Organisers:

Petros Karatsareas (University of the West of England & Open University of Cyprus)
Jeanette Sakel (University of the West of England)

Invited Speaker:

Professor Jason Rothman (University of Reading)

We are delighted to announce a one-day workshop on “Morphosyntactic interference in heritage languages” to be held at the Bristol Centre for Linguistics, University of the West of England, Bristol on Thursday 11 June 2015 (11:00 – 18:00).

Heritage speakers are typically the children of immigrants who are born in their parents’ host country. They normally grow up acquiring the language of their parents’ country of origin at home until they start attending school, at which time they start acquiring the majority language of the host country. Gradually, they become more fluent in the latter, limiting the use of the former to the interaction with family and friends from the same socioethnic background.

Research has shown that this acquisitional trajectory distinguishes heritage speakers from both L1 acquirers and L2 learners (see in particular Benmamoun et al. 2013, Montrul 2008, Polinsky & Kagan 2007 and references therein). On the one hand, heritage speakers are exposed to the heritage language for most of their childhood, thus acquiring a significant part of its grammar on a par with native speakers. On the other hand, the stark reduction of domains in which the heritage language is used and the consequent interruption of their acquisition results in a type of linguistic competence reminiscent of L2 learners. The interrupted acquisition of the heritage language, possible subsequent attrition, and interference from the majority language gradually leads to the formation of heritage grammars characterised by innovations on all levels, from phonology and morphology to syntax and semantics.

Call for Papers:

The aim of this workshop is to bring together established scholars and early career researchers working on heritage linguistics to specifically explore phenomena of morphosyntactic interference in heritage languages.

We invite abstracts on any domain of morphosyntax for 30-minute talks (20 minutes presentation plus 10 minutes discussion). We particularly welcome contributions focusing on the following phenomena:

- Inflection (nominal and/or verbal)
- Case assignment
- Definiteness
- Tense/aspect/modality
- Agreement (gender, number, case, class, person)

Abstracts must be up to 400 words in length (excluding references) and include the title, the name(s) of author(s) and their affiliation(s). Please submit your abstracts in both .doc(x) and .pdf format by email to Petros.Karatsareasuwe.ac.uk by 20 March 2015. Notification of acceptance/rejection will be communicated by 31 March 2015.