Heritage Language bilinguals are native speakers of a home (minority) language who grow up in an environment where the societal language is different. In the typical case, heritage bilinguals, along a considerable spectrum of individual variation, become dominant in the majority language whereby their heritage language competence differs from that of age and SES matched monolinguals of the heritage language. How and why this happens and ultimately what factors predict where an individual sits along the outcome continuum are the “million dollar question” within the field.

In this talk, Professor Jason Rothman will focus on charting and explicating factors related to individual outcomes in heritage speakers, showing that distinct variables are able to account for specific differences even within the same individuals (eg specific grammatical domains versus lexical richness and general complexity - may have different predictors). Implications of this will be discussed as it relates to how we understand the processes involved in minority language bilingualism and what they tell us more generally.

The presentation will be online and you can register for the link here. Please get in touch with Dr Eloi Puig-Mayenco if you have any issues.

About the speaker

Professor Jason Rothman is Professor of Linguistics at UiT and Adjunct Professor at Universidad Nebrija. Professor Rothman primarily works on language acquisition and processing across the life span, especially in various types of bilingualism and multilingualism.