of exposure to English, their frequency of exposure to Korean, and their usage of Korean could help account for their performance. Fifteen adult simultaneous bilinguals and eighteen adult sequential bilinguals participated in the study. Their responses were compared to that of eight Korean-dominant bilinguals comprised of a subset of the mothers of the participants (and other similar speakers), who formed the control group, to represent the baseline (i.e., the input that heritage language speakers actually receive). The participants completed language history questionnaires, which were used to create composite usage and exposure scores for Korean. General measures of the speakers' ability in Korean were compiled based on self-rated ability scores and an analysis of their accuracy and productivity on two of the tasks in this study. In order to examine the heritage language speakers' grammars with respect to the nominal domain of Korean, the participants completed three tasks: 1) a preference task designed to test their sensitivity to various combinations of Case drop and their preferences for structures with or without plural marking and comitative Case markers; 2) an elicited imitation task designed to test their ability to recognize and produce Case markers; and 3) an elicited narration task designed to elicit production of Case markers, the plural marker, and quantificational structures. The results of mixed effects logistic regression models suggest that, with respect to aspects of the Korean nominal domain that are sensitive to differing levels of acceptability, the heritage language speakers showed awareness of these levels overall; different aspects of their language experiences were useful in accounting for differences between speakers. The results from the control group also suggest that the input that heritage language speakers receive is not "faulty".
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Eugenia Suh
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2287070948