Event Date
LOCATION: 53A
Beyond accuracy: Heritage speakers’ performance on two kinds of acceptability judgment tasks
Dr. Eve Zyzik
University of California, Santa Cruz
Heritage speakers are early bilinguals who acquire their first language naturalistically in the home environment and later (or simultaneously) acquire a second language in the broader community and in school. In this presentation, I focus specifically on the performance of heritage speakers on acceptability judgment tasks (AJTs), which are controversial for a number of reasons. One concern among researchers (cf. Boon and Polinksy, 2014; Polinsky, 2016; Orfitelli and Polinksy, in press) is the suggestion that heritage speakers may lack confidence in their responses. In the current research, I present the results from two bimodal AJTs that included a separate confidence scale with four options (not confident at all, somewhat confident, very confident, and absolutely certain). Data were collected from 57 heritage speakers of Spanish who were subsequently divided into two groups based on language dominance (Gertken, Amengual, and Birdsong, 2014). Monolingual Spanish speakers (n=18) from Mexico served as a comparison group. The results reveal significant effects for task stimulus (grammatical versus ungrammatical items), language dominance (Spanish-dominant versus English-dominant heritage speakers), and language domain (morphosyntax versus lexicon). The confidence ratings on both tasks were generally very high, suggesting that any differences between monolingual native speakers and heritage speakers are very subtle. These data are discussed in relation to recent studies that address the question of native-like abilities among heritage speakers.
Eve Zyzik (PhD, UC Davis) is currently an Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics at UC Santa Cruz. She has published on a variety of topics related to second language acquisition, heritage language development, and language pedagogy. Recent publications include an advanced-level textbook entitled, El español y la lingüística aplicada (with Robert Blake) and a book on the many uses of authentic materials entitled, Authentic Materials Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching (with Charlene Polio).