This project investigates language acquisition and language attrition in speakers of Bosnian and Serbia living in Norway. It seeks to unveil how individual difference factors predict language outcomes. The original title of the project is: "MultiLingual Minds and Factors Affecting MultiLingual Outcomes". It was funded by UiT the Arctic University of Norway, from 2020 to 2024. Investigators: Aleksandra Tomić, Yulia Rodina, Fatih Bayram, Cécile De Cat.
We created the HeLEx questionnaire to document bilingual language experience in Heritage Speakers, based on an adapted and augmented version of the LSBQ. See our publication Documenting heritage language experience using questionnaires, where we compare the two and discuss the impact of methodological choices regarding question phrasing, visual format, response options, and response mechanisms. The HeLEx is available on Gorilla (link to be posted soon).
Our study investigated the individual variation in language outcomes in speakers of Bosnian or Serbian who had emigrated to Norway in childhood or adulthood, or who were born there to immigrant parents. We carried out three studies in adult speakers (n=71), each probing a different aspect of language outcomes: (i) the knowledge of clitic placement, (ii) morphosyntactic competence, and (iii) lexical competence. We also probed (iv) the knowledge of clitic placement in children, using an elicitation task.
Knowledge of clitic placement: Our self-paced listening study demonstrates that P2 clitic placement in Bosnian and Serbian is vulnerable in bilingual speakers in contexts of immigration. The outcomes included a violation detection score and a listening/processing time difference between licit and illicit structures. Through causal inference modelling, we demonstrated that language background variables are part of a complex web of associations, and that seemingly age-related effects (such as the onset of exposure to Norwegian as the societal language, or the length of residence in Norway) are in fact proxies for key aspects of the quantity and quality of language experience. Literacy as reading practices was one of the most important factors promoting sensitivity to P2 violations as a metalinguistic measure, whereas the extent of HL use across contexts and later SL Exposure Onset boosted clitic position sensitivity in the processing measure. By contrast, length of residence in the SL country was not predictive of attrition. This suggests that heritage speakers and attrited speakers should be considered on a continuum rather than as distinct bilingualism profiles. See our publication "Individual language experience factors in morphosyntactic variation in heritage and attriting speakers of Bosnian and Serbian: A causal inference approach" (currently in press).
Watch this space for the outcomes of our other studies.