Case in Heritage Polish. a Cross-Generational Approach

Home , Final case, Formal case, Initiative case, Polish morphology, Prepositional case

Case in Heritage Polish. A Cross-Generational Approach

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy of The Ohio State University

Izolda Wolski-Moskoff, M.A.

Graduate Program in Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures

The Ohio State University

2019

Dissertation Committee:

Ludmila Isurin, Advisor

Leslie Moore

Helena Goscilo

Izolda Wolski-Moskoff

2019

Abstract

Nominal case morphology is often considered one of the most reanalyzed elements of heritage grammar (Benmamoun et al., 2013; Montrul, 2016). Several case typologies have been put forward to investigate which cases are more vulnerable in heritage languages. The two considered in this dissertation are based solely on the internal qualities of cases. Benmamoun et al. (2013) have suggested that structural case is better preserved than inherent case, whereas

Laskowski (2014) has proposed that strong cases replace weak ones in the language of Polish heritage speakers. Neither of these approaches, however, has compared divergences between the speech of heritage speakers and the language of their parents. By analyzing patterns of case use in the language of two generations of Polish immigrants, this dissertation offers new insights into nominal morphology in the Polish heritage language. It also analyzes whether any of the proposed case typologies are applicable to heritage Polish. To gain a more comprehensive view of nominal case morphology in heritage Polish, the present study focuses not only on the internal characteristics of cases, but also on such external qualities as case markings.

Conducted mainly in Chicago, the study investigates the case use and knowledge of twenty-five Polish heritage speakers, twelve first-generation immigrants, and a control group of twelve monolinguals from Poland. The results show that all oblique cases are preserved in the speech of the advanced heritage speakers, albeit occurring less frequently therein than in the language of the other two groups. The lower-proficiency speakers’ decreased accuracy, meanwhile, may signify that the grammatical systems of these speakers operate on the syntactic rules of the dominant language (i.e., English). Additionally, the results of the first-generation immigrants indicate that the frequency of oblique case use in their language is much lower than in the language of the control group. i

To measure the use and knowledge of cases, the study employed three tasks: story elicitation (based on the picture book Frog, Where Are You?), elicited sentence completion, and grammaticality judgment. The results of the tasks indicate that heritage speakers’ divergent use of cases exhibits several tendencies: (1) reassignment of case functions, especially those pertaining to the genitive, (2) allomorphic reduction in cases that display more complex morphology, such as the locative and genitive, (3) overgeneralization of one post-prepositional case, and (4) substitution of the nominative for most oblique cases in lower proficiency speakers. Additionally, the results of the first-generation immigrants show that they use fewer oblique cases per clause than the control group. In particular, the two cases used less frequently by first-generation immigrants are the accusative and instrumental in so-called figurative functions.

Most divergent patterns displayed by heritage speakers in this study apply to both case types suggested by the above-mentioned typologies. Therefore, the proposed case theories cannot predict which cases are more or less vulnerable. Instead, I argue that the patterns observed represent strategies used by heritage speakers to compensate for inadequate case knowledge and/or difficulty with case-ending retrieval, which also points to the role of cognitive economy. The patterns are different for various proficiency levels. Intermediate speakers tend to replace all oblique cases with the nominative, reduce case allomorphy, and/or rely on prepositions in case ending retrieval, whereas advanced heritage speakers tend to reduce case functions. Overall, the results of this study indicate that nominal morphology in the Polish heritage language is conditioned by the cognitive strategies heritage speakers use to maintain their language, as well as by divergent parental input characterized by less frequent use of some cases.

Dedication:

Moim rodzicom

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Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Ludmila

Isurin. Without her guidance and mentorship this dissertation would not have been possible. I was very fortunate to have her as my advisor. She has been a great support in my academic journey, both on a scholarly and personal level. It was not only her patience, understanding, and knowledge that I could always count on, but also her belief in me, especially when I needed it most. My decision to pursue a PhD part-time was rather risky, and I believe that completing it would not have been possible if not for Dr. Isurin. She has never allowed me to focus on my little defeats but always encouraged me to see what is ahead.

Also, I would like to thank my committee members, Drs. Leslie Moore and Helena Goscilo.

They are luminaries in their fields, and I am forever grateful that I was able to work with them.

Taking classes with Dr. Moore was a turning point in my life, because this is when I decided to pursue a PhD program. It was also in her class that I read research on heritage speakers for the first time. Dr. Moore is a very inspirational teacher, and I am very fortunate to have met her on my journey. I am grateful to Dr. Goscilo for many things. She has not only been a model of a great scholar and teacher for me, but also a kindred spirit – a ‘bratnia dusza’ with whom I could chat in

Polish.

My experience at the OSU has given me the best possible tools to begin a productive academic career. I am grateful to all the professors whose classes I have taken, especially in the Slavic

Department and the Department of Linguistics. The challenging and thought-provoking

discussions they encouraged have enabled me to grow as a scholar. I am especially grateful to Dr.

Donald Winford, whose comments on the prospectus of this dissertation helped me develop a more in-depth analysis of the data I had collected.

I would like to thank all those who helped me with the recruitment for this study. First, many thanks and warm thoughts go to my sister Iwona, whose energy and commitment were indispensable in finding participants in Poland. Next, gratitude goes to my colleagues from

Chicago, Anna Szawara of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Bożena Nowicka McLees of

Loyola University. They both made sure that students from their institutions responded to my email and that I had enough participants. Dziękuję bardzo!

Also, many special thanks to WILA organizers and participants. Taking part in this workshop has enabled me to share my ideas with the wider heritage-language world. I am very grateful for their warm welcome and encouragement, and the opportunity they have afforded to meet so many scholars working in the heritage field. I am especially grateful to Dr. Joe Salmons, whose interest in my research has been very encouraging. Also, I would like to thank Dr. Mike Putnam for giving me further insights on the model that he co-authored.

Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for providing the support and encouragement necessary to continue with this dissertation. My parents, who are no longer here and will not be able to share the joy of a finished work with me, I thank for encouraging me to continue my education. I am especially grateful to my beloved mother, who made many sacrifices to put me through college. Last but not least, I would like to thank my husband Robert, who has been by my side all these years reminding me about the task at hand.

Vita

1995 B.A., Polish Philology University of Torun, Poland

1998 M.A., Polish Philology University of Torun, Poland

2006 M.A., Central Eastern European Studies La Salle University, Philadelphia PA

2008-2011 Lecturer in Polish University of Pennsylvania

2011-present Lecturer in Polish The Ohio State University

Publications

Wolski-Moskoff, I. (2018). Forms of Address in Polish Heritage Speakers, Heritage Language Journal

Wolski-Moskoff, I. (2017). Teaching Polish in the US./Nauczanie Języka Polskiego w Stanach Zjednoczonych, in Bilingual and Bicultural: Speaking Polish in North America, ed. K Zechenter

Fields of Study

Major Field: Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures

Tracks: Slavic Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition

Specialization: Second Language Studies

Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………….……………………………………………...i Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………..……iii Acknowledgments…….……….…………….…………………………………………………...iv Vita ………………..………………...……………………………………………………………vi Table of Contents ………………………….….…………………………………………………vii List of Tables ………………..…………………………………………………………………....x List of Figures………………………………..…………………………………………………..xi Abbreviations…………………………………………………………..………………………..xii Introduction ...... 1 1. Chapter 1: Polish immigrants in the United States ...... 6 1.1 The History of Polish immigration ...... 6 1.1.1 The Polish communities in Chicago ...... 11 1.2 Polish identity ...... 15 1.2.1 The role of the church ...... 17 1.2.2 Language maintenance ...... 20 2. Chapter 2: Polish as a heritage language ...... 26 2.1 Heritage speakers – a definition ...... 26 2.2 The language of heritage speakers ...... 29 2.2.1 Lexicon ...... 31 2.2.2 Nominal morphology...... 34 2.2.3 Verbal morphology ...... 36 2.2.4 Syntax ...... 37 2.2.5 Phonetics ...... 38 2.2.6 Socio-pragmatics ...... 39 2.3 Sources of divergent grammar in heritage languages ...... 41 2.3.1 Incomplete acquisition ...... 41 2.3.2 Attrition ...... 43 2.3.3 Cross-linguistic influences ...... 45 2.3.4 Input ...... 49 2.3.5 Parental input ...... 53 Attrition of L1 in first-generation immigrants .………………………………………….56 2.4. Conclusion ...... 61 3. Chapter 3: Polish case ...... 63 3.1 Case in Polish - overview ...... 63 3.1.1 The Nominative ...... 68 3.1.2 The Accusative ...... 69 3.1.3 The Genitive ...... 71 3.1.4 The Dative ...... 74 3.1.5 The Instrumental ...... 75 3.1.6 The Locative ...... 76 3.1.7 The Vocative ...... 78 3.1.8 Summary ...... 79

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3.2 The acquisition of cases by Polish monolingual children ...... 79 3.3. Case in heritage languages ...... 88 3.3.1 Case in the Polish heritage language in the United States ...... 88 3.3.2 Case in the Russian heritage language in the United States ...... 92 3.3.3 Case in the Polish heritage language in Sweden ...... 97 3.3.4 Case in the Polish heritage language in Germany ...... 100 3.3.5 Summary...... 101 3.4. Pilot study ...... 101 3.4.1 Study goals ...... 102 3.4.2 Methodology...... 103 Participants ...... 103 Materials and Procedure ...... 104 3.4.3 Findings ...... 105 The use of cases by HSs - interpretation ...... 111 3.5 Conclusion ...... 118 4. Chapter 4: Theoretical framework and research questions ...... 121 4.1 Introduction ...... 121 4.2 Bilingual acquisition and maintenance ...... 121 4.2.1 Theoretical framework ...... 125 4.3 Research questions and hypotheses ...... 131 4.3.1 Research questions ...... 132 5. Chapter 5: Methodology ...... 135 5.1 Introduction ...... 135 5.2 Participants ...... 135 5.2.1 Polish heritage speakers ...... 136 Extra-linguistic variables...... 143 5.2.2 First-generation immigrants (FGIs) ...... 146 5.2.3 Control group...... 149 5.2.4 Summary...... 150 5.3 Materials and procedure ...... 150 5.3.1 Questionnaires ...... 150 5.3.2 Task 1: Spontaneous speech ...... 151 5.3.3 Task 2: Story elicitation ...... 153 5.3.4 Task 3: Elicited sentence completion task (ESCT) ...... 154 5.3.5 Task 4: Grammaticality judgment (GJ) ...... 158 5.3.6 Procedure ...... 159 5.3.7 Data coding and analysis ...... 160 6. Chapter 6: Results and analysis...... 161 6.1 Introduction ...... 161 6.2 Quantitative data ...... 162 6.2.1 Task two: story elicitation ...... 162 Clause complexity ...... 163 Individual case distribution ...... 166 Case substitution ...... 172 Task two: heritage speakers...... 173

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6.2.2 Task three: elicited sentence completion task (ESCT) ...... 176 Task three: heritage speakers ...... 178 Advanced HSs’ accuracy by gender ...... 180 Advanced HSs’ accuracy by case ...... 183 6.2.3 Task four: grammaticality judgment ...... 186 Task four: heritage speakers ...... 187 6.2.4 Quantitative analysis - summary ...... 188 6.3 Qualitative analysis – heritage speakers ...... 189 6.3.1 The use and knowledge of cases ...... 189 The Accusative ...... 192 The Genitive ...... 193 The Instrumental ...... 198 The Locative ...... 202 The Dative ...... 205 Case use and knowledge - summary ...... 207 6.3.2 Other related nominal divergences ...... 208 Problems with grammatical gender ...... 209 6.3.3 Lexicon ...... 210 Task one: OPI ...... 210 Task two: problems with retrieval of lexicon ...... 216 6.4 Qualitative analysis – first-generation immigrants ...... 218 6.4.1 Case distribution ...... 218 6.4.2 Errors in case inflections ...... 220 6.4.3 Problems with lexical retrieval ...... 223 7. Chapter 7: Discussion ...... 225 7.1 Introduction ...... 225 7.2 More and less vulnerable cases in HSs ...... 225 7.3 Divergent patterns in case inflections ...... 236 7.3.1 Case functions ...... 238 7.3.2 Prepositions ...... 242 7.3.3 Dative ...... 246 7.3.4 Allomorphic reduction ...... 247 7.3.5 Noun frequency ...... 250 7.4 Cross-generational change ...... 251 7.5 Extra-linguistic factors ...... 256 7.6 Summary ...... 260 8. Chapter 8: Conclusion ...... 262 8.1 Study limitations ...... 264 8.2 Implications for further research ...... 265 8.3 Pedagogical implications ...... 266 Bibliography ...... 268 Appendix A Questionnaire - heritage speakers...... 281 Appendix B Questionnaire – first-generation immigrants ...... 287 Appendix C Elicited sentence completion task ...... 292 Appendix D Grammaticality judgment ...... 296

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Main functions of Polish cases…………………………………………………………65 Table 3.2 Inflectional endings of Polish nouns…………………………………………………. 66 Table. 3.3 Inflectional endings of the locative case with examples………………………………77 Table 3.4 Speech characteristics for each group in the study……………………………………106 Table 3.5 Use of cases for each HS……………………………………………………………..107 Table 3.6 Socio-linguistic data from the background questionnaire……………………………110 Table 5.1 HSs – basic demographics……………………………………………………………136 Table 5.2 HSs’ current use of Polish……………………………………………………………137 Table 5.3 Formal schooling in Polish…………………………………………………………...139 Table 5.4 Self-assessment of Polish language skills by HSs……………………………………140 Table 5.5 OPI results for HSs…………………………………………………………………...141 Table 5.6 HSs’ individual OPI ratings versus self-assessments…………………………………142 Table 5.7 Extra-linguistic data by individual HS……………………………………………….144 Table 5.8 Logistic regression results for extra-linguistic variables……………………………..145 Table 5.9 First-generation immigrants' basic demographic data………………………………..148 Table 5.10 Control group's basic demographic information…………………………………….150 Table 6.1 Clause complexity and correctness…………………………………………………...164 Table 6.2 The means of each group’s case use…………………………………………………167 Table 6.3 The means of case substitution per clause for HSs and FGIs………………………..172 Table 6.4 The means of case substitution per clause for intermediate and advanced HSs……..174 Table 6.5 Patterns in case substitution by proficiency level and for all HSs……………………175 Table 6.6 Case accuracy by group………………………………………………………………177 Table 6.7 Case accuracy by proficiency level of HSs…………………………………………..178 Table 6.8 Means of inflection accuracy by gender in advanced HSs……………………………181 Table 6.9 Means of inflection accuracy by case function and gender…………………………..184 Table 6.10 Rejection of erroneous sentences – all groups………………………………………187 Table 6.11 Rejection of erroneous sentences by HS proficiency level…………………………187

List of Figures

Figure 4.1 Graphic representation of Putnam and Sánchez (2013) model…………………….128 Figure 6.1 Case distribution in each group…………………………………………………….165 Figure 6.2 The means of individual case distribution per clause in HSs, FGIs and CG……….168 Figure 6.3 The means of instrumental distribution for each group…………………………….170 Figure 6.4 The means of accusative distribution for each group……………………………….171 Figure 6.5 Responses by proficiency group and noun type……………………………………..179

Abbreviations

ACC/A Accusative ACTFL American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages ATH Activation Threshold Hypothesis DAT/D Dative ESCT Elicited Sentence Completion Task GEN/G Genitive F/FEM Feminine FF Functional Features FGI First-Generation Immigrants FUT Future Tense HFN High Frequency Nouns HL Heritage Language HS Heritage Speakers IMP Imperative INF Infinitive INS/I Instrumental LFN Low Frequency Nouns LOC/L Locative M/MASC Masculine MP Masculine Personal N Neuter NMP Non-Masculine Personal NOM/N Nominative OPI Oral Proficiency Interview PART Particle PAST/PST Past Tense PL Plural PF Phonological Features PRS Present Tense PSS Polish Saturday School SF Semantic Features SG Singular SP Standard Polish SR Standard Russian VOC Vocative

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Introduction

This dissertation stemmed from a longtime interest in heritage language related to my professional experience as an instructor of Polish. Of all the elements of heritage grammar, case usage intrigued me the most, perhaps due to the “bad reputation” it “enjoys” among heritage linguists. Having interacted with many Polish heritage speakers whose cases, albeit divergent from the monolingual variant, were quite robust, I have always been perplexed by the reigning consensus that nominal case morphology is deeply reanalyzed in some instances into a two-case system. My observations in classrooms and in the Polish diaspora led me to design this study, aimed at gaining a better understanding of the case system in heritage Polish. In doing so, I also bore in mind that heritage Polish is one of the least-studied of the heritage languages.

The literature on heritage language is virtually unanimous on the point that nominal morphology is the most affected aspect of heritage speakers’ grammars (for discussion, see

Benmamoun et al., 2013; Montrul, 2016). There are comparative studies that show, moreover, that verbal morphology is “hardier” than nominal morphology. For instance, agreement markings on verbs are well preserved as compared to agreement markings between nouns and their modifiers

(Montrul et al., 2010). Of all the nominal elements of grammar, case is considered the most affected in heritage language.

In addition to the widespread notion of profoundly reanalyzed nominal case morphology in heritage language, two case theories have been proposed that this dissertation will put to the test.

The first, put forward by Benmamoun et al. (2013), posits that inherent case is less vulnerable than structural case in heritage grammars. The second theory, that of Laskowski (2014), suggests that

strong cases are preserved better than weak ones. Overall, the two theories are rather contradictory, insofar as Laskowski’s (2014) strong cases (with the exception of the genitive) could essentially be regarded as structural according to the former theory. Created for the Polish heritage language,

Laskowski’s theory initially seemed more accurate in describing what I had observed previously.

However, as this dissertation argues, no theory relying solely on internal case qualities can accurately describe the nominal case morphology of Polish heritage speakers. This dissertation hypothesizes that in order to evaluate case in the heritage language system, one must consider other attributes of cases, such as their frequency, the amount of different functions (both syntactic and semantic), and the qualities of their markings, whether they are complex and/or frequent.

As mentioned, research on heritage Polish in the United States is meager. In fact, there have been only two other general studies of cases that I could turn to: Preston and Turner’s (1984) study of case in Polish in Western New York, and Kozminska’s (2015) study of the Polish heritage language in Chicago, in which she also investigated case. The results of these two studies were rather contradictory. The first showed that the case system in heritage Polish is quite robust, whereas the second described it as profoundly reanalyzed with a tendency to maintain only one oblique case. Given such a slim and conflicting context in regard to general case theory as well as the case system of heritage Polish, one of the aims of the present study was to fill this enormous gap by providing a comprehensive description of the nominal case morphology of Polish heritage speakers.

Despite the consensus that the baseline language for heritage speakers must be established

(Polinsky & Kagan, 2007), very few studies compare divergences between the speech of heritage speakers and the language of their parents. By analyzing patterns of case use in the language of two generations of Polish immigrants, this dissertation offers a new approach to heritage language, 2

and fills a considerable gap in the research. The cases of heritage speakers are analyzed vis-a-vis those of first-generation immigrants, whereas the language of monolinguals serves as the background for both bilingual variants. Additionally, unlike most previous heritage language studies, which have tended to treat heritage grammars as incompletely acquired or partially lost, this dissertation applies the activation-based model of Putnam and Sánchez (2013), which emphasizes the process over the outcome. This model accentuates the bilingual context of heritage language development and considers the impact of the dominant language as part of this development.

The dissertation consists of eight chapters, of which Chapters 1-3 provide literature review regarding Polish immigrants, heritage language, and grammatical case, respectively. Chapter 4 discusses the theoretical frameworks used in this dissertation (a modification of that of Putnam and Sánchez) and presents the dissertation hypothesis and research questions. Chapter 5 provides information on the study’s methodology. Chapters 6 and 7 report findings, both quantitative and qualitative, and discussion thereof. Chapter 8 offers concluding remarks.

In the first part of Chapter 1, I discuss the demographic and historical background of Polish immigrants in the United States. Additionally, the chapter offers a discussion on such topics as

Polish identity, the role of the Church, and practices of language maintenance. It also presents a more in-depth discussion of Polish immigrants in the Chicago metropolitan area, where most of the data for this study were collected.

Chapter 2 offers a general overview of heritage language speakers and their language. It also discusses linguistic features that have been observed to be divergent in heritage languages, focusing especially on heritage Polish and Russian. Moreover, this chapter provides an overview

of the widely discussed sources of divergent heritage grammars. Finally, another factor that has not been extensively studied yet – parental input – is examined.

In Chapter 3, I provide an overview of Polish cases as used by monolingual speakers in Poland.

Additionally, the chapter offers a brief discussion of how cases are acquired by monolingual children in Poland. Moreover, the two major case theories that have previously been applied to heritage language are discussed. Then I present the acquisition of cases by Polish and Russian heritage speakers in the United States and Israel, as well as the results of research on the Polish heritage language in Germany and Sweden. Finally, I review the results of a pilot study that helped inspire this dissertation.

Chapter 4 provides the theoretical framework adapted by this dissertation: the model by

Putnam and Sánchez (2013), which is presented in comparison to previous approaches in heritage research. A possible expansion of the model is then offered – this study’s particular adaptation - via the additional factor of parental input. Lastly, the research hypothesis and questions are stated and briefly discussed.

In Chapter 5, I present the methodology of this dissertation. First, I describe each group of participants, the methods of their recruitment, and the procedure used in the study. The results of the first task (language proficiency assessment) are then presented for the first group of participants. I also analyze extra-linguistic factors involved in the language proficiency of the first participant group. I then describe the questionnaires and four tasks used in the study.

Finally, the chapter provides information on the methods by which data were coded and analyzed.

In the first part of Chapter 6, I provide quantitative results from all the tasks used in this study. The quantitative analysis of tasks two, three, and four provided in this chapter consists of the percentile results as well as the results of statistical tests. The chapter also presents the qualitative results of heritage speakers’ and first-generation speakers’ performance from all tasks.

In addition to the analysis of cases, I also discuss the findings of such pertinent grammar properties as grammatical gender and lexicon, inasmuch as these bear on our interpretation of the results as a whole.

Chapter 7 offers a discussion of the findings presented in the previous chapter. The discussion is organized around the dissertation’s four research questions. The results of the study are also discussed in relation to previous research studies. I examine such concepts as more/less vulnerable cases and individual case divergences in heritage speakers, as well as case knowledge and use in first-generation immigrants. Lastly, I analyze the role of extra-linguistic factors in shaping the grammars of HSs.

In Chapter 8, I provide concluding remarks that summarize the most important findings of this dissertation. The chapter also offers a discussion of certain limitations of the study, and recommendations for further research.

Chapter 1. Polish immigrants in the United States

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 8.5 million Americans of Polish descent living in the United States, that is, 3.2 % of the entire population. The newest 2010 Census estimates the

Polish-speaking population to be 607,531 (Ryan, 2013). Although this number has decreased by

25% in the last thirty years and is expected to decrease even further (Ortman & Shin, 2011), Polish still remains one of the top twelve minority languages spoken in U.S. metropolitan areas with the largest Polish-speaking populations, including Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York and others. Recent surveys reveal that contemporary Polish-Americans have higher levels of education and income than the average American (for an overview see Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek, 2010).

In this chapter, I will offer the historical and sociolinguistic background of Polish immigrants in the United States. In order to do so, I will discuss the history of Polish immigration to the United

States, the ethnic identity of Polish immigrants, and the practices of language maintenance.

Moreover, these attitudes and practices will be discussed within the context of other immigrant languages to assess the language vitality of Polish. Additionally, because the data for this dissertation were collected in Chicago, I will focus on historical and social characteristics of Polish communities in this city.

1.1. The history of Polish immigration

The first Polish settlers arrived in the United States in the early 17th century. They were a small group of craftsmen who arrived in Jamestown in 1608 (Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek,

2010). However, a larger influx of immigrants from the Polish lands began in the 18th century due

to geo-political changes. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, once a vast, multicultural and multiethnic country, was partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria in three successive partitions in 1772, 1793, and 1795. The partitioning countries imposed various political and economical sanctions on the Poles, which led to mass migration. The United States was not the only destination of the emigrants, many of whom settled in Western Europe as well. These early immigrants often considered themselves political refugees, and they had a very strong desire to preserve their Polish identity. They established the first fraternal organizations in order to provide support for various

Polish causes, including Polish education (Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek, 2010).

The industrialization of the 19th century offered new opportunities for the lowest stratum of Poles who had moved to the United States in large numbers (Pilch, 1988). It is believed that due to the partitions the ethnicity of Poles arriving in the United States at that time was not recorded correctly (some of them were considered Austrian, some Prussian and some Russian). Thus, it might be hard to establish the correct numbers of Polish immigration to the United States at the turn of the 19th and 20th century; one might with high probability assume that it was much higher than the numbers at the time indicate (Velikonja, 1988). In fact, the U.S. Census statistics from

1900 and 1910, when Polish immigration reached its peak, show no listing for Polish nationals at all (Nowicka McLees & Dziwirek, 2010). According to the U.S. Census, there were 3.5 million first- and second-generation Poles in the United States in 1930 (Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek,

2010). This group, referred to as the first wave of Polish immigration, was the largest in history.

The second wave arrived in the United States after World War II. These were Polish citizens who found themselves outside the newly created borders of communist Poland, decided not to return to their home country, and sought refuge in the West. It is assumed that over 200,000

Poles came to the United States in the 1940s and early 1950s (Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek,

2010).

The next wave of Polish immigrants arrived in the 1980s, numbering around 62,000

(Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek, 2010). This wave was a result of political circumstances in communist Poland, where growing disappointment with the oppressive authorities and economic decline caused many protests and consequently the creation of a strong anti-communist movement known as Solidarność – the Solidarity Free Trade Union. Fearing the growing influence of this movement, the Polish authorities declared Martial Law1 in 1981. Many members of the Solidarity movement then decided to leave the country as political refugees.

Despite the fall of communism, immigration from Poland did not decrease in the 1990s.

On the contrary, the number of newcomers grew, and in the Chicago area alone picked at 68,000

(Paral, 2004). Two main factors causing this last wave of immigration were the changes in U.S. immigration policy as well as the instability of Poland’s economic system. During the transition period, the unemployment rates in Poland were as high as 12 to 15 percent. However, some researchers explain that one should also consider the Poles’ national tendency for immigration (for an overview see Erdmans, 2006). Even when the economic situation stabilizes, people from countries with such a culture continue to emigrate because it is part of their “national habit.”

According to that theory, cultural and social factors can better explain the continuation of Polish

1 refers to the period of time from December 13, 1981, to July 22, 1983, when the authoritarian communist government of the People's Republic of Poland drastically restricted normal life by introducing martial law in an attempt to crush political opposition. A curfew was imposed, the national borders sealed, airports closed, and road access to main cities restricted. Telephone lines were disconnected, mail made subject to renewed postal censorship, all independent official organizations were criminalized, and classes in schools and universities were suspended.

immigration than economic factors. Nevertheless, after Poland joined the EU, the number of new immigrants in the United States decreased, mainly because Poles found other countries closer to home where they could easily find employment.

These four waves of Polish immigration differed significantly with regard to not only socioeconomic status but also level of education. The first wave had little or no formal education in the Polish language. This situation changed with the arrival of the second wave, which included many soldiers who had fought during WWII, and even more so upon the arrival of the Solidarity wave, which included many young professionals with college degrees. It was the first wave, however, that initiated the establishment of Polish organizations and institutions in the United

States. The church played a vital role in the life of these early immigrants, most of whom originated from the rural areas. This is when the first parochial Polish schools were established. Some 74 percent of Polish-Americans attended these parochial schools (Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek,

2010). Between 1930 and 1950, church politics changed, immigrants were encouraged to integrate with the majority culture and language, and the parochial schools were closed. However, with the arrival of the second wave and many well-educated people, a new type of school, which exists to this day, was established – known as the Polish Saturday School (PSS) (Nowicka Mc Lees &

Dziwirek, 2010; Kubiak, Kusielewicz, & Gromada, 1988).

The difference between these waves of immigration was also very visible in terms of dialectal diversity. The first two waves, but especially the turn-of-the-centuries wave, used different regional, dialectal and local varieties of Polish. Poles who came to the United States in the early 20th century arrived from countries where Polish was not an official language. The literary version of Polish had continued to be used to various degrees, yet education in the language

had not been widely available during the periods in history when using Polish was actually punishable by the ruling foreign authorities. Hence, the illiterate immigrants from the formerly

Polish lands spoke many distinct dialects of Polish. Similarly, the post-war immigrants, although better educated, used regional varieties characteristic of pre-war Poland.

The situation of the Polish dialects and regional varieties changed quite drastically after

WWII. For one, the Holocaust and the new Polish borders created a new homogeneous society, which no longer consisted of people of various heritages and ethnicities. Secondly, due to the unprecedented mass movement of people to the newly acquired territories, the regional differences, which were once so evident, gradually diminished, and standard Polish emerged (for an overview see Kamusella, 2016).

Pre-war Poland's population consisted of many different ethnicities such as Jews (8.6%),

Ukrainians (13.9%), Byelorussians (3.1%), Germans (2.3%)2 and others. Because the new Polish borders were moved westward, many of these ethnic groups were left outside the Polish territories.

Consequently, the former eastern borders of pre-war Poland were annexed into newly created

Soviet republics. Additionally, the second largest ethnic minority, namely Jewish, was almost completely killed during WWII. In consequence, the post-war Polish population became very homogeneous, made up of 98% ethnic Poles.

Additionally, in order to inhabit the newly acquired territories, which once belonged to

Germany, many people were relocated to what is today northeastern and southwestern Poland. The mass movement had an impact on regional dialects because the co-settlement of people who used

2 the numbers come from the 1931 Polish census

different dialects created favorable conditions for emergence of a uniform colloquial language, which soon became standard Polish. The communist educational system and state-controlled mass media played a large role in eradicating existing dialects, too. As a result, in today's Poland, even people from the regions where dialects were strong enough to survive use two different varieties of Polish: standard Polish and their local dialect. Despite recent interest in preserving local dialects, the number of speakers of local dialects has diminished and most likely will not be passed to the next generations (Karaś, 2016).

One can distinguish several different causes for Polish immigration to the United States.

The immigrants from the 18th and early 19th century as well as those who came after WWII may be considered political refugees (in today's terms). However, the largest wave, which arrived at the turn of the 19th and 20th century and consisted of the poorest strata of Polish society, immigrated for solely economic reasons. Similarly, the last post-Solidarity wave from the 1990s came to have a better life. Despite their different reasons for immigration, all these different groups of Polish immigrants were very involved in preserving their culture and language, which is often attributed to national pride (Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek, 2010).

1.1.1 The Polish communities in Chicago

I decided to conduct my study in the Chicago metropolitan region because its Polonia is the largest and most vibrant in the world. It is the home of 133,797 Polish immigrants and nearly

900,000 Americans of Polish heritage (the numbers come from the 2000 U.S. Census). Polish

immigrants are present throughout the city and its environs as they inhabit old Polish neighborhoods as well as the city’s suburbs.

The Americans of Polish heritage in Chicago are descendants of immigrants from the

Polish lands who arrived in the first decade of the 20th century and settled in the North Side neighborhood, at the intersection of Milwaukee, Division and Ashland Avenue. Many of these early immigrants, whose numbers during the 1920s grew to half a million, found employment in meatpacking industries (Erdmans, 2006). Since then, immigrants from Poland have continued to settle in Chicago, although due to immigration restrictions, their numbers were limited until the late 1970s with the arrival of political refugees from the so-called Solidarity wave. The numbers of Polish immigrants, however, were highest in the early 1990s when two of every five Polish newcomers to United States settled in the Chicago metropolitan region. Between 1972 and 2000, roughly 100,000 Poles immigrated to the region. Now 29.9% percent of all Polish immigrants in the United States reside there.

Unlike native-born Polish Americans, Polish immigrants tend to work in semi- and low- skilled positions and in the service sector after arrival. Over time, however, their immigrant statuses improve; their occupations and/or incomes become more similar to those of native-born

Polish Americans. This improvement of life’s standards usually coincides with these immigrants leaving their Polish urban neighborhoods for the city’s many suburbs. Thus, in addition to old

Polish ethnic communities in the Jackowo and Belmont-Central areas, there are many suburbs in

Chicago where Polish immigrants live. In fact, only 23% of Polish Americans reside in the city, whereas 65% live in the suburbs (Paral, 2004).

The presence of Poles is widely noticeable in the city and its suburbs. In addition to Polish delis, restaurants and businesses that serve mainly immigrants, one can find a variety of professional shingles with Polish last names (e.g., doctors, dentists, accountants, lawyers, travel agents) in both urban and suburban areas. Moreover, there are over 100 Polish organizations in the city, including three prominent Polish-language radio stations with 217 different programs, four television stations, three daily newspapers and many magazines. The presence of Poles in the city is also noticeable thanks to city-wide events such as the May 3rd Constitution Day Parade, the

Polish Film Festival, the Taste of Polonia Festival, and the Festival Polonaise.

Research on these immigrants’ places of origin is scarce; however, some regions seem to be better represented than others. In Chicago one can generally meet Poles from all Polish regions, but due to chain migration from the Podhale region, Górale (Polish: Highlanders) make up one of the biggest regional groups there. The exact number of Highlanders who live in Chicago is not known, but their presence in the city is widely visible; for instance, the Southwest Side near

Midway Airport is believed to be populated mostly by Highlanders (Field Museum, 2010). The

Highlanders are proud of their culture, aspects of which include their regional dialect, music and clothing. They are very involved in preserving their traditions and passing them on to the next generation. One of the most interesting facts about the Highlanders, however, is their use of the

Podhale dialect. Unlike most dialects in Poland, the Podhale dialect is still very much alive.

However, due to government education policies as well as the speakers’ need to know the standard language, the linguistic situation in this region can be described as diglossia. The speakers use both standard Polish and the Podhale dialect. Moreover, older speakers who use this dialect primarily are known to add elements from the nationwide variation to their language (Karaś, 2016).

Nevertheless, because of the large presence of Highlanders in the Chicago metropolitan area, one 13

can find households where the Podhale dialect is the main language of family communication. In addition to the Podhale dialect, one can also hear other dialects from Lesser Poland, such as the

Oravian dialect. Oravian culture – that of a small population (twenty-five villages in Poland and

Slovakia) – is less known to the general public, but linguists count Oravian among Polish’s best- preserved dialects (Karaś, 2009). The Oravian and Podhale dialects both belong to the Lesser

Poland dialect group, and share many linguistic features: mazurzenie (the replacement of alveolar consonants with dental consonants), closed vowels, lack of the front nasal in the word-final position, and word-initial stress, among others.

In addition to this linguistic variety, the Poles in Chicago, just as the early immigrants are known for their religiousness. The old parishes established by immigrants at the turn of the century still have many members, and the buildings where parochial schools were once located are now used by Polish Saturday schools. In addition to the old churches located in the city, many suburban parishes offer mass in the Polish language. These suburban parishes are shared with other members who do not speak the language; therefore, they no longer play the same role as parishes did for the early immigrants. However, Polish Catholics still refuse to participate in English masses even when they are fluent in the language (for an overview see Erdmans, 2006). They often commute to other parishes if these offer masses in the Polish language. The strong bond between religion and language is something that still characterizes Polish immigrants.

There are thirty-four Polish Saturday Schools in the Chicago metropolitan area which enroll

16,000 students (Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek, 2010). Most of them were established by parish members, and in addition to classes in Polish language, history and geography, they offer classes in religion. Many of these schools have large enrollments which allow them to offer separate

instruction for every grade. Typically, children begin these schools in kindergarten and can continue until the last year of high school. However, the vast majority of them do not continue after the eighth grade (Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek, 2010). Additionally, there are Polish preschools in the city, where Polish language is used by teachers. There are also various clubs and groups where parents can enroll their children and where the Polish language is used, including

Polish dance groups, theaters, choirs, and reading clubs, among others.

1.2 Polish identity

The numbers of Polish immigrants were so large over the centuries that they created a need for a special term to describe those who have left the Polish lands. Polish communities that reside abroad have been referred to as Polonia. This noun is the Latin word for Poland. Polonia has been used to denote Polish diasporas all over the world. It is believed that immigrants in the United

States began using this term in the 19th century to refer to their own communities. Additionally, there are other words derived from this noun, such as Polonus, which refers to a Pole who lives abroad. The presence of a special term to describe Poles who live abroad may signify how deeply immigration is rooted in the Polish culture. The following section will discuss the birth of Polish national identity and its significance for Polish immigrants.

The birth of Polish national identity is often ascribed to the writings of Polish Romantic poets who were part of political immigration in the 19th century (Fagin, 1977). After the partitions, Poles lived under foreign rulers; the country's territory was divided among three empires. Poles did not accept this situation and tried to free themselves by organizing uprisings. As a result of these

revolutions, the ruling authorities restricted the use and influence of Polish culture and language even further. Many Poles involved in the uprisings as well as those whose cultural influence was deemed dangerous either were forced to leave the country or decided to do so in order to gain more freedom in publishing their work. Some of the most influential Polish Romantic poets and artists

(e.g. Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Chopin) were among these political immigrants. They wrote and published their most important works while living abroad. The Romantics described their situation of forced immigration as pilgrimage. Their writings spoke about the necessity to preserve the

Polish spirit and about defying against foreign rulers.

These Romantic writings played an important role in the preservation of language among

Poles, both abroad and in the Polish lands, which remained under foreign rule for 123 years.

Despite foreign attempts to eradicate the use of Polish, upon regaining independence in 1918,

Polish people still used the Polish language (although sometimes with many borrowings from either German or Russian). Of course, the maintenance of language within a partitioned country cannot be compared to language maintenance abroad. The choice to use this language despite the circumstances, however, created a pattern for future generations. It was a matter of pride for Poles to know by heart long literary pieces, including epic poems written by the Romantic poets. The oeuvre of the Romantics was part of the heritage passed from generation to generation in order to preserve the national spirit through the use of language. To this day, one can hear Polish radio or television hosts citing Polish poetry when discussing seemingly unrelated matters.

I argue that the Poles' strong sense of ethnic identity, which is closely related to their

"language preservation ideology," can be indirectly attributed to the writings of Polish Romantic

émigré-poets. They played a vital role in preserving the heritage of the stateless nation. Poles who

lost their independence and whose identity was endangered by foreign laws aimed at diminishing the role of Polish language and culture became very protective of their heritage. They were also willing to fight for the right to have their own country despite unfavorable circumstances. This

Polish spirit, nurtured by the writings of the above-mentioned Romantics, shaped the attitude of a people determined to preserve their culture and language against all odds. Additionally, the status of a person who lives abroad yet makes a deliberate decision not only to use the Polish language but also to be involved in creating the culture while abroad has served as a role model for many immigrants.

1.2.1 The role of the Church

Nevertheless, some argue that this Romantic ideology, although generally well accepted, cherished and wide spread, was not available to all (Radziłowski, 2011). After all, the turn of the century’s wave of Polish immigrants consisted of the poorest and least educated people, who were often illiterate. Due to lack of education as well as access to high culture and language, these people did not possess a national identity in the Romantic sense. Moreover, they often spoke very different regional dialects and felt more attached to their region than to any country. What brought them together, however, was their religion. The vast majority of the first wave of Polish immigrants were Roman Catholics. Those who were not identified as something other than Polish once they were in America (Radziłowski, 2011).

The pre-partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a multireligious and multiethnic country in which all religions were protected by law. The various ethnic groups,

however, were of different religions. The majority of ethnic Poles were Roman Catholics, and since almost all the partitioning countries were not, being Catholic became part of Polish national identity. Thus, one of the consequences of the partitions was the birth of Polish national identity with the Catholic religion as an integral aspect of it. By delivering sermons and religious songs in

Polish, the Church became the last mainstay of Polishness in foreign-ruled Poland. In more recent history, the Church gave shelter to those who opposed the communist regime. Thus, its role in

Polish history and in creating the Polish identity cannot be overlooked.

Polish immigrants are often described as very religious, and Catholicism has been cited as the main force keeping Polish communities together (Radziłowski, 2011). The life of the early immigrants was tightly connected to the life of local parishes. These immigrants spent immense amounts of money on building new churches, which became the centers of not only religious but also cultural life. In addition to providing cultural and spiritual support, the parishes represented a substitute for the families and friends the immigrants had left in their home countries. The parishes became places where one could feel the presence of the old country through customs, language and shared values. Thus, the number of Polish churches grew, and in 1929, there were 540 of them across the country (Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek, 2010).

The church was also involved in the education of Polish immigrants by establishing Polish parochial schools at practically every parish. Since the parishes were located in Polish ethnic neighborhoods, where 85 percent of Polish-Americans lived, it is estimated that 74 percent of them attended these parochial schools. The language of instruction in these schools was mainly Polish, although by 1914, half of daily instruction commonly occurred in English. Due to a new church policy that fostered integration, the Polish language gradually disappeared from parochial schools

between 1930 and 1950, and the schools were closed by the 1950s. Nevertheless, thanks to Church politics, the first wave of Polish immigrants, as well as their children and grandchildren, learned how to read and write in these parochial schools, which also nurtured their national identity.

The life of these early Polish parishes was not without problems. The hierarchy of the

Roman Catholic Church in the United States did not always approve of Polish parishes being ethnic-oriented. As a result of this conflict, a priest from a parish in Scranton, Pennsylvania, created an independent Polish National Catholic Church in 1897. The Church spread across the country, and other parishes soon joined the union. The newly created Church was founded on the governance of parish affairs by lay parish committees as well as the change of liturgical language from Latin to Polish. It also incorporated days commemorating events in Polish history into the church calendar (Wieczerzak, 2011).

The role of the Catholic Church in the preservation of language and culture was very important for early Polish immigrants. Parishes became not only centers of faith and spiritual life but also places where the Polish language was used and taught. The creation of Polish-American identity is often ascribed to the activities of the Church. With the arrivals of new waves of immigrants, parishes continued to serve Polish-speaking followers; their numbers, however, decreased as fewer Poles came to the U.S, and ethnic neighborhoods changed. The only city that has resisted this change is Chicago, where demand for Polish parishes has not declined.

1.2.2 Language maintenance

The closure of parochial schools coincided with the arrival of the second wave of Polish immigrants. These immigrants established a new type of school known as Polish Saturday School

(PSS). These schools opened in cities with large Polish populations, such as Chicago, New York and Cleveland. Since PSSs are often established through the initiative of parents and lack a central governing institution, there are no precise statistics regarding their number. Nowicka McLees and

Dziwirek (2010) provide an estimated number of 120. They also believe that around 26,000 students attend these schools.

The Center for Polish Language and Culture in the World at Jagiellonian University has sponsored several initiatives in order to revitalize and modernize Polish language teaching in the

United States, which resulted in the publication of the first (and probably only) book on PSSs in the United States (Lipińska & Seretny, 2012). Unfortunately, this book indicates that PSSs in

Chicago do not meet many pedagogical requirements. In their critical assessment, Lipińska and

Seretny (2012) point out these schools’ lack of appropriate instructor training and suitable materials. Many Polish ethnic schools still teach Polish as a native language and adopt the same curriculum used for Polish monolingual native speakers in Poland. Even though Lipińska and

Seretny do not discuss the role PSSs may play in language maintenance, they provide data on the students' attitudes and language maintenance. In their publication, Lipińska and Seretny present figures from surveys they conducted with 170 students at one PSS in Chicago. The majority of students whom they surveyed assessed their language skills in the Polish language as very good

(36.5%) and good (44.7%). Additionally, for language of home communication, 51.8% of them indicated the use of only Polish with their parents, whereas 20.8% of the participants claimed that

they used mostly Polish. Of course, one has to remember that these are only the heritage speakers who attend the language classes. Nevertheless, the numbers seem high compared to other languages, where many speakers indicate an almost complete shift to English. For instance, Lee and Shin (2008) report studies that show that 77% of Korean HSs speak only or mostly English to their parents after the age of five.

Norton (1998), in her article on the relationship between native language maintenance, identity and acculturation, presents the example of a Polish family whose choice to use HL preserved close relationships among all the family members. She describes two diametrically opposite scenarios of child language development in immigrant families. The children in the first family, which came from Vietnam, exhibited subtractive bilingualism. In contrast to that, the daughter from the Polish family continued to use her heritage language. In the first case, the

Vietnamese immigrants chose English as their main language of family communication, which resulted in a breakdown in family life. The Polish family, on the other hand, decided to use only

Polish when communicating with one another, which allowed them to keep strong family ties.

Norton explained these different choices as the outcome of direct and indirect racism. The

Vietnamese family chose English over their native language because they did not value their heritage, most likely as a result of not being accepted into Canadian society. Their strong desire to fit into this society caused them to abandon their entire heritage. The Polish family, on the other hand, did not feel that their country of origin was inferior to Canada. The linguistic choices made by these two families resulted in very different relationships among members. The Vietnamese children did not interact with their grandparents and mother because the family did not share a common language. Additionally, the children displayed an ambivalent attitude toward the family members who did not know English well. The Polish family continued to use Polish, which 21

allowed the parents to communicate better with their daughter and express themselves more accurately. Norton (1998) explains these family relations through the notion of power: parents who choose to use their non-dominant language may lose their authority and place in family structure.

Her article not only shows the importance of a common language in creating strong family ties but also exemplifies the mechanics of subtractive and additive bilingualism.

Interestingly, the Polish family's practices of language maintenance, as presented by

Norton (1998), show the importance of community support. The mother described how she and her husband decided to use only Polish with their daughter at the suggestion of a local priest, who told them the importance of communicating in Polish not for love of the language but out of concern for their family's future. He warned them that by choosing English they would soon be unable to communicate fully with their child. Additionally, the daughter was sent to Polish

Saturday School each week, allowing the parents to rely on the community in their effort to preserve the Polish language in their family.

The role of Saturday Schools in preserving language and identity was investigated for other

HLs as well. For instance, Chinen and Tucker conducted a study with Japanese HSs in Los Angeles

(2005). Their research examined the relationship between the participants' sense of ethnic identity, attitudes toward Saturday School, and self-assessed proficiency in Japanese. The results show a positive and significant correlation between the learners' ethnic identity and their attitudes toward their school as well as their sense of Japanese identity. The students reported that school was an important place for them to socialize and nurture their Japanese identity. Moreover, the authors of this study claim that their results show a relationship between ethnic identity and language that may be understood as reciprocal; i.e. there is influence in both directions (Chinen & Tucker, 2005).

There are less favorable assessments of the role of Saturday School in HL literature as well

(Benmamoun, Montrul, & Polinsky, 2013; Kagan, 2010). For instance, in their Prolegomena to

Heritage Linguistics, Benmamoun et al. (2013) talk about several studies examining the role of

Korean and Chinese Sunday schools. Their results indicate that exposure to schooling in the heritage language after immigration does not seem to have any serious effect on the proficiency of

HSs (2013, pp. 23-24). Additionally, Kagan (2010) mentions that Saturday Schools play a rather ambivalent role in language maintenance, as they may have a negative effect on motivation to study language if students feel dissatisfied with them.

Despite findings that suggest a lack of influence of Saturday Schools on language proficiency as well as a generally low assessment of the instructors’ pedagogical training (Lipińska

& Seretny, 2012), I believe that these schools play a valuable role in language maintenance. Even if they are not very successful in improving the linguistic skills of HSs, their role in shaping identity and language attitude may be quite important. PSSs also seem to provide opportunities for HSs to use their language, which for many of them might be the only such place outside their homes. In general, I think of Saturday School as a place where a community can continue to use any given

HL, and where HSs can learn about their linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Finally, as indicated in the study of the Japanese SSs, these schools can have a positive impact on the participants' sense of ethnic identity.

One more factor that has been investigated in studies of HL, which may be of value for language maintenance, is frequency of travel to the country where the language is spoken (Kagan

& Carreira, 2011). I am not aware of any study that indicates any correlation between language maintenance and number of visits to the country of origin; however, based on my pilot study with

nine Polish HSs, I observed that all participants visited Poland at least every three or four years.

In comparison, the survey for Russian conducted by Kagan and Carreira found that less than 3% of the participants traveled to Russia every year (2010). This may indicate that Poles are more like the other groups in this survey, such as Chinese or Korean HSs, which travel to their country of origin more often (Kagan, 2010).

To summarize, a number of important factors contribute to language maintenance for

Polish immigrants: several large waves of Polish immigration, a strong ethnic identity, the establishment of PSSs, and travel to Poland. The Polish communities located in many major cities were large enough to establish their own institutions and schools, and the number of speakers in these communities was sufficient to provide opportunities for HSs to use HL. Additionally, owing to political circumstances as well as Romantic national ideology and the Catholic faith, Poles have been very keen to preserve their identity. Finally, the role of the PSS seems to be important, too.

As studies of Japanese HSs indicate, there is a correlation between this type of a school and the ethnic attitudes that lead to better language skills (Chinen & Tucker, 2005). Based on my pilot study, I can also assume that Polish HSs quite frequently visit their parents' country of origin.

Finally, of great importance are the findings of Lipińska and Seretny's (2012) surveys, which show that Polish HSs have a very high preference for the Polish language in their home environment.

Their study also shows that many Polish HSs self-assessed their skills in Polish as good and very good.

Overall, I believe that the situation of the Polish language in the United States can be generally described as conducive to language maintenance. Of course, one can argue that speakers in small communities cannot take advantage of all the opportunities that may help language

preservation. It is possible that one could find a large variation in language use between HSs in big Polish communities and those in remote areas without such support.

Finally, featuring the largest Polish population in the United States (Paral, 2004), the city of Chicago provides optimal conditions for Polish heritage-language maintenance. The large number of speakers of the language affords opportunities for everyday use. Moreover, the city’s numerous Polish Saturday Schools offer a chance to learn the language in formal settings

(Nowicka McLees & Dziwirek, 2010).

Chapter 2. Polish as a heritage language

This chapter presents working definitions of heritage speakers and heritage language as they are used in this dissertation. In addition, it offers a general overview of these speakers and their language. The second section, focusing on examples from Polish, discusses linguistic features that have been observed to be divergent in heritage languages. Since research on Polish as a heritage language in the United States is very scarce, examples from the Polish heritage language in other countries and the Russian heritage language, which is typologically close to Polish, are also discussed. Finally, the last section provides an overview of the widely discussed sources of divergent heritage grammars. Moreover, another factor that has not been extensively studied yet – parental input – is examined.

2.1 Heritage speakers – a definition

Overall, there are two different conceptions of the heritage speaker (HS): one referred to as broad, and the other as narrow (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007). The broad definition encompasses all speakers who "have been raised with a strong cultural connection to a particular language through family interaction" (Van Deusen-Scholl, 2003). This definition emphasizes possible links between cultural heritage and linguistic heritage. It also includes heritage language learners (HLL),

"with a heritage motivation." However, in line with this definition, these culturally motivated learners may or may not possess linguistic knowledge of the language.

The narrow definition was first put forth by Guadalupe Valdés, and it refers to the heritage speaker as an individual "raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken, who speaks or merely understands the heritage language, and who is to some degree bilingual in English and the heritage language" (2000, p. 375). This definition was created for Spanish heritage speakers in the United States; therefore, it is English-centered, but one can easily extend it to other language contact situations with a different dominant language.

Since heritage linguistics is predominately occupied with describing the various skills of

HSs (Lynch, 2014), the term is applied in its narrow sense most of the time. Speakers with cultural motivation who learn their heritage language from the very beginning do not differ from other L2 learners, in the sense that they do not possess the linguistic skills that are the main foci of research.

Individuals with cultural motivation, on the other hand, are at times referred to as heritage learners (Van Deusen-Scholl, 2003). However, there is no consensus on the use of this term either.

Some researchers refer to language users who learned their heritage language from birth as heritage learners (Beaudrie, Ducar, & Potowski, 2014). In that case, the latter term is preferred over heritage speaker because these individuals cannot speak a minority language but possess receptive skills in it.

In this dissertation, the term heritage speaker will be used in its narrow sense in the way it is defined by Pascual Y. Cabo & Rothman: “a heritage speaker … is a bilingual who has acquired a family… and a majority societal language naturalistically in early childhood.” (2012, p. 450)

Furthermore, the minority language spoken by heritage speakers will be referred to as the heritage language (HL). The term heritage language is sometimes used to refer to a minority language spoken by any generation of immigrants (Nagy, Chociej, & Hoffman, 2014). Since language 27

acquisition and development vary considerably between individuals who acquired their L1 in the country where it is spoken as a majority language and those who learned it outside of that country, the term will refer to the language of HSs as defined above, rather than the language of their parents.

The HL field is a relatively new area of studies that has not answered many questions about

HSs and their language. One of the reasons that HL research faces so many obstacles is the fact that HSs are not a homogenous group. In fact, significant variation in the linguistic skills of HSs is often cited as one of their main characteristics (Benmamoun, Montrul, & Polinsky, 2013). This variation has been described as a continuum, ranging from the variety closest to the minority language to the one that least resembles this language but bears similarities to the majority language (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007).

The other thing that is common to all HSs is the fact that they almost always end up being dominant speakers of the majority language in adulthood (Benmamoun, et al., 2013; Pascual Y.

Cabo & Rothman, 2012; Polinsky & Kagan, 2007). Thus, commonly used terms like first and/or second language have to be applied with caution regarding HSs. In fact, HSs’ shift in language dominance challenges two myths about language acquisition. The first is an assumption that acquisition of a language from childhood results in native-like command of that language in adulthood. The second is a belief that the structural integrity of the native language acquired by the end of the preschool period is stable (Montrul, 2016). These two idiosyncrasies of HSs have drawn scholars’ interest in recent years.

Typically, HSs are not formally educated in their HL3. They might have attended weekend schools where they received some instruction in the HL, but their main education is conducted in the majority language. According to Pascual Y. Cabo and Rothman (2012), lack of formal education might explain, for example, the differences in HSs' socio-pragmatic production as compared to their monolingual counterparts. Others suggest that lack of formal education and literacy may have more profound consequences on the development of HLs because the existence of writing and written tradition have a considerable effect on the structure of a language

(Dąbrowska, 2013).

HL research has shown that although some HSs’ performance may be indistinguishable from native speakers, the majority of them exhibit divergent knowledge about various domains of grammar. Generally, it is agreed that some of these domains (nominal and verbal morphology, to name a few) are more affected than others (e.g., pronunciation). The following section will provide a brief description of several grammatical properties in the Polish and Russian HLs.

2.2 The language of Polish heritage speakers

Chapter 1 provided a somewhat positive perspective on the vitality of Polish in the United

States, discussing Polish immigrants’ efforts to preserve the language. Despite these practices,

Polish, like many other large HLs, including Spanish (Potowski, 2010), is no longer used by the fourth generation of speakers (Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek, 2010). In fact, it is believed that in most cases the language shift takes place between the second and third generations of immigrants

3 Some school districts offer bilingual instruction to minority students.

with the latter becoming monolingual speakers of English (Hakuta & D’Andrea, 1992). There are several small communities in remote areas of Texas and Wisconsin where Polish has been spoken for over a hundred years (Rappaport, 1990). But these are exceptions rather than the rule. As in the case of many other languages, the lack of continuity is attributed to extra-linguistic factors.

The second generation already initiated language change by becoming English dominant.

Consequently, speakers moved out or married outside the Polish community.

The linguistic skills of Polish HSs can generally be described as divergent from monolingual variation. However, there is a scarcity of research on the Polish HL and Polish HSs in the United States compared to other HLs (Nowicka Mc Lees & Dziwirek, 2010; Kozminska,

2015). To the best of my knowledge, there have only been two recent publications by Kozminska

(2015) and Łyskawa, Maddeaux and Nagy (2016) that focus primarily on the linguistic skills of

Polish HSs in the United States and Canada. Additionally, there are earlier studies from Poland and the United States that describe the properties of the "American-Polish dialect."4 In those publications, the focus is on the lexical aspect of this language variety (Gruchmanowa, 1988) with a few exceptions: the seminal book on Polish in the United States by Doroszewski (1938), which describes all aspects of this language; an unpublished PhD dissertation (Lyra, 1962); and a study on nominal morphology in the Polish of Western New York by Preston and Turner (1984). Owing to a lack of more recent studies, I will refer to Lyra's (1962) unpublished dissertation in the following sections of this chapter on several occasions. Despite some shortcomings, e.g., lack of a clearly defined theoretical framework, his work still provides the most comprehensive evaluation

4 It should be noted that the term "American-Polish dialect" is used to describe Polish used in the United States and Canada by any generation of speakers.

of the Polish language in the United States to date. Moreover, my broad observational data confirm the findings in that study and allow me to cite his evidence. Of course, I am aware that the Polish language in Poland has changed since 1962 in quite a few domains such as lexicon or phonetics.

Nevertheless, owing to a lack of other studies and some rather significant differences between

Polish and Russian, I decided to bring back these evaluations to provide a broader background of the Polish language in the United States.

Additionally, more recent studies on the Polish HL in other countries (Brehmer & Czachór,

2012; Laskowski, 2014; Miękisz, Haman, Łuniewska, Kuś, O'Toole & Katsos, 2016), which may serve as a background for this dissertation, will be cited. The above studies may provide data for cross-linguistic comparison. For instance, the seminal book by Roman Laskowski (2014) on Polish

HSs in Sweden provides a very extensive analysis of nominal morphology that I will be presenting in more detail in Chapter 3. In other words, to provide a general view of the Polish heritage language, I will draw on the studies of heritage Russian in the United States as well as Polish HSs in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany, in addition to the scarce data collected on Polish

HSs in the United States.

2.2.1 Lexicon

The only area that has been investigated extensively in the Polish HL is lexicon. This line of research has mainly focused on the elements in which heritage Polish and standard Polish vary, namely lexical borrowings. Interestingly, some of the borrowings that were recorded by

Doroszewski in 1938 are still in use today, particularly in large Polish communities that have been

living in the same neighborhood for a long time, such as Green Point in New York, Jackowo in

Chicago, or Port Richmond in Philadelphia (Gruchmanowa, 1988). These early borrowings were often related to professional life and formal contact with English, as seen in examples like inszurans (insurance), taksy (taxes), lojer (lawyer), trok/trak (track), tubajfor (two-by-four) and others (Gruchmanowa, 1988).

Borrowings observed in the Polish HL can be classified as derivational blends and extensions, according to Winford's typology (2003). The first group is a subtype of loanwords and denotes an imported stem with the native suffix; for example, graduacja is a loan word from

English graduation with a Polish suffix -cja (Kozminska, 2015). The second group represents loan meaning and denotes shifts in the semantics of a native word under the influence of a foreign word.

Among the words that often undergo semantic shifts, one can find many words commonly referred to as “false friends”; for example, klasa (which in Polish refers only to a group of people or a room) is extended to denote a course of instruction. Polinsky (2006) observes a similar tendency in the Russian HL. According to her, the most common reason for divergent uses of standard

Russian vocabulary is the influence of English, especially if the Russian and English words are cognates.

In addition to the above borrowings, the lexicon of the Polish HL has been described as limited (Kozminska, 2015; Laskowski, 2014). Generally, the lexicon of HSs is constrained owing to restricted contexts in which the HL is used – mainly for family communication and everyday topics (Benmamoun, et al., 2013; Montrul, 2016).

A recent study conducted in the United Kingdom in regard to the acquisition of Polish HL lexicon provides interesting insights into the mechanisms of bilingual acquisition (Miękisz, et al., 32

2016). The study investigated 53 Polish-English bilingual toddlers and their knowledge of Polish and English vocabulary. Participation in this study was limited to children from families where both parents were native speakers of Polish. The data from this group were compared to the data from monolingual children. Through questionnaires, the study collected data on Polish and English vocabulary size as well as TV (Total Vocabulary – the sum of Polish and English words) and TCV

(Total Conceptual Vocabulary – comprised of translation equivalents and singlets5). Although the

TV score was not significantly lower for bilinguals than for their monolingual counterparts, their

Polish vocabulary and TCV were significantly lower. The results indicated that parental input in the minority language was not sufficient for these children to develop monolingual-size vocabularies. Despite the fact that 85% of parents addressed their children mainly in Polish,

Miękisz, et al. (2016) interpreted L2 input from the parents as a confounding variable for L1 development, which may be responsible for the bilinguals’ lack of a productive vocabulary comparable to that of monolinguals. The authors, however, noted that mere exposure to English did not influence the children’s Polish vocabulary size; it was the lack of consistency in using the language that most likely created the competing factor (Miękisz, et. al, 2016).

Studies on the Russian heritage language have also reported limited lexicons in these speakers (Kagan, 2010; Polinsky, 2006). Polinsky (2006) conducted a study on 21 Russian HSs who moved to the United States between the ages of 3 and 11 years old. She administered a vocabulary translation task from English into Russian – the Swadesh list – consisting of 100 words.

The lexical proficiency of the participants in this study ranged from 74% to 90.5%. Polinsky interpreted her findings as proof that the Russian HL lexicon is deficient. The experiment revealed

5 Words that did not have equivalents in respective languages.

what she called significant gaps in the vocabulary of Russian HSs. Moreover, Polinsky observed a slow speech rate, which she attributed to a lack of direct access to some vocabulary items during lexical access and retrieval. Another interesting finding of this study was the Russian HSs’ overuse of diminutives. Polinsky attributed this phenomenon to the existing regional varieties of Russian, in which diminutives are more common.

2.2.2 Nominal morphology

Another area of Polish HS linguistic skills that has been described in literature is nominal morphology (Kozminska, 2015; Laskowski, 2014; Preston, 1986; Preston & Turner, 1984). Worth mentioning is the fact that there is a widespread opinion in heritage literature that this domain of heritage language is affected more than others (for an overview, see Montrul, 2016). Studies from various languages confirm that no other area of HS linguistic knowledge is as divergent as nominal morphology, which in this grammatical case seems to be the most divergent (for an overview, see

Benmamoun, et al., 2013).

In addition to cases,6 studies on the Polish HL have investigated gender distinction

(Laskowski, 2014; Lyra, 1962). Studies of Polish HSs in Sweden (Laskowski, 2014) have indicated instability in the category of gender in the language of these speakers. According to

Laskowski (2014), this instability leads to a violation of the syntactic rules pertaining to gender agreement:

6 A more in-depth discussion of these findings will be provided in Chapter 3, which will focus on nominal morphology in the Polish language

1. Był-Ø dług-i kolejk-a Was-M long-M line-F “There was a long line”

2. Przyszedł-Ø ryb-a Came-M fish-F “The fish came”

These difficulties with gender agreement have been confirmed for other Slavic heritage languages.

Polinsky (2006) reported problems with the gender distinction of words with palatalized consonant endings, which in monolingual Russian are assigned either a masculine or feminine gender. As will be discussed later, Polinsky explained this divergent knowledge of grammatical gender as incompletely acquired.

The Polish gender system has another distinction that is often missing in HSs’ language.

In addition to the three-gender distinction, Polish has the masculine-personal/non-masculine- personal gender distinction in the plural, which is marked on nouns, pronouns and adjectives.

Earlier studies (Lyra, 1962) have observed that this distinction is absent in the Polish HL. Lyra

(1962) attributed it to a problem with morphophonemics, which, according to him, are reduced in

American Polish. According to Lyra, the elimination of the velar stop - affricate alternations results in the elimination of the adjective’s personal/impersonal gender distinctions. Consequently, Polish

HSs know only one of two separate forms that exist in standard Polish. For example, masculine- personal wszyscy (all) is replaced with non-masculine-personal wszystkie (all) which is used when describing nouns which are masculine personal (Lyra, 1962).

It is worth mentioning that this property of the Polish language belongs to complex features of the language, which are acquired by monolingual children after case acquisition is complete

(Łuczyński, 2004). Additionally, lack of distinction between masculine-personal and non- masculine personal is characteristic to most Polish dialects. These two facts may point to incomplete acquisition and/or quality of input as the main culprit in the lack of knowledge about this distinction.

2.2.3 Verbal morphology

Verbal morphology tends to be less affected than nominal morphology in HLs

(Benmamoun, et al., 2013; Montrul, 2016). For example, HSs seem to know various types of conjugations better than the inflections of nouns. Nevertheless, prior studies have also attested to divergences in verbal morphology, and problems with features such as mood, aspect and tense have been reported (Montrul, 2016).

Kozminska's (2015) study which focuses on nominal morphology, briefly describes aspectual prefixes. Polish HSs use perfective and imperfective prefixes differently from monolinguals. This problem has been studied in depth for the Russian HL (Laleko, 2010; Polinsky,

2006). Those studies show that knowledge of aspect is related to the HSs' proficiency. For instance,

Polinsky (2006) observed that the perfective-imperfective morphology opposition is lost in low- proficiency Russian HSs. Most verbs become lexicalized perfectives or lexicalized imperfectives

(e.g., umeret' - to die, vzjat' - to take, are lexicalized as perfective, and rasti - to grow, begat' - to run, are lexicalized as imperfective) depending on the lexical class. Additionally, Laleko (2010)

discovered that low-level HSs exhibit a reduction of the pragmatically conditioned functions of the imperfective aspect, as well as imperfective forms with completed events, even in the presence of contextual discourse-pragmatic triggers. At the same time, she found that advanced heritage speakers did not exhibit errors with aspectual morphology in their speech.

Another study on verbal morphology in the Polish HL was conducted in Germany.

Brehmer and Czachór (2012) carried out a study of Polish HSs on the formation and use of two variants of the analytic future tense. Their findings demonstrated that the formal restrictions for composing the analytic future tense in Polish did not undergo attrition. Unlike their parents’ generation, however, HSs tended to more frequently use a variant that combined an auxiliary verb with an infinitive of the main verb. The authors explained these results as the influence of German, which has such a pattern for the formation of the analytic future. But they also claimed that the analytic form with the infinitive is preferable in the HL because it reduces the cognitive load by not requiring one to specify certain grammatical features (e.g., gender).

2.2.4 Syntax

As far as syntax is concerned, it is believed that in languages where word order and case interact, such as Russian and Polish, the reanalysis of the case system has consequences on the word order (Montrul, 2016). It is also assumed that core syntax is rarely affected by the situation of language contact. In a study on the comprehension of relative clauses in child and adult Russian

HSs, Polinsky (2011) observed that only child HSs have a full mastery of relative clauses. Using

a picture-sentence matching technique, she discovered that HSs have more difficulty with comprehension of object relative clauses than with comprehension of subject relative clauses.

Laskowski’s (2014) research of Polish HSs in Sweden provides some observations in regard to syntax as well. According to the author, the Polish HL displays syntactic interference from Swedish. First of all, there is a tendency to apply Swedish word-order rules to Polish sentences. The other two tendencies observed are the avoidance of double negation and the emergence of a common, uninflected relative pronoun used regardless of the antecedent, i.e. the relative co. Standard Polish requires the inflected relative pronoun który, which is marked for gender, case and number, and therefore quite complex.

2.2.5 Phonetics

Due to the general impression of HSs' native-like pronunciation, there is a scarcity of phonology studies in the HL field in general (Benmamoun, et al., 2013; Polinsky & Kagan, 2007).

Interestingly, according to a survey conducted by Kagan and Carreira (2011) with 1,732 participants, HSs generally self-assessed their skills in their HL as significantly lower than in

English, but 76.5% of them assessed their listening skills as native-like, and 72.3% assessed their speaking skills as native-like. And yet research on phonology suggests that the pronunciation of

HSs is not completely native-like. The best-known is probably the study by Godson (2004) on vowel production in Western Armenian,7 which suggests that English affects the Western

7 All speakers of Western Armenian have emigrated from the Western portion of historical Armenia and lived in countries where Western Armenian is a minority language.

Armenian vowel system, although only for those vowels that are already similar to vowels in

English.

Additionally, a recent study on word-final obstruent devoicing in heritage Polish in Canada showed that Polish HSs devoice significantly more than homeland Polish speakers (Łyskawa, et al., 2016). The authors found a positive correlation between code-switching and the rate of devoicing; the more an individual code-switched, the more he or she would devoice word-final obstruents. However, in their conclusion, Łyskawa, et al. write that the divergent devoicing in the

Polish HL in Canada is a result of the grammatical rules of two languages converging, namely

Polish and English. According to them, HSs who exhibited a higher rate of devoicing than is observed in both homeland Polish and English applied the rules of both grammars, hence increasing the frequency of this phenomenon occurring.

2.2.6 Socio-pragmatics

A pilot study (Wolski-Moskoff, 2018), which investigated Polish HSs’ knowledge of forms of address and the vocative case in particular, provided some insights into speakers’ knowledge of pragmatics in the Polish HL. Polish has two ways of addressing people – formal and informal.

Generally, they correspond to Brown and Gilman's T-V dichotomy (1960). In order to address people formally, one has to use the vocative case. Interestingly, the use of the latter is limited almost entirely to formal settings. This study examined formal forms of address in three different language groups: heritage speakers in the United States, L2 learners of Polish, and a control group of native speakers of Polish residing in Poland. The participants were presented with a set of 12

pictures illustrating different interactional settings and four sentences and were asked to rate these sentences according to their acceptability using the magnitude estimation technique. HSs showed a high preference for sentences with formal terms of address. Unlike the other two groups, however, they did not exhibit a preference for the vocative case. When asked to explain their choices in the next part of the experiment, most HSs indicated that the vocative case was unknown to them, seemed unnatural, or was less formal than the nominative case. In addition to the above problems with the vocative case, Polish HSs in this study exhibited a divergent knowledge of the grammatical rules that govern Polish formal forms of address, such as agreement, non-dropping rule, and others.

Wolski-Moskoff (2018) interpreted this divergent socio-pragmatic knowledge of forms of address and the vocative case as the result of the insufficient input that the Polish heritage speakers received, due to their limited access to formal settings. Additionally, transfer of socio-pragmatic elements from the dominant language of English was suggested (Wolski-Moskoff, 2018).

The above discussed studies on the Polish and Russian HLs offered different explanations for the potential factors influencing the shape of heritage grammars. Among others, they suggested that divergence in the Polish and Russian HLs can be explained by transfer or convergence

(Kozminska, 2015; Laskowski, 2014; Łyskawa, et al., 2016), incomplete acquisition (Polinsky,

2006), attrition (Polinsky, 2011), cognitive load (Czachór & Brehmer, 2012) as well as input

(Wolski-Moskoff, 2018). The following section offers more in-depth analysis of these factors as discussed in heritage language literature. Additionally, it puts forward one more possible factor that has not been widely studied – divergent parental input.

2.3 Sources of divergent grammar in heritage languages

The diversity in competence among HSs has been explained by numerous factors that contribute to the development and maintenance of a heritage language, such as incomplete acquisition (Benmamoun, et al., 2013; Montrul, 2008), attrition (Montrul, 2008; Polinsky, 2011), cross-linguistic influences (Benmamoun, et al., 2013) as well as input (Pires & Rothman, 2009).

Recently, a new model has been formulated (Putnam & Sánchez, 2013), which posits that frequency of language activation is the main factor in heritage language acquisition and maintenance.

Additionally, the most recent research has pointed at social and attitudinal factors as equally important in shaping HL grammars (Montrul, 2016; Nagy et al., 2014). In fact, Montrul

(2016) suggests that to understand the development and linguistic outcome of heritage language acquisition, one must consider the socio-affective context. Thus, one should consider things like community practices for language maintenance as well as the ethnic identities of speakers.

2.3.1 Incomplete acquisition

HL grammars are evaluated by comparison to the language of monolingual speakers. Many missing or divergent aspects of these grammars are described as incompletely acquired. Hence, the term incomplete acquisition refers to grammatical elements that are missing in HLs or are used differently by HSs. The term signifies that the process of acquiring these elements has not been finished or has not reached the final stage found in the grammars of monolinguals. Seen as an interrupted process, incomplete acquisition affects grammatical elements that are acquired over a

long period of time or acquired later in language development (Benmamoun, et al., 2013). For example, Benmamoun, et al. suggest that if a given language feature causes problems equally for adult heritage speakers and for child learners ages five and up, then such a feature has not been completely acquired.

Montrul (2008), who was one of the first researchers to use this term regarding HSs, identified the subjunctive in Spanish as an example of incomplete acquisition. Based on her studies with Spanish monolingual children, who did not show categorical knowledge of subjunctive until after the age of 10, and Spanish HSs, who had difficulties with some of the uses and semantic nuances of the subjunctive, she concluded that the property was not completely acquired by the latter.

As discussed earlier, Polinsky (2008) identified another element of HL grammar that was not completely acquired by HSs, namely gender assignment in Russian. Russian has three genders, and nouns are assigned gender based on the final sound. The distinction is quite straightforward for most nouns; however, there is a group of nouns, ending in palatalized consonants, that is classified by native grammars as either masculine or feminine. The acquisition of the gender assignment of this group takes a long time for monolingual children, and in the early stages of development of this feature, feminine nouns are treated as masculine. Interestingly, Russian HSs make the same type of errors. Polinsky concluded that unlike monolingual children who outgrow these errors and eventually learn the distinction, Russian heritage speakers remain at the stage of incompletely acquired gender.

Although used as a means of comparison to monolingual grammars rather than a value judgment, the term incomplete acquisition has caused many controversies in the field (Montrul, 42

2016). First, the term might imply that HSs are unable to acquire the elements of grammar available to them. Understood this way, the term is stigmatizing because it suggests that HSs lack certain intellectual abilities (Pascual Y. Cabo & Rothman, 2012). Secondly, as proponents of the term have noted, incomplete acquisition is the outcome of reduced input, which suggests a possibility that the missing or divergent grammatical elements may not be available in the input received by

HSs. Finally, the above-discussed mechanisms of incomplete acquisition – i.e., grammatical features being complex and/or acquired late – cannot explain speakers’ divergent knowledge of many of these elements that are acquired early in language development. In fact, one opinion of language acquisition argues that most grammatical properties in every language are acquired by the age of four.

2.3.2 Attrition

Another commonly accepted source of the divergent HL is attrition, understood as the loss of previously acquired and used language elements (Benmamoun, et al., 2013; Montrul, 2016). It is assumed that some structural properties of the HL are acquired and mastered by ages four to six but are subsequently lost. Thus, HSs’ high error rates with structures supposedly acquired during the initial period of syntactic development are usually interpreted as attrition.

For instance, Polinsky (2011) conducted a study on the comprehension of relative clauses in child and adult HSs. While monolingual and bilingual children demonstrated full adult-like mastery of relative clauses, adult HSs were significantly different. The child HSs’ knowledge of relative clauses indicated that the adult heritage grammar was not a product of incomplete

acquisition but rather attrition. In other words, since child HSs recognized relative clauses more successfully than adult HSs, we may assume that the clauses were acquired early in language development and subsequently lost due to limited input and use.

Available studies that attribute the loss of grammatical structures to attrition compare the language of a child HS to an adult HS (Polinsky, 2011), or they are based on the regressive hypothesis, which assumes that properties acquired first are retained longest (Johannessen, 2015).

There is an absence of longitudinal studies tracing the development of specific structural properties over time in HSs (Montrul, 2016).

Using attrition as an explanation for the divergent grammars of HSs has caused some reservations as well. For one, it is difficult to tease apart attrition from incomplete acquisition in

HLs. It is possible that HSs exhibit difficulties with certain grammatical properties because they require a longer maturational period; i.e., they might be acquired early but the process of maturation and/or sustained use is too short. Thus, there is no certainty that some of these presumably lost properties were fully acquired and/or mastered in the first place.

Moreover, in light of studies showing that adults who were not adequately schooled in the language may also have problems with some grammatical properties (Dąbrowska, 2012), the role of schooling in the mastery of language should be analyzed as well. Based on the results of these studies, formal education is required for some language properties to be mastered even if they are present in everyday communication. Hence, it is suggested that acquiring certain grammar elements at an early age may not ensure that the process is finished early as well (for an overview, see Montrul 2016).

However, the role of attrition may be of importance to another group of speakers who are crucial in the development of HL, namely first-generation immigrants. The language of parents, who are often the main or only source of input that HSs receive, may undergo changes upon immigration as well. These changes may not be as profound as those found in the grammars of

HSs but they should be considered when discussing an HL. For one, parental input may be the only input that HSs are exposed to, which creates a baseline for the HSs’ language development.

The role of parental input and attrition in first generation immigrants will be discussed in more detail in the final section of this chapter.

2.3.3 Cross-linguistic influences

It has been attested that some divergent elements in HLs are transferred from the dominant language (Dubinina, 2010; Godson, 2004; Kozminska, 2015). It is believed that as the HL becomes weaker over time the majority language becomes dominant. Consequently, HSs transfer some aspects of their dominant language into their HLs. As bilinguals with limited input from one language, they may experience the same cross-linguistic influence from their dominant language that L2 learners do (Pavlenko & Jarvis, 2008). Psycholinguistic research, however, points out that transfer may occur not only for unbalanced bilinguals but also for bilingual speakers who must constantly juggle their two languages (for an overview, see Treffers-Daller & Sakel, 2012). Thus,

HSs as bilinguals are expected to transfer linguistic properties from one language to another.

Nevertheless, the notion of cross-linguistic influences as the culprit responsible for shaping

HLs has been approached with caution (Benmamoun, et al., 2013). For one, there is a tendency in

HL literature to over-interpret many instances of divergent grammar as transfer whenever two typologically different languages are involved. For instance, the restructuring of case (Kozminska,

2015) and overuse of overt pronouns (for an overview, see Benmamoun, et al., 2013) have been interpreted as being caused by transfer from the dominant language, based solely on typological differences between the languages.

Still, the role of transfer in shaping an HL has been succesfully attested in several studies.

For example, Silva-Corvalan (1994) found evidence of transfer in the speech of three Spanish- speaking groups in Los Angeles. Participants from two of these groups were either born in the

United States or arrived as children. Thus, in today's terms they would be considered HSs. Silva-

Corvalan argues that based on her data, one can distinguish two types of transfer: direct transfer and indirect transfer. The former refers to the import of a new form from another language, such as lonche "lunch" or registrarse which incorporates the meaning "to register in school" from

English. Silva-Corvalan found many examples of this type of transfer at the level of lexicon, but she noticed especially the reproduction of multiple-word units, the calques. In each sample of natural speech lasting between 60-90 minutes, Silva-Corvalan recorded 1-26 instances of lexico- syntactic calques.

Transfer was also referred to in one of the very few publications that exist on the Polish language in Chicago in recent years (Kozminska, 2015). Kozminska (2015) evaluated several different areas of the language of advanced Polish HSs, including lexicon and verbal and nominal morphology. In regard to lexicon, she recorded many loanwords in the Polish HL. For example, kontraktorka (meaning any type of a job that involves contractors, but mainly construction) was

modeled on the English word contractor to which a Polish suffix - ka was added, and the meaning extended to any type of the job that is usually undertaken by contractors.

Additionally, Kozminska (2015) observed verbal innovations that she ascribed to the influence of English.8 The following example of the conditional mood that she presented, and that she interpreted as an "outcome of incomplete acquisition which resulted in the introduction of innovations into HP" (2015, p.17), are structured in English syntax:

HL: Chcia-ł-a-m by tak-i program. want-PAST-FEM-1.SG PART such-MASC-ACC program-ACC ‘I would like such a program.’

SP: Chcia-ł-a-by-m tak-i program. want-PAST-FEM-PART-1.SG such-MASC-ACC program-ACC ‘I would like such a program.’

In standard Polish, conditionals are formed by adding the particle by to a verb stem which is followed by a personal suffix. However, in the Polish HL the order of the morphemes differs. The particle by is detached from the verb and is not marked for person, instead serving as an element of analytical construction to mark the mood (as with English would). However, rather than preceding the verb as in English, the particle follows the verb as in standard Polish, and the personal marking, although moved to the verb, is not lost. Kozminska (2015) interprets this mechanism that leads to the simplification of the Polish rule as convergence, where the grammar

8 She also ascribed case restructuring to the influence of English, which is problematic and will be discussed later in the dissertation.

becomes biased "toward the selection, retention and strengthening of structures shared by the minority and majority languages” (Montrul & Bowles, 2009, p.381).

Convergence, understood as the increase of similarities between languages involved in situations of contact, is another phenomenon that was evidenced in the grammars of HLs (Brown

& Putnam, 2015; Montrul & Bowles, 2009; Schmitt, 2004; Silva-Corvalan, 1994, Łyskawa, et al.,

2016). The terms convergence and transfer are often used alongside each other by researchers working on contact-induced language change (for an overview, see Treffers-Daller, 2009). In addition, some researchers consider convergence a type of transfer. However, others indicate that, unlike transfer, which is always externally motivated, convergence may also be internally induced

(Bullock, 2004; Silva-Corvalan, 1994). Silva-Corvalan points out that "convergence may result as well from pre-existing internally motivated changes in one of the languages, most likely accelerated by contact, rather than as a consequence of direct interlingual influence" (1994, p. 5).

As the above-mentioned examples indicate, the influence of the dominant language is responsible for some aspects of HL acquisition and development. First, direct transfer has been recorded in lexicon. Furthermore, indirect transfer and convergence explain many structural properties, such as the overuse of progressive in Spanish in Los Angeles (Silva-Corvalan, 1994), the conditional mood in Polish HL (Kozminska, 2015), case reassignment in Russian HL

(Polinsky, 2008) as well socio-pragmatic knowledge (Dubinina, 2010; Wolski-Moskoff, 2018) .

2.3.4 Input

There are studies in HL literature that point to quality and quantity of input as either the main cause or one of the most important causes of HL grammars differing from monolingual variations (Pires & Rothman, 2009; Thomas, Williams, Jones, Davies, & Binks, 2014; Wolski-

Moskoff, 2018). It is generally agreed that input received by HSs in their HLs is reduced in quantity as they speak the language mainly with family members, and is reduced in quality because they are familiar only with an everyday colloquial register of HL due to lack of or limited literacy in the language. As has been discussed above, some researchers also name input as a reason why incomplete acquisition or attrition takes place (Montrul, 2008; Polinsky 2006, 2008; Silva-

Corvalan, 1994).

Worth mentioning is the fact that input is also brought up as the main source of incomplete acquisition in studies on bilinguals and bilingual acquisition (for an overview, see Paradis, 2011).

It has been attested that for ¼ of children in potentially bilingual environments who do not become bilingual, input is responsible for their lack of development of one of the languages (Pearson, 2007; de Houwer, 2003). Although the crucial question about the amount of input necessary for acquisition has not been answered as of yet, studies of bilingual children have identified two important aspects of input. First, there seems to be a threshold of input necessary for the acquisition of certain linguistic features (Gathercole, 2002; Gathercole & Hoff, 2007); i.e. some have called it a "critical mass," after which more exposure is not necessary. Secondly, the research of bilingualism has pointed out the necessity of timely input; i.e. adequate input must be provided at the stages when a bilingual child develops certain skills or grammar competence. It might be less crucial at later points (Gathercole, 2002).

A study that attested to the role of the quantity of input in shaping HL grammar was conducted in Wales (Thomas, et al., 2014). It investigated the acquisition of complex plural morphology in three groups of bilingual children. Welsh plural morphology involves several different mechanisms for modifying noun number, such as suffix addition, deletion and alternation, with or without vowel change. Additionally, the system is further complicated by the multi- functionality of particular endings, and by the fact that in many cases there is no clear indication of which plural form a singular root should take.

Altogether, there were 88 children ages 7 to 11. The first group, identified as L1 Welsh, acquired Welsh before acquiring their-dominant English. The second group (2L1) acquired

English and Welsh simultaneously. Finally, the last group consisted of English monolingual speakers who were learning Welsh as a foreign language. The results revealed that L1 Welsh- speaking children exhibited a knowledge of the plural very similar to that of the monolingual control group of adults. Simultaneous bilinguals produced fewer target forms than the L1 Welsh in each category. Finally, the lowest scores were recorded for L2 learners of Welsh. The authors explained these results in terms of quantity of input. Each of these groups had a different amount of exposure to the language. The first group, who grew up in exclusively Welsh-speaking households, demonstrated the fullest acquisition of plural morphology. The second group of children, from households where two languages were spoken, displayed less knowledge. Finally, the last group, who learned Welsh as a foreign language at school, had the highest error rates

(Thomas, et al., 2014).

Interestingly, this drastic difference in language competence between simultaneous and sequential HSs has been observed by Montrul (2008) as well. She also attributed it to the role of

input; however, she called this variable the age of onset of bilingualism. In her interpretation of the difference between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals, Montrul (2008) also considered the impact of age when bilingualism started (the earlier the start of bilingual acquisition, the worse the speaker’s knowledge of the first language).

As far as quality of input is concerned, one can safely assume that many HSs only have access to the spoken form of the language. Hence, one cannot expect them to use elements of the language that monolingual speakers acquire through schooling, such as vocabulary that belongs to higher registers grammar used mainly in written language.

The impact of quality of input on heritage grammars was first presented in a publication by Pires and Rothman (2009). The researchers observed the existence of inflected infinitives in spoken European Portuguese, but not in Brazilian Portuguese, and how this impacted the respective heritage languages. Their findings confirmed their assumption that qualitative changes in input resulted in European Portuguese HSs and Brazilian Portuguese HSs having different linguistic repertoires.

The findings of the above-mentioned input studies confirmed the role that quality and quantity of input play in shaping HLs. The first study, with Welsh bilinguals, attested to the role of quantity of input in shaping the grammars of HSs. The simultaneous bilinguals exhibited a limited knowledge of Welsh plural morphology compared to the sequential bilinguals. These findings were interpreted in terms of the various amounts of input that these groups of speakers received by speaking one or two languages at home. It should be noted that in studies on complex morphology in general, exposure to morphosyntactic structures as well as the consistency of their

distributional properties are believed to influence the rate and pattern of acquisition (Bertram,

Hyona, & Laine, 2011).

The study by Pires and Rothman (2009), on the other hand, showed a relationship between the language of Portuguese HSs and the quality of input they received. European Portuguese HSs received different input than did Brazilian HSs because the parents of European Portuguese HSs spoke the colloquial variant of Portuguese that included inflected infinitives, whereas the parents of Brazilian Portuguese HSs spoke the variant without them. The value of this study lies in the fact that it attests to a clear connection between the input received by HSs and their language in terms of quality. Earlier studies on incomplete acquisition have often credited impoverished input as the factor most likely causing incomplete acquisition. But prior to Pires and Rothman there were no studies in HL literature showing to what extent this input was impoverished.

Despite general agreement on the key role of input in shaping the grammars of HSs

(Montrul, 2016, Polinsky, 2006, Silva-Corvalan 1994), there are studies that indicate that the role of the latter should be scrutinized (O'Grady, Kwak, Lee, & Lee, 2011):

... what matters for language acquisition is not so much the frequency of particular forms

as it is frequency of clear-cut instantiations of mappings between form and meaning. That

is, children do not learn the past tense suffix or the definite article simply by encountering

the forms -ed and the. Rather, learning takes place only to the extent that children encounter

situations in which forms can be successfully linked to a corresponding semantic function,

thereby creating mappings. (p. 316)

This criticism comes from observations that certain properties of the Korean language, despite being very rarely used, are acquired by Korean HSs. The authors argued that it was due to the role of the processor. The processor, which is responsible for form-meaning mappings, is sensitive to two properties: the adequate frequency of form-meaning mappings in proportion to their difficulty, and mappings of low cognitive load. Korean HSs acquired a grammatical property that was very infrequent in the input they received, thus indicating that the input frequency of a given linguistic property, although very crucial, is not responsible for all aspects of heritage language acquisition

(O'Grady, et al., 2011).

Despite consensus on the key role of input, it has not been thoroughly studied yet. Only a handful of studies, for instance, have attempted to describe the impact of parental input on the language of heritage speakers (Brehmer & Kurbangulova, 2017; Paradis & Navarro, 2003).

Moreover, other studies that provide evidence of the role of input do not consider the fact that the language of the parents providing the main input may be divergent, too. As late bilinguals exposed to another language upon immigration, this generation of parents of HSs may have undergone attrition of some linguistic properties as well. This phenomenon will be discussed in more details in the following section.

2.3.5 Parental input

The importance of parental input in shaping HSs’ grammar has been discussed in HL literature (e.g. Montrul, 2016; Polinsky, 2006; Silva-Corvalan 1994). However, only a small number of studies have attempted to investigate a connection between the language of parents –

first-generation immigrants – and their children, who are heritage speakers (Brehmer &

Kurbangulova, 2017; Montrul & Sánchez-Walker, 2013; Paradis & Navarro, 2003; Pascual y

Cabo, 2018). Attrition studies indicate that the language of immigrants changes upon intensive contact with an L2. There are still many concerns as to how profound this change is and whether it is reversible (Grosjean, 2011; Pavlenko, 2004), but one can safely assume that the language of immigrants exhibits some divergences, even if only at the lexical level. Heritage language research, however, has rarely considered the change of the linguistic systems of first-generation immigrants as one of the possible culprits responsible for the shape of the HL.

Building on the presumption that the input received by heritage speakers already differs from the monolingual variation, we can assert that the language change that has often been solely ascribed to HSs has been initiated by the generation of their immigrant parents, whose language exhibits divergences as well. Thus far, only a few studies have directly compared the language of heritage speakers to that of their parents (Brehmer & Kurbangulova, 2017; Paradis & Navarro,

2003).

For example, Brehmer and Kurbangulova (2017) investigated the language of a Russian family of four residing in Germany. They looked at how Russian voice onset time (VOT) changed under the influence of German over time. Russian and German differ significantly in the realization of voiceless /p/, /t/, /k/ and voiced /b/, /d/, /g/ stops. Voiceless stops are unaspirated in Russian but aspirated in German, whereas voiced stops, which are realized with prevoicing in Russian, are produced as voiceless in German. Based on previous research showing that VOT in both languages of bilinguals can be influenced by the speakers’ L1 or L2, Brehmer and Kurbangulova (2017) suggested that the language of the family would be affected in that regard. Interestingly, the

change in VOT, although less apparent, took place in the language of parents as well. Brehmer and

Kurbangulova (2017) concluded that the children received input that already showed some cross- linguistic influence from German. Moreover, according to the researchers, the language of the children exhibited an acceleration of the changes already present in the language of the parents.

A similar conclusion was drawn in another pilot study, conducted by Paradis and Navarro

(2003), who investigated the use of overt subjects in the language of a bilingual child (age 1;9-2;6) and two age-matching monolingual children (ages 1;8-2;7 and 1;8-2;11). Additionally, the language of the bilingual child was compared to the language of her parents. The study utilized the spontaneous language corpus available from CHILDES. The results showed that the bilingual child used overt subjects differently from her monolingual counterparts. Although these findings could be interpreted as cross-linguistic influence from English, Paradis and Navarro were more inclined to interpret this phenomenon as the role of parental input. The parents of the child used more overt subjects than monolinguals and exhibited a tendency to use overt subjects in the same category (described as low informativeness) as the child, which cannot be explained by the influence of English. The data presented by Paradis and Navarro did not permit them to distinguish conclusively between transfer and parental input, but they concluded the study by suggesting that future research should take input into account.

The findings of the above studies indicate that parental input shapes the linguistic systems of HSs, but they also point out that changes in parental input brought about by immigration and the influence of the L2 should be taken into account when considering the various factors that shape the grammars of HLs. Therefore, the following section will provide an overview of attrition

studies that may offer some insights into whether the language of first-generation immigrants can change due to influence from the L2 and to what degree.

Attrition of L1 in first-generation immigrants

As discussed above, there are only a handful of studies that have investigated whether certain changes found in the language of HSs are already found in the baseline language to which they were exposed. Therefore, in order to afford a more holistic approach, the following section will provide a brief summary of attrition studies conducted with immigrants. It should be stressed, however, that a full overview of attrition studies is beyond the scope of this dissertation, as its main focus is on the language of HSs. Nevertheless, it seems important to briefly review attrition literature to find out whether changes in case use are observed in first-generation immigrants.

By and large, attrition is described as the non-pathological language loss caused by lack of exposure or limited access to the L1. It is argued that L1 attrition is a process that takes place only under certain circumstances, such as emigration, extensive use of the L2 in daily life, extremely reduced use of the L1 in daily life, plus a fairly long time span after the onset of bilingualism

(Köpke & Schmid, 2007). The mix of such conditions may cause quite an evident language change.

However, language change may take place in all bilinguals to a lesser degree under the influence of any of the above conditions. In fact, research on bilinguals and multilinguals has advanced the notion that the acquisition of an L2 changes the L1 in quite a profound way (Cook, 2003; Grosjean,

2008). This approach is confirmed by psycholinguistic research, which has shown that bilinguals

process language differently than monolinguals (for an overview, see Kroll, Bogulski & McClain,

2012).

Extra-linguistic factors that have been named as the most influential in language attrition are: age at onset of L2 acquisition; age at onset of L1 attrition; time since onset of attrition; level of education; attitude; as well as frequency, amount and setting of use of the attriting language. In regard to the first two factors, there is a great difference between children and adults. There exists compelling evidence from studies on adoptees that the L1 can indeed be eroded quite severely if the attrition process begins well before puberty (Isurin, 2000; Vago, 1991, among others). On the other hand, attrition research with adults does not yield such results. The education effect has not been well studied yet, and the studies which do account for the effect have shown various results

(for an overview, see Schmid and Köpke, 2004). Nevertheless, it seems that the numbers of years of L1 education might correlate with linguistic performance in general, which may be of value when assessing the quality of parental input. A third factor determining the scope of language attrition is the length of time that has elapsed since the onset of attrition. It is suggested that if an individual is to lose some abilities in his/her L1, it would presumably take place between 5 and 10 years after immigration (for details, see Schmid and Köpke, 2004). As far as language attitude, despite compelling evidence reported by Schmid (2002) in a study of German Jews whose language attrition was ascribed to the intensity of persecution, other studies were less successful in showing a correlation between ethno-linguistic vitality and language attrition (Søndergaard,

1996). However, it is widely agreed that amount of contact with the L1 might be one of the most decisive factors in language attrition.

The major question in L1 attrition is whether the language can really be forgotten. Despite many convincing examples of young children forgetting their L1 (for an overview, see Schmid,

Köpke, & de Bot, 2012) as well as studies with adults showing their divergent performances with object naming (Ammerlaan, 1996) or VOT (Brehmer & Kurbangulova, 2017), there are still doubts regarding the possibility of a complete loss of certain linguistic features in adults. Also, there are studies that indicate that what on the surface might look like language loss is in fact only a divergent performance caused by the influence of the L2, whereas the metalinguistic tasks used with the same attriters show that the speakers still possess the knowledge of these elements of language (for discussion see, Schmid & Köpke, 2004).

It has been argued that attrition is a phenomenon that selectively affects language, suggesting that certain areas of linguistic knowledge are more vulnerable than others (Schmid,

2011). Thus far, the research on L1 attrition in adults has overwhelmingly shown the vulnerability of lexicon (Olshtain & Barzilay 1991). While it is commonly agreed upon that difficulties with lexicon are quite widely attested to, there is a handful of studies showing changes in deeper structures of language such as narrow syntax (Tsimpli, 2007). Additionally, studies on inflectional systems have often yielded conflicting results (Schmid, 2002; Sorace, 2006), whereas phonology remains understudied (Hirvonen, 1998; Major, 1992). Changes in the lexicon of attriters are usually far more noticeable than changes in the inflectional endings in an even sound system.

According to Schmid (2011), the readiness of noticing these changes in lexicon results from the size of this area of linguistic knowledge, which is incomparably larger than the inflectional or phonological system. Our brains store far more lexical items than morphological endings or sounds in any given language. Additionally, morphological endings and sounds are used in different

configurations with different words constantly, whereas certain elements of lexicon, such as those of relatively low frequency, might be retrieved only occasionally.

As discussed above, morphology, which is the focus of the present dissertation, has not been shown by the research on adult attriters to be compelling evidence as in the case of lexicon.

However, according to many theoretical frameworks (Hagen & de Bot 1990; Schmid 2002; Seliger

1991) as well as results of studies conducted on young attriters (Schmitt, 2004), the predicted language changes are supposed to affect case markings in the first place. However, studies in this domain have yielded conflicting results (Hirvonen, 1995, Schmid, 2002). For one, it has been attested that attrition of case may be different for typologically different languages, as shown in the example of Dyirbal and German (Schmidt, 1985; Schmidt, 1991; Schmid, 2002; Stolberg &

Münch, 2010). Dyirbal is a language spoken by the Aboriginal community in Australia. Owing to compulsory education as well as other external and internal factors the language is nearing extinction. Schmidt (1985, 1991) conducted a study that identified a profound structural change in the Dyirbal language of twelve young speakers (ages 17-33). One of the most affected areas of grammatical knowledge was case. Dyirbal has 10 cases, of which the ergative is especially complex because of its seven different allomorphs. The choice of ending in the ergative is based on morphophonological rules, which are simplified in the language of young Dyirbal speakers.

The ergative9 underwent allomorphic reduction in five of the respondents and was lost in the remaining respondents who replaced it with a strict word order. Clearly, such profound language loss in minority societies like that of Dyirbal speakers from Jambun is the outcome of many

9 "In an ergative-absolutive case system, the subject of an intransitive verb, and the object of a transitive verb, are in the absolutive case, while the subject of a transitive verb is in the ergative case" (Schmidt, 1985, p.46)

additional factors, including extreme racial and linguistic stigmatization, which may not be involved in the language attrition of immigrants. However, due to a lack of other studies with adult speakers of languages with complex case systems, the above study is of value because it describes the stages of case simplification.

Other studies of case loss in adults have not reported such a deep case erosion as in the above study of Dyirbal speakers. For example, speakers of German studied by Stolberg and Münch

(2010) or Schmid (2002) displayed very subtle changes in this system, if any. Stolberg and Münch showed far less of a loss of case category in their respondents: elderly speakers of German, who were not exposed to their L1 anymore. Similar results were reported by Schmid (2002).

Unfortunately, the number of attrition studies investigating case use in adults is limited

(Schmid, 2002; Stolberg and Münch, 2010), and to the best of my knowledge, there has not been any study investigating case erosion in adults speaking a Slavic language. However, bearing in mind the case complexity of Polish, including many cases with allomorphs as well as numerous irregular inflections, it is safe to assume that the attrition of case in the Polish language spoken by immigrants may be more noticeable than in other attrition studies, which mainly focus on German, whose inflectional system is far less complex. On the other hand, given the virtually incomparable circumstances in which Dyirbal speakers have lost their linguistic knowledge, one can hardly expect case erosion in Polish immigrants to be that profound.

To summarize, one can predict with high probability that the language of Polish immigrants will be affected by their L2. It is possible that this change will only pertain to language mixing, lexical borrowing or on-line difficulties, and will not affect other properties of language such as case. However, considering that one of the factors named as important in language attrition is 60

education, one might expect Polish speakers in Chicago to display some errors in case category as well. This may be true especially since education has been discovered to play a role in shaping the knowledge of case in native speakers, as will be discussed in Section 3.1.4. It seems that the question of whether changes in the L1 of first-generation immigrants are only performance difficulties is not so important for evaluating the parental input. If the language spoken by first- generation immigrants differs from the language of monolinguals, HSs receive divergent input. A new question emerges, however, of the degree to which this language is different from the standard variation.

2.4 Conclusion

Overall, I argue that the profiles of Polish HSs, which I have tried to compile based on very slim research and comparison to Russian HSs, suggest that like other HSs, Polish HSs are English- dominant bilinguals, whose language is different from the monolingual variant spoken in Poland.

The divergence is seen in many different areas of linguistic and pragmatic competence. Like other

HSs, Polish HSs display great variance in their linguistic skills; they can be more or less fluent in their HL. The only study of advanced HSs in Chicago published recently described their linguistic skills as restructured and highly influenced by their dominant English: for example, in the area of lexicon (Kozminska, 2015). Yet, there is earlier research (Preston, 1986) which indicates that the

HL system, albeit divergent, retains many characteristics of the monolingual variation. These seemingly conflicting results suggest that HSs are indeed not a homogenous group, which has been found for most languages investigated in the field (Benmamoun, et al., 2013; Beaudrie, Ducar, &

Potowski, 2014; Kagan & Carreira, 2011, Montrul, 2016). The divergence has been observed in 61

the area of lexicon, forms of borrowings and calques, phonology, pragmatics, but above all the

HSs’ knowledge of morphology (both nominal and verbal).

On the other hand, Chapter 1 illustrated that Poles, in general, are rather keen to preserve their culture and language when living abroad. Thanks to many advantageous factors, such as a large population, an interest in language maintenance manifested in the establishment of Saturday schools, and frequent visits to the country of origin, Polish HSs who grow up in larger communities receive support from their community, at least in terms of the availability of certain institutions.

Keeping in mind that the situation may be less favorable for HSs in more remote areas, I argue that these practices in language maintenance are rather successful and that the overall language of

Polish HSs is not as eroded as is commonly thought. Evidence for this comes from the self- assessments of HSs presented by Lipińska & Seretny (2012), where Polish HSs rated their skills in the language as good or even very good (Marian, Blumenfeld, & Kaushanskaya, 2007).

Finally, as was discussed in the third section of this chapter, many factors can potentially be responsible for the shape of an HL. Some of these factors, such as incomplete acquisition or attrition, have either caused some controversies or require a longitudinal methodology that is beyond the scope of the present dissertation. Additionally, the last factor that might impact heritage language development – parental input – will be considered. That being said, it is also very important to look closely at the grammatical feature under investigation: case. As previous research has indicated, the changes in the HL may be a result of not only external but also internal factors. Since case category in Polish belongs to one of the most complex parts of the language, any analysis of this area has to take into account the specifics of case. The following chapter presents an overview of the most common characteristics of Polish case.

Chapter 3. Polish case

Polish, like most Slavic languages, is characterized by a rich nominal morphology. Because it still makes use of some case functions that are no longer used by other Slavic languages, Polish has also been often referred to as more conservative than other Slavic languages in that regard

(Handke, 1994). For example, the genitive of negation, still used in contemporary Polish, is considered archaic in Czech and optional in Russian (for an overview, see Franks, 1995). The present chapter offers an overview of Polish cases, their functions, and the way they are marked and used by Polish speakers in Poland. Consequently, drawing on observational and experimental studies, the chapter provides a short discussion of how cases are acquired by monolingual children in Poland. In addition, the acquisition of cases by Polish and Russian heritage speakers in the

United States and Israel is presented, as well as the results of research on the Polish heritage language in Germany and Sweden. Finally, the results of a pilot study that inspired the topic of this dissertation are discussed.

3.1 Case in Polish – overview

There is much debate about the general role of case in language, as well as the functions of particular cases (Blake, 2001; Brecht & Levine, 1986; Franks, 1995). Traditionally, Slavic linguistics followed Jakobson’s semantic approach (Brecht & Levine, 1986), which attempted to account for the general and specific meaning associated with the use of particular cases in particular contexts. In contrast, Chomsky’s Government-Binding Theory and the notion of abstract

case put more emphasis on the syntactic values of cases. There is an ongoing debate between these two approaches, and several different typologies have been proposed. Kuryłowicz (1949), for instance, argued for the existence of both semantic and syntactic case. Interestingly, his conceptualization of case is consistent with Chomsky’s notion of structurally and inherently assigned cases. Many of the remaining typologies generally agree with the two-types-of-case approach and offer twofold frameworks: e.g., “grammatical” vs. “adverbial” case or “abstract” vs.

“concrete” case (for an overview, see Brecht & Levine, 1986). Neither of these frameworks, however, seems to account entirely for the complexity of Slavic cases. For example, most cases in

Slavic languages have both syntactic and semantic functions, and it is hard to decide which of these functions is more important. Also, a case can be syntactic in one language, while semantic in another: for instance, the genitive of negation in Polish and Russian (Franks, 1995). Therefore,

Brecht and Levine (1986) argue that a definition of case should encompass both properties, i.e., semantic and syntactic.

For the purpose of this dissertation, I employ the latter approach which assumes that each case may possess both syntactic and semantic functions. All the main functions of Polish cases are listed in Table 3.1. Most of them are discussed in the following section, which provides the general characteristics of each case.

Case Syntactic function Semantic function Prepositional use10 Pragmatic

function

Nominative subject agent no to call sb

Genitive adnominal, subject patient, possessive, spatial & temporal

& direct object after partitive

negation

Accusative direct object patient spatial & temporal

Dative indirect object beneficiary,

experiencer

Instrumental nominal predicate instrument spatial &

accompaniment

Locative location spatial & temporal

Vocative no no to call sb

Table 3.1 Main functions of Polish cases

10 Prepositional use is distinguished here because of its different – analytic – nature. This is a special context in which, in addition to case morpheme, a preposition is used. The functions, however, might be of either syntactic or semantic nature.

The category of case is central for nominal morphology in the Polish language. The language makes use of seven cases: the nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. Case affixes not only mark different cases but also carry information about number (i.e., singular or plural) and sometimes gender. The category of gender is quite extensive in Polish. There are three genders in singular (with additional animacy distinctions for some cases) as well as two genders in plural. Altogether there are 42 different morphemes that mark cases in

Polish; in addition to the case affixes compiled in Table 3.2, there are 15 consonant replacements

(alternations) in the locative case and in the nominative plural of masculine-personal nouns.

Masculine

Feminine human animate inanimate Neuter

SG NOM -a; Ø Ø Ø Ø o; -e; -ę ACC -ę;=NOM =GEN =GEN =NOM =NOM GEN -i/-y -a -a -a; -u -a DAT -‘e; -i/-y -owi;-u -owi; -u -owi; -u -u LOC =DAT -‘e; -u -‘e; -u -‘e; -u -‘e; -u INSTR -ą -em -em -em -em VOC -o; -u; -i/-y =LOC =LOC =LOC =NOM

PL NOM -i/-y; -e -owie; -‘i/-‘y; -e -i/-y; -e -i/-y; -e -a ACC =NOM =GEN =NOM =NOM =NOM GEN Ø; -i/-ya -ów; -i/-y -ów; -i/-y -ów; -i/-y Ø DAT -om -om -om -om -om LOC -ach -ach -ach -ach -ach INSTR -ami -ami -ami -ami -ami VOC =NOM =NOM =NOM =NOM =NOM

Table 3.2 Inflectional endings of Polish nouns11 (Source: Dąbrowska, 2006)

11 The choice between these endings is unequivocally determined by the phonological form of the stem.

The choice between the above case endings and the consonant alternations (not included in Table 3.2) is based on several factors. First of all, grammatical gender is considered. This distinction plays a bigger role in singular than in plural, where most affixes are the same for all genders except for the nominative, genitive and accusative, which have different inflections for masculine-personal and non-masculine-personal nouns. Secondly, the phonological form of the stem has to be considered when deciding between endings, especially for the locative, which has a number of possible endings based on the final consonant of the stem. In addition to the two above criteria, the semantic, morphological and lexical aspects of nouns might be taken into account for certain cases.

The following section describes the general characteristics of Polish cases. It only focuses on the main case functions and pertains to the main markings of particular cases. It should be noted that a full analysis of the case system is beyond the scope of this dissertation. In other words, it does not discuss irregular inflections or focus on inflections of respective genders, and in general, it does not focus on plural forms; instead, it attempts to capture the most important aspects of each case pertaining to its functions and marking.

3.1.1 The Nominative

Of the seven Polish cases, the syntactic functions are especially applicable to the nominative, accusative, genitive and dative, which also are referred to as "grammatical cases."

The nominative case is used to mark the subject in the sentence, although it may have other peripheral uses as well (e.g., after jak or in questions). Additionally, the nominative is used instead of the vocative in informal forms of address (e.g., when addressing friends/peers by their first names).

The nominative is an unmarked case, which carries information about number and gender and is used as a citation form of a given noun. Generally, learners of Polish as L2 are taught to take the stem of the nominative (by eliminating the final vowel) and add the affix of a dependent case in order to mark the noun for this case. In practice, however, the stem of the nominative and the dependent cases often differ, and some linguists suggest that the stem of the genitive should be considered a default stem instead (Tokarski, 1973). The majority of differences between stems in the nominative and stems in the genitive are historically motivated and pertain to the vowels; for example, the nominative has ó in the final syllable whereas the oblique12 cases have o instead.

Another example: e from the final syllable of masculine nouns is absent in oblique cases, etc.

The category of gender is determined by the phonological form of the nominative; most words that end in a consonant are masculine in gender, those which end in –a are feminine, and neuter nouns end in –e, –ę or –o. Although these determinants can be applied to most nouns, there are groups of nouns that have different endings (e.g., feminine nouns that end in a consonant,

12 I use the term oblique to refer to any non-nominative case.

masculine that end in –a, and neuter that end in a consonant). The gender of these nouns is either determined lexically or other aspects have to be considered, such as word morphology (e.g., neuter nouns that end in –um).

The most challenging aspect of the nominative case is the masculine-personal and non- masculine-personal distinction marked in plural. The non-masculine-personal plural shares endings with feminine. These endings are phonologically determined and generally do not present a problem. In order to mark masculine-personal nouns, one has to consider both lexical and morphological aspects of the words, which may be conflicting (i.e., one determinant may suggest a different ending than the other). In such instances the language sometimes accepts both forms

(e.g., inżynier ‘engineer’ – inżynierzy / inżynierowie ‘engineers’). Interestingly, the masculine/non- masculine personal distinction is absent in Polish rural dialects (Karaś, 2009).

3.1.2 The Accusative

The next case, used in nouns that appear after most verbs as the object, is the accusative.

In addition to its most basic syntactic function, the accusative case has adverbial functions and is used in prepositional phrases. Interestingly, the accusative quite often appears after the same prepositions as the locative, but it can also be used with the same prepositions as the instrumental.

In instances where two cases share the same preposition, the choice of case is determined by the verb (1-2). Generally, verbs that require the accusative indicate some motion toward the object marked by the accusative, whereas verbs that require the locative are considered “static.”

1. Id-ę na uniwersytet- Ø. Go-PRS.1SG on university-ACC.SG

'I am going to the university.'

2. Jest-em na uniwersyte-cie. Be-PRS.1SG on university-LOC.SG ‘I am at the university’

The markings of the accusative exhibit partial nominative-genitive syncretism. In the feminine inflection, the case has its own marking –ę, but in masculine only animate nouns are marked by –a, whereas inanimate, as well as neuter nouns, remain unmarked, as in the nominative.

This nominative-accusative syncretism may cause ambiguity due to Polish’s flexible syntax, which allows for the OVS (object-verb-subject) order. In practice, to avoid confusion language users employ additional linguistic devices or follow the strict SVO (subject-verb-object) order, which is a pragmatically neutral and dominant word order.

The accusative exhibits syncretism with the genitive as well. The affix –a which is used to mark masculine animate nouns is also used to mark the genitive for the same group of nouns (3-

4):

3. Konrad ma-Ø brat-a. Konrad have-PRS.3SG brother-ACC.SG ‘Konrad has a brother.’

4. To jest ubranie brat-a. This be-PRS.3SG clothing brother-GEN.SG ‘This is the brother’s clothing.’

This partial syncretism with the genitive is sometimes provided as an explanation for the overuse of the accusative case at the expense of the genitive, observed in some monolingual speakers, which is discussed in the next section (Miodek, 2000).

In practice, the biggest problem with the accusative is its animate-inanimate distinction, which is absent in all other cases except the genitive. The distinction seems to be difficult for some

Polish speakers, who tend to mark masculine inanimate nouns as animate. Although this tendency seems to be related only to certain groups of nouns referred to as facultative animate nouns (for an overview, see Swan, 2002), prescriptive grammars warn against overusing the –a ending with inanimate nouns. For instance, recent loanwords referring to technology and appliances have been used as masculine animate (e.g., Mam laptop-a ‘I have a laptop’ instead of Mam laptop-Ø).

3.1.3 The Genitive

Interestingly, even though the accusative is the main case that marks a direct object, the genitive is the most frequently used oblique case in the Polish language. The genitive, in addition to a few syntactic functions such as the direct object after negated verbs (5) and the subject after so-called existentials (in negated sentences) (6) as well as the adnominal genitive (7), has many semantic (8) and prepositional functions (9). Several of the functions of this case are as frequent as the syntactic functions. Hence, unlike the nominative and accusative cases, which have clear syntactic main functions in Polish morphology, the genitive distinguishes itself as a "multitasker."

The following are examples of the above-mentioned different functions of the genitive case:

5. Nie ma-Ø żab-y. Not have-PRS.3SG frog-GEN.SG ‘There is no frog.’

6. Nie lubi-ę banan-ów. Not like-PRS.1SG banana-GEN.PL ‘I don’t like bananas.’

7. Książk-a student-a Book-NOM.SG student-GEN.SG ‘Student’s book’

8. Pies bo-i się ogn-ia. Dog fear-PRS.3SG REFL fire-GEN.SG ‘The dog is afraid of fire.’

9. Świstak wyszed-ł z nor-y. Groundhog exit-PST.3SG from den-GEN.SG ‘The groundhog came out of his den’

The most problematic aspect of the genitive case, as used by monolingual speakers,13 is its markings (Bańko, 2002). Although the case exhibits partial syncretism with the accusative in the masculine animate, it presents a challenge to speakers with regard to the endings of masculine inanimate nouns where two endings are possible: –a and –u. As discussed earlier, the choice of case affixes in Polish is based on several factors. First of all, one has to consider grammatical gender. Secondly, the noun stem ending is important because some cases (e.g., the locative) designate the affix based on the phonological aspect of a word. Additionally, for some groups of

13 To the best of my knowledge, there are no empirical studies that would suggest how widespread this problem is among native speakers. Dąbrowska (2001) suggested that it may be related to level of education.

nouns, the semantic and lexical aspects are taken into account as well. Finally, the morphology of words might be decisive as well (Bańko, 2002).

When deciding between two possible endings for inanimate masculine nouns, one has to consider lexical and morphological aspects as well. Sometimes these criteria conflict with one another; for instance, a noun might have a morphology similar to a group of nouns that end in –a in the genitive, but belong to a lexical group that uses –u. These conflicting criteria are challenging to Polish speakers, who have to remember the genitive endings for all those nouns rather than rely on their internal grammar. Sometimes prescriptive grammars offer some help to speakers by considering both endings as correct (e.g., wieczor-u / wieczor-a ‘evening’). Because of this feature, the genitive case is sometimes considered by linguists as the “case that is still developing” (Cegieła

& Markowski, 1982) or “inflection without default” (Dąbrowska, 2001).

Polish speakers also exhibit problems with the genitive related to its functions. First of all, the rules of the genitive of negation are not always followed. These rules assume that the genitive should be used with all verbs that, when not negated, require the accusative. There are many instances of the replacement of the genitive with the accusative reported in colloquial speech, especially when the verbs are preceded by a modal verb (10) (Handke, 1994). Additionally, there is a tendency for verbs that require the genitive as the direct object to be followed by the accusative instead. According to Swan (2002), differentiation between the two cases is based on the meaning or level of formality. Generally, there is a tendency for the accusative case to become more prevalent at the expense of the genitive as the direct object, which in my opinion rules out the role of partial syncretism between these two cases.

10. Nie chciał martwić matk-ę. Not want-PST.3SG worry mother-ACC.SG ‘He didn’t want to worry mother’

3.1.4 The Dative

Another case used primarily in syntactic function is the dative. The dative is used to mark the indirect object, understood as "the person or another animate being for whom or which something is done, or to whom or which something is given” (Swan, 2002, p. 344).

The use of the dative in contemporary Polish is limited, however, and generally, the case is considered the least frequently used in speech, after the vocative (Swan, 2002). The case is used primarily with personal pronouns and personal nouns. In addition to its syntactic function, the dative is used after many "personal verbs," that is, verbs that logically require a personal subject and indirect object: for example, dawać ‘to give,’ gratulować ‘to congratulate,’ dziękować ‘to thank,’ wierzyć ‘to believe.’

Like the genitive, the dative presents a problem for speakers of Polish in terms of case markings. In feminine, the dative has the same endings as the locative case (11-12).

11. Henryka często pomaga-ł-a matc-e. Henryka often help-PST-3SG mother-DAT.SG ‘Henryka often helped the mother.'

12. Rozmawia-l-i o matc-e. Talk-PST-3PL about mother-LOC.SG ‘They talked about the mother.'

Even though feminine endings are numerous (i.e., in addition to four vowels, there are fifteen consonant alternations), it is masculine and neuter genders that present a problem. The dative has two endings in masculine, –owi and –u, and one in neuter, –u. In masculine, the first ending is used with the majority of nouns, whereas the second marks only sixteen, most of which are one syllable long. Thus, nouns marked by –u have to be remembered as exceptions. Many speakers, however, tend to expand the ending –u to other nouns, e.g., koni-u ‘horse’ instead of koni-owi. This partial syncretism with neuter seems to affect neuter declension, since the masculine ending –owi is erroneously used sometimes. Dąbrowska (2012) conducted a study on nonce-word inflection, which showed that Polish speakers’ knowledge of the dative case correlates with their education. The speakers in her study who did not have a high school diploma displayed a higher error rate than those with a college degree. Dąbrowska (2012) explained that the relationship between education and knowledge of the dative might be the result of this case being used in writing more often than in oral speech.

3.1.5 The Instrumental

From the semantic point of view, the instrumental case is one of the most diverse cases; it has uses that are not related to one another (Swan, 2002; Tokarski, 1973). The basic function of the instrumental is to express the means by which something is done. Additionally, it is used with many different prepositions and has a syntactic function as a nominal predicate. The latter is a noun complement linked to a subject noun with the verbs być ‘to be,’ wydawać się ‘to seem,’ stać się ‘to become,’ and zostać ‘to turn out.’

The instrumental is the only case in the Polish language that does not share its endings with another case. In other words, the endings of instrumental, –em (for masculine and neuter) and –ą

(for feminine), are not used to mark any other case.

Handke (1994) reports the erroneous use of the nominative instead of the instrumental in expressions of the predicate nominal, for example:

12. Panie Eugeniusz-u Pach, Pan tu jest-eś gospodarz- Ø. Mister Eugeniusz-VOC.SG Pach, Mister here be-PRS.2SG host-NOM.SG ‘Mister Eugeniusz Pach, you are the host here’

In my opinion, however, the replacement of the instrumental with the nominative in such constructions serves a special pragmatic role and is used on purpose. The nominative in the predicate nominal is used in emotive expressions, for example, to express sarcasm (as in Example

12) or irony. In other words, the speakers who use these forms may be perfectly capable of using the instrumental in predicate constructions in other contexts.

3.1.6 The Locative

The locative is the sole Polish case used only after prepositions. The case is usually used in spatial and temporal adverbial phrases. It shares several prepositions with the accusative but the main reason it might appear challenging is the number of case markings it uses. In addition to four different vowels, fifteen consonant and two vowel alternations are used to mark this case. Besides grammatical gender, the choice of case markings for the locative is based on the phonological form of a word. In order to attach a correct affix, one has to know the gender of a noun and the last

consonant of its stem. The final consonant, as well as selected vowels, need to be changed to mark this case, for instance, uniwersytet – uniwersytec-ie, las – les-ie. Despite this complexity, however, the locative declension is very regular and has very clear criteria for choosing a right ending. Table

3.3 presents inflectional endings of the locative:

Nom. Stem MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER Last Letter

b, p klub – w klubie grupa – w grupie m, n Waszyngton – w mama – o mamie pianino – na Waszyngtonie pianinie w, f Warszawa – w Kraków – w Krakowie Warszawie s, z klasa – w klasie

t uniwersytet – na gazeta – w gazecie uniwersytecie d ambasada – w Listopad – w listopadzie ambasadzie st miasto – w mieście balast – w balaście niewiasta – o niewieście sł krzesło – na krześle przemysł – o przemyśle Wisła – na Wiśle r teatr – w teatrze gitara – na gitarze ł stół – na stole szkoła – w szkole

k październik – w Polska – w Polsce jabłko – o jabłku październiku g Praga – w Pradze tango – o tangu róg – na rogu ch (h) mucha – o musze ucho – w uchu dach – na dachu

c, dz, cz, sz, rz, czerwiec – w czerwcu praca – o pracy słońce – w słońcu ż

l, j, i, ś, ń, ć, ź maj – w maju Filadelfia – w Filadelfii południe – na południu

Table. 3.3 Inflectional endings of the locative case with examples

3.1.7 The Vocative

The last case, the vocative, is the least frequently used case in Polish (Swan, 2002). The case is used to call on somebody and has no syntactic role.14 Of all the Polish cases, use of the vocative has changed most drastically in recent decades. Despite prescriptive grammars still suggesting such, the vocative is rarely used in informal forms of address and is replaced by the nominative in this context. This replacement is perceived as a sign of the vocative case disappearing from the Polish language (for an overview, see Jaworski, 1992). However, its use in formal forms of address (Example 12), as well as in insults, seems to contradict this theory.

Additionally, the vocative is still used in informal address, although it serves a different pragmatic role. It creates distance between interlocutors and signals potential disagreement between parties.

The markings of the vocative exhibit partial syncretism: in masculine, this case has the same endings as the locative; in the feminine, it is marked either by –u or –o, and the choice between the two is based on the last consonant of the stem (Examples 13-14 present the locative- vocative syncretism in masculine):

13. Dawno nie słysza-ł nic o dziadk-u. Long not hear-PST.3SG nothing about grandfather-LOC.SG

'He has not heard anything about the grandfather for a long time.'

14. Co u ciebie słycha-ć, dziadk-u? What at you hear-INF, grandfather-VOC.SG? ‘What’s new, grandpa?’

14 Tokarski (1973), however, claims that the vocative plays a very important syntactic role in sentences in the imperative mood, where it is used as the subject.

3.1.8 Summary

As mentioned earlier, Polish is an inflectional language. The characteristics of Polish nominal morphology might justifiably place it among the most complex languages in that domain.

A non-exhaustive list of these characteristics as briefly presented above includes: the use of seven cases, the large number of case markers, the significant number of case functions, and the disproportionate relation between case markers and case functions.

One of the problematic areas regarding morphemes and their functions is the fact that the number of case functions and affixes are not proportional (i.e., the number of functions is larger than the number of morphemes). This means that morphemes need to be multifunctional, which leads to case syncretism. On the other hand, owing to the fact that most cases have more than one morpheme, one syntactic function might be represented by several different affixes.

3.2 The acquisition of cases by Polish monolingual children

Despite this complexity, the acquisition of cases by Polish monolingual children begins very early in speech development and is accomplished by the end of the fourth year (Łuczyński,

2004). It has been attested by many studies that children use most case markers as early as their second year of life (e.g., Dąbrowska, 2006; Krajewski, 2011; Łuczyński, 2004, Smoczyńska,

1985). According to Smoczyńska (1985), the difference between the acquisition of inflectional endings in English and Polish is caused by the difference between the respective languages’ use of word stems. In English the basic form of a word is essentially the stem, which can perform 79

numerous functions. Polish children, on the other hand, do not have the stem readily available to them and they have to learn to extract it from a given word. The stem of a Polish noun is more abstract. It has to be formed by cutting off the common part that occurs in various forms with different endings. As discussed earlier, the nominative is not always the case that provides the stem. There exist many words with two different stems, one for the nominative and one for the oblique cases. Therefore, a child has to screen several different word forms in order to extract the right stem.

As far as order of acquisition, Polish monolingual children also differ from their English counterparts. Generally, all existent data indicate that all cases appear in the language of Polish monolingual children almost at the same time (for a more detailed discussion, see Łuczyński, 2004,

Smoczyńska, 1985). Unlike English-speaking children, Polish children acquire inflectional endings very early, and they do not use one case at the expense of another. In other words, there are no more important cases that can be used in place of less known cases, as occurs with English past tense inflectional endings. Smoczyńska (1985) explains the difference between the acquisition of English and Polish endings in terms of their frequency.

That being said, the general order of case acquisition can be drawn. At first, the singular forms of cases are acquired in their most basic syntactic functions. It is believed that in their third year of life, children actively use all morphemes. In their fourth year, the process of morpheme acquisition is completed. Later, in their fifth and sixth year of life, children acquire only new, less frequently used functions of cases, as well as irregular inflections and mastery of case use. The process of case acquisition is completed in the sixth year of life, and at that point, a child’s morphological system includes most irregular inflections as well (Łuczyński, 2004).

The order of case acquisition and use is closely related to children's communicative needs.

Thus, children will gradually acquire all case affixes, but only case functions that are necessary for particular communicative needs will be internalized. For example, in the beginning, children learn how to express simple needs using the imperative and the vocative case (15-16). Next, they learn the difference between the subject and the object in the sentence by using the accusative case to mark the latter:

15. Peś nie ścieka-j [1,11]15 Dog not bark-IMP.2SG ‘Dog, don’t bark!’ (SP) Psie, nie szczekaj!

16. Póbuj, tatk-u, titink-ę! [1,10] Try-IMP.2SG, daddy-VOC.SG, lemon-ACC.SG ‘Daddy, try a lemon!’ (SP) Spróbuj, tatku, cytrynkę!

In other words, case markings are acquired much earlier than all functions of a particular case. The process of acquisition of affixes is facilitated by children's special acquisition mechanisms. For example, it has been noted that children pay special attention to word endings

(Slobin, 1994; Smoczyńska, 1985). For Polish children, it has been observed that despite not fully acquiring the phonology of the language, they are able to pronounce all case markers correctly.

Łuczyński (2004) observed that children pronounced case markings with special care even though they might use phonological simplification in word stems (as in sentences 15-16 where there is a

15 Age in years and months.

lack of consonant clusters); he also found that the error rate when using case markings was very low in this group.

The first case acquired by Polish children is the nominative. Owing to case syncretism, nominative morphological markers are also used to mark the accusative and vocative.16 As discussed above, both the nominative and accusative are needed to generate the most basic SVO- type sentences in Polish. The nominative’s many different functions facilitate its acquisition as the first case. The accusative is acquired almost as early as the nominative. In this way, a child is able to produce her first sentences in her second year (Zarębina, 1965 & Łuczyński, 2004). According to Łuczyński (2004), who conducted the most extensive research on case acquisition by monolingual children, it is impossible to provide a clear-cut time frame for the emergence of each particular case in the language of monolingual children. The only exception would be the acquisition of the above-mentioned three cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, which always emerge as the first cases used by a child. After acquisition of these cases is completed in the final months of the second year, a child seems to be able to use any other case in her language, and these cases appear sporadically in the beginning (Łuczyński, 2004). Therefore, unlike in less complex languages, research on Polish cases has not been able to establish a uniform case-acquisition time frame. However, most researchers agree that children use most case markers as early as in their second year of life and that they use these markers correctly from the beginning. There is no stage of substituting one case for another (e.g., Dąbrowska 2006, Krajewski 2011, Łuczyński 2004).

16 There is case syncretism between masculine inanimate nouns in the nominative, accusative and vocative.

That being said, Łuczyński (2004) asserts that there is a clear tendency for the genitive to emerge right after acquisition of the first three cases. However, it is used only in a few of its functions. It appears on the object and subject in negated sentences early in the acquisition process, replacing the accusative and nominative in sentences without negation (17-18). Therefore, it seems that Polish children interpret negative sentences as requiring a different case as early as the second part of their second year. In addition to this function, children use the genitive in the partitive and adnominal functions quite early (19). They also start using this case on objects of prepositional phrases in the genitive’s spatial function (20). Interestingly, they tend to omit prepositions in these phrases. The following are examples of sentences with the genitive case from the speech of two- year-old children:

17. Koćk-ów nie ma-Ø. [1,8] Block-GEN.PL not have-PRS.3SG 'There are no blocks' (SP) Klocków nie ma.

18. Nie ci-e juś bułećk-i. [1,10] Not want-PRS.1SG already roll-GEN.SG 'I don't want a roll anymore.' (SP) Nie chcę już bułeczki.

19. Mamusia, we-ź tatusi-a ziec-i. [1,10] Mammy, take-IMP.2SG daddy-GEN.SG thing-PL 'Mammy, take daddy's things.' (SP) Mamusiu, weź tatusia rzeczy.

20. Ziu-ć kosi-a! [1,8] Throw-IMP.2SG trash-GEN.SG 'Throw (it) (to) trash!' (SP) Wrzuć do kosza!

Right after acquiring the three major cases, Polish children start using the dative, locative and instrumental. The dative emerges as an indirect object in sentences that require a recipient.

However, researchers emphasize the generally low frequency of the dative in the speech of a child

(Łuczyński 2004, Dąbrowska 2006). The locative appears first in its spatial function. Interestingly, however, even when the locative case is used (correctly), the early child’s speech often lacks obligatory prepositions. Similar to the use of the genitive in the spatial function, the marker of case is used earlier than the preposition with which it appears in an adult’s Polish. Finally, the instrumental is used in sentences that require the use of a tool; not surprisingly, in the speech of children, these are usually toys.

Even though it is generally agreed that Polish children inflect words correctly from the start and display very low error rates (Łuczyński, 2004), some patterns of errors have been described in literature. First of all, there is an overgeneralization of the –a ending for the genitive singular form of masculine inanimate nouns. As discussed earlier, masculine inanimate is challenging to adult speakers as well owing to a few competing factors that determine the ending. Smoczyńska (1985) observed that children overcome this tendency quite early, which she attributes to the high frequency of genitival forms.

Another pattern of error occurs in the animate-inanimate distinction in the accusative.

Again this error has been reported in adult speech; however, children seem to use the –a ending

with inanimate nouns to a much larger extent. Smoczyńska (1985) interprets this error as an overextension of the adult rule rather than an overgeneralization of the –a ending. According to her, the existent data show that overall, children acquire the –a versus Ø distinction but choose not to use it in all contexts.

The next error type that has been observed in the speech of Polish children pertains to the locative. Smoczyńska (1985) reported an overextension of the –u ending by Polish children. As discussed earlier, the choice of case affixes in the locative is based on the final consonant of the stem. Additionally, when adding the –e ending one has to change the last consonant(s) of the stem.

The other endings of the locative do not have this effect on final consonants. Thus, it is possible that Polish children make this choice to avoid stem alternations.

The above error patterns are not frequent, and, as stated above, inflectional endings are acquired quite early and almost entirely. The evident differences between acquisition of languages with less and more extensive morphologies suggest different mechanisms at play. Much of the research on morphologically rich languages is concerned with mechanisms that are involved in this process and that allow for acquisition of complex inflections (for an overview, see Bertram et al., 2011). Experimental studies conducted with Polish-speaking children have indicated that usage-based models are able to account for this process better than the dual-mechanism theory

(Dąbrowska & Szczerbiński, 2006; Krajewski et al., 2010). The latter assumes that regular and irregular elements of grammar are processed by different types of memory; for example, the –ed ending in English past tense is a regular ending that works as a default system applied to any word, whereas the second mechanism involves the associative memory that stores all irregular forms

(Marcus et al., 1992). Usage-based theories, on the other hand, assume that a single mental

mechanism is responsible for supplying both regular and irregular inflections (Dąbrowska &

Szczerbiński 2006).

Dąbrowska & Szczerbiński (2006) conducted an experiment on nonce-word inflection with

Polish pre-school children, which provided support for the usage-based theory. There were three groups of children in their study: two-year-olds, three-year-olds and four-year-olds, as well as an adult control group. The participants were presented with twelve toys that represented six real words (animals) and six nonce nouns (some animate creatures). Initially, they were introduced to the toys and their names. Consequently, they were asked to finish sentences using words that referred to the toys. The role of these sentences was to elicit nine inflections (three of each gender in the genitive, the accusative, and the dative). The authors chose these inflections based on the following four aspects: regularity, size of the domain of application, overall frequency and phonological diversity17. For example, the genitive masculine inflection is not regular, but it is frequent. Masculine and feminine inflections apply to more nouns than neuter inflections. Nouns in the genitive and accusative are more frequent than nouns marked for the dative, and so forth.

These criteria allowed researchers to test the above two theories: one based on token regularity and the other on frequency. The study’s results showed that regularity did not play a role in the use of inflections but frequency and phonological diversity did.

Dąbrowska and Szczerbiński (2006) observed that even though the speech of the two-year- olds was characterized by the use of most cases, it seems that they applied different mechanisms in speech production than the four-year-old children and adults. Based on the performance of the

17 Two types of phonological diversity were calculated: attested diversity and potential diversity. They were based on the phonological differences between final syllables in given inflections.

particular groups, the authors suggested that the youngest children were more productive with inflections that were more frequent, while four-year-old children and adults paid more attention to phonological diversity. According to the authors, attention to phonological diversity is necessary in the extractions of exemplars (schemata), which in turn allow users to generalize earlier learned examples. In other words, younger children acquire case endings and become productive in the use of inflections that are frequent. In order to be able to generalize these rules and apply them to new, unknown words, children must encounter input that is phonologically dissimilar. This allows for extracting schemata that can be used with unknown words. In other words, the schemata allow for inflecting all words, even previously unheard ones. The performance of four-year-olds was almost identical to the performance of adults; hence this result suggests that this process – the creation of the above-mentioned exemplars – must be accomplished by the age of four.

In my opinion, the above study may be of value to the understanding of the grammatical system of HSs. Not only does it present the stages of development of case system in Polish- speaking children and adults, but it also shows what linguistic features play a role in case acquisition and productivity. Unlike traditional case frameworks, which tend to look at one case as a whole (including all genders) the results of the study by Dąbrowska and Szczerbinski (2006) show that particular case endings, as well as inflections’ regularity, frequency, and phonological diversity, should be considered when discussing case productivity.

3.3 Case in heritage languages

Heritage language research has proposed two assumptions regarding case. The first posits that case is one of the grammatical features whose reanalysis is the most extensive in HLs (for an overview, see Montrul, 2016). The second assumption, based on case typology, postulates that one group of cases (belonging to one case category) is better retained than the other group of cases.

There are several different theories regarding case taxonomy. One is rooted in Chomsky’s case distinction and assumes that so-called inherent cases – i.e., the genitive, dative, instrumental and locative – are better preserved than structural cases, i.e., the nominative and accusative

(Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky, 2015). Another theory, based solely on research on Polish heritage speakers in Sweden and proposed by Laskowski (2014), suggests that strong cases – i.e., the nominative, accusative and genitive – replace weak cases, i.e., the dative, instrumental and locative. As discussed earlier in this chapter, case typologies have been debated by many (for an overview, see Brecht & Levine, 1986). The simplest, most convincing argument against this binary system is that in Slavic languages one case may have a few different functions, some of which can be characterized as semantic (inherent) or syntactic (structural) (Kuryłowicz, 1949). The following overview will provide some insights into the research on cases in Slavic heritage languages, taking into account what, if any, case taxonomy it may confirm.

3.3.1 Case in the Polish heritage language in the United States

Currently, only a handful of studies have attempted to describe nominal morphology among Polish heritage speakers in the United States, and their findings are conflicting. Preston &

Turner (1984) affirmed that cases were intact in Polish spoken in western New York, whereas the most recent study in Chicago by Kozminska (2015) indicated that the system was restructured heavily with the tendency to use only two cases: the nominative and oblique.

Preston and Turner (1984), who interviewed two generations of Polish immigrants in New

York, reported their participants as having knowledge of all cases. They made some interesting observations regarding case reassignment, such as a low frequency of marking direct objects of negated verbs with the genitive, as well as substitution of the nominative case for the instrumental in nominal predicates; however, in general, cases seemed to function the way they did in various dialects in Poland. The study investigated knowledge of cases in Polish immigrants of the first and second generations and showed differences between them, including " accusative-genitive reversal." In the language of immigrants, the genitive was the second most frequently used case, whereas in the first generation of New York Polish speakers (who in today's terms would be described as heritage speakers), the accusative case was more prevalent, partly due to the fact that objects of negated verbs were marked by the accusative case and not by the genitive as they are in standard Polish. Despite these differences, Preston and Turner conclude that nothing in their data suggests that the case system has been lost in Polish spoken in the United States. Conversely, they argue that “one might ... logically assert that a minor re-analysis of the case system is going on which drops some of few ‘illogical’ uses and strengthens the overall system” (1984, p. 149).

Kozminska (2015), on the other hand, reports a very different nominal system in heritage

Polish. She argues that the Polish language of HSs undergoes restructuring that leads to a decrease in the number of cases and, in its final stage, becomes a two-case system with the nominative case

and one oblique case as observed in other heritage languages (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007). However, her article does not provide clear evidence for such restructuring.

For instance, Kozminska found that in heritage Polish the nominative is substituted for the other oblique cases, termed by her “marked cases.” She provides four examples, three of which are in fact in the accusative (which exhibits this syncretism with the nominative) (21):

21. Posz-ł-a pilnować t-e dzieci. Go-PAST.3SG.FEM look after DEF.PL.ACC child-PL.ACC ‘She went to look after the children.’ (Kozminska, 2015, p.11)

Since only nouns in the masculine animate and feminine are marked in the accusative,

Kozminska’s fourth example is feminine. In the next example (22), the proper name appears after the preposition do but is not inflected accordingly; it is used in the nominative rather than in the genitive:

22. Jeździ-li-śmy do Częstochow-a Go-PAST-1.PL to Częstochow-NOM

i tak-ie różn-e miast-a. and such-ACC.PL various-ACC.PL city-ACC.PL

‘We went to Częstochowa and other various cities.’

(Kozminska, 2015, p.11)

Although the name of the city, Częstochowa, in the above example is indeed in the nominative, the case of the other noun and its modifiers may be the accusative. Also, it should be noted that

errors in the use of cases with proper names in monolingual Polish have been reported, too

(Handke, 1994).

Additionally, Kozminska (2015) argues that the genitive case is used as the general oblique case that is substituted for all other dependent cases, and she provides one example of such substitution:

23. Moj-a mam-a pracow-ał-a w fabryk-i ceramiczn-ej. POSS.1SG.NOM mom-NOM work-PAST.3.SG in factory-GEN ceramic-GEN. ‘My mom worked in a ceramic factory.’ (Kozminska, 2015, p.12)

The ending –i in the above example, fabryki, is used to mark the genitive, but the ending –ej used to mark the adjective is used to mark the locative case as well. The locative case, which would be used in this sentence in standard Polish, is also marked by the affix –i although after different consonants (palatalized consonants). Therefore, this particular example could also be interpreted as an extension of the –i ending in the locative rather than as a use of the incorrect case. One should note that Polish monolingual children make a similar error in marking this case. Unlike the prescribed ending –e, the affix –i does not change the preceding consonant. In standard Polish, the final consonant ‘k’ would be changed into ‘c,’ and in consequence, the word would have an alternative stem: fabryce, which may create an additional cognitive load for the speaker. In order to be certain that this is an ending extension and not a case substitution, one would need more data from this particular speaker.

Overall, it should be noted that differences in the findings from the above two studies may result from differing methodologies. Kozminska (2015) compared the rules of the linguistic systems of HSs to prescriptive Polish language rules as presented by grammar books. This type of 91

analysis caused many inaccuracies in her article, such as the finding of errors in the speech of HSs that can also be found in the language of monolingual speakers. One example is the use of the accusative instead of the genitive, but she also reports errors in regard to other parts of speech

(e.g., the collective numerals). Preston and Turner (1984), on the other hand, conducted interviews with native speakers in Poland and later compared the language of New York Polish speakers to the Polish of the native speakers. Moreover, unlike Preston and Turner, Kozminska's study does not offer any quantitative analysis. The limitations of her study are quite understandable, since she aimed at describing the whole linguistic system of Polish HSs and not just the nominal morphology, and her article was one of the first in recent literature to discuss Polish in the United

States.

3.3.2 Case in the Russian heritage language in the United States

Owing to the scarcity of research on Polish HSs, it is worth examining studies on other

Slavic languages, especially research on Russian HSs, which can provide some insightful observations. Two studies are of particular interest here: Polinsky's (2008a) study on HSs' narratives and Isurin & Ivanova-Sullivan's (2008) study. Both studies employed the same methodology: story elicitation based on a picture book by Meyer (although the two studies used two different books by the same author). Additionally, this chapter will evaluate studies on case in bilingual Russian children, as they present the errors of developing case systems that might be informative for this dissertation (Schmitt, 2004; Schwartz & Minkov, 2014).

The findings of Polinsky's (2008a) study showed quite a robust simplification of the

Russian case system. First, the nominative was used as both subject and object. Moreover, the accusative, although not lost, was reanalyzed as the case for the indirect object instead of the dative. Polinsky also found that, unlike in standard Russian, the nominative was frequently used in prepositional phrases. Finally, she interpreted the correct forms of other cases as "chunks" that were retained by Russian HSs outside the overall case system.

Isurin and Ivanova-Sullivan (2008), on the other hand, did not observe the reanalysis of the accusative as the case used to mark indirect objects. However, these researchers did find the preferred use of one oblique case instead of another, such as the dative case instead of the accusative, the prepositional or dative instead of the genitive, and the instrumental instead of the prepositional. They did not observe any instances of the nominative case occurring after prepositions. Additionally, they did not interpret the correct forms of cases as chunks. Overall,

Isurin and Ivanova-Sullivan argued that, unlike in Polinsky's study, "the restructuring of cases" did not emerge in their data, and that their findings may be better explained as "a reanalysis of case functions such as direction, location, means, etc." (Isurin & Ivanova-Sullivan, 2008, p.84)

The differences in findings from the two studies discussed above result from the differing linguistic proficiencies of the participants. The two participants in Polinsky's study must have been less proficient speakers than those in Isurin and Ivanova-Sullivan's study (n=7), since both participants in Polinsky’s study stopped actively using Russian around the age of five, whereas the participants in the other study were enrolled in a Russian language program at a U.S. university at the time of the study. In my opinion, these seemingly different observations of HSs might represent various stages of linguistic systems that can be part of the same continuum. The participants of

Polinsky's study would represent the lower level, and the participants in the Ivanova-Sullivan study would bear more similarities to the baseline language, understood as the language that HSs have access to mainly through interactions with family members (see Polinsky & Kagan, 2007, for a more elaborate description of this term). As for case replacement owing to category, none of these studies provide clear evidence for inherent cases being better preserved than structural ones.

Both aforementioned studies focused on the language of adult HSs, which, although more comparable with the participants in this dissertation, do not show how cases are acquired by HSs or whether the process is like that found in monolingual children. The following two studies exemplify how cases are acquired and retained by young Russian HSs.

Schwartz & Minkov (2014) conducted a study with Russian bilinguals in Israel that examined case acquisition. They recorded the speech of six early sequential bilinguals and three simultaneous bilinguals over a seven-month period. At the start of the study, all the children were approximately three years old, and all were Israeli-born. Data from these bilingual children were compared to data from monolingual children as well as to qualitative reports on error types made by monolingual children over the course of case acquisition. From a qualitative point of view, both bilingual groups showed the same types of errors found in monolingual acquisition. For example, the researchers found that substitution of the nominative case and errors in oblique cases, declension and animacy among the bilingual children were similar to those described for Russian- speaking monolingual children. However, the errors made by the bilinguals were significantly more frequent and stable than those made by the monolinguals. Also, the error rates in the monolinguals were much less variable than those of the bilinguals. For example, for genitive singular, the difference between the highest and lowest results was approximately 69% for

bilinguals, and 0.7% for monolinguals. Also, the results showed quantitative differences in case acquisition between sequential and simultaneous bilinguals, with the latter being much less proficient. Unlike the sequential bilinguals – who displayed the highest error rate with plural endings, which are also the most persistent case error for monolingual children – the simultaneous bilinguals exhibited a very high rate of nominative case use instead of other oblique cases. Of all error types, the most frequent pertained to plural forms of the genitive and prepositional as well as singular forms of the prepositional and dative.

Schwartz and Minkov (2014) explained their data, especially the results from the simultaneous bilinguals, in terms of cross-linguistic influence from caseless Hebrew. According to them, the impact of Hebrew seemed particularly evident in the high level of nominative substitution they observed among the simultaneous bilinguals. Schwartz and Minkov described the case system of bilinguals as delayed when compared to the grammars of monolingual children, and for simultaneous bilinguals, the delay was even more significant (two years behind their monolingual counterparts). However, the fact that simultaneous adult bilinguals exhibit higher error rates as well (Monrtul, 2008) might suggest that the case system may never be acquired by this group of HSs.

The results of the above study might provide some answers as to the source of the vast range in proficiency among HSs, especially concerning the differences between sequential and simultaneous HSs. However, its results do not indicate any case substitution except for the nominative, a process which is explained by the authors as influence from the dominant language.

The following study, also of Russian bilinguals, reports evidence from speakers whose case system

was quite stable because it was acquired in Russia but later underwent reanalysis upon contact with English.

The study in question was conducted by Schmitt (2004). It was a longitudinal study with five boys who were brought to the United States between the ages of 3;8 and 4;2 The data for this study were collected at two different times: in 1997 and 1999. At the time of the first collection, all the subjects had lived in the United States for a period between four and five years. Schmitt observed simplification and reduction in case use. However, the boys did use the majority of cases in a target-like way – 91.42% (during the first recording) and 86.97% (in the second recording), which indicated a quite stable and full-fledged six-case system of Russian. They displayed errors, which Schmitt attributed to convergence with English. Unlike the authors in the aforementioned studies, however, Schmitt argued that neither the number of cases was reduced nor was the case system simplified, but that replacement strategies used by these speakers demonstrated the two languages interacting within one clause and contributing to what is on the surface monolingual.

According to Schmitt, it is possible that morphological case markers do not erode; instead, the context where these markers are required become less clear to the speakers. She argues that

Russian largely continues to build the grammatical frame and supply all case markers, but English also participates in the creation of the grammatical structure by projecting some slots for case marking. Because English does not use overt-case marking, the Russian nominative case is used as a neutral form for the slots projected by English. It seems that Schmitt’s way of explaining her data might be especially helpful in understanding these cases, marking of which may be similar in both languages, in particular pertaining to prepositions.

3.3.3 Case in the Polish heritage language in Sweden

Although Polish in the United States has received little attention in literature, studies on

Polish HSs have been conducted in other countries. For example, a study of Polish HSs was carried out in Sweden (Laskowski, 2009, 2014). To the best of my knowledge, this is the most extensive study of Polish HSs to date. Between 1989 and 1992, Laskowski (2009, 2014) investigated 133

Polish-speaking children aged 5-15, who had lived in Sweden for at least five years. The findings of that study shed light on the simplification of Polish cases by diaspora children. Laskowski observed two phenomena: 1) reduction of the inventory of cases owing to the substitution of strong cases (nominative, accusative and genitive) for weak ones (dative, locative and instrumental), and

2) expansion of prepositional constructions at the cost of cases that do not use a preposition.

Laskowski (2009, 2014) offers another case typology that is rooted in Jacobson’s case markedness theory, and which more or less corresponds to case division by Kuryłowicz (1949).

He divides cases into strong cases (i.e., the nominative, accusative and genitive) as well as weak cases (i.e., the instrumental, locative and dative). Additionally, Laskowski’s typology corresponds to the case acquisition order attested in monolingual Polish-speaking children, who acquire the nominative and accusative (as well as the vocative) before they start using other cases (Łuczyński,

2004; Smoczyńska, 1985).

Based on error types and frequency of use, Laskowski asserts that weak cases are more difficult to master for HSs than strong cases. For example, in his study the dative was the least frequently used case by HSs, followed by the locative and instrumental. On the other hand, the accusative and genitive cases were better retained in heritage Polish in Sweden. This does not mean, however, that the acquisition of strong cases is error-free in Laskowski’s data. In fact, he 97

observed the erroneous use of the accusative, which led him to propose the following case acquisition order for the HSs in Sweden:

N>G>A>I>L>D

The biggest difference between the above order and the one proposed for monolingual children is the genitive-accusative switch. This hierarchy of case was central to Laskowski’s analysis as he attempted to grasp the rules of Polish heritage grammar, which have sometimes been described as haphazard (Lyra, 1962). It should be noted, however, that his typology is based on the functional paradigm rather than the formal case paradigm pertaining to case markers. In other words,

Laskowski’s analysis focuses on what case functions are maintained in heritage Polish, which are lost and which are reassigned to other cases. It does not explain the role of case markings in case acquisition and maintenance. Note that case markings (their frequency and phonological diversity) play a decisive role in case acquisition by monolingual children, as discussed in Dąbrowska and

Szczerbiński’s (2006) experimental study. Therefore, their role should be evaluated in case acquisition by HSs. Nevertheless, Laskowski’s extensive study of case allows for distinguishing patterns in case acquisition also with regard to case marking. Below, I discuss some of his observations regarding particular cases.

According to Laskowski (2014), the nominative case has "unique status" in heritage Polish.

First of all, in the speech of the least proficient HSs, the nominative form shows a tendency to function as the only form of a given word. Additionally, the nominative is never replaced by oblique cases, but it often replaces other cases in a sentence.

Regarding the accusative, Laskowski (2014) reports problems with this case that are related to the masculine-personal versus non-masculine-personal distinction in nouns. The lack of this distinction in the grammars of HSs results in the overgeneralization of either the nominative or the genitive forms for all masculine nouns. Overall, use of the accusative case was observed in all participants, although nominative substitution was present in less proficient speakers.

The use of the genitive according to Laskowski (2014) shows a tendency to reinforce its function in prepositional phrases with a simultaneous tendency to reduce its non-post-prepositional occurrences to the possessive function. In other words, use of the genitive in its syntactic function after negated verbs is lessened, as well as other functions such as the partitive and quantitative.

Additionally, use of post-prepositional phrases with the genitive is increased at the expense of other cases, namely the dative and locative.

Finally, weak cases (i.e., the dative, locative and instrumental), according to Laskowski

(2014), are acquired incompletely. For instance, most of the HSs in his study did not acquire the dative at all or used it only to mark pronouns. The locative is considered by Laskowski “the facultative case” and is inconsistently used by HSs, who often replace it with either the genitive or the accusative in locative adverbial functions (where the former cases are used with locative prepositions). The most interesting and best mastered weak case is the instrumental, called by

Laskowski a “resistant case.” The only problematic use of the instrumental is in its predicate function (as the complement of the verb ‘to be’ and similar verbs). Also, when used to express the instrument or means by which something is done, the instrumental is notoriously used with the added preposition z ‘with,’ which does not occur in standard Polish.

The immense work done by Laskowski to evaluate the case system in heritage Polish has exemplified many vulnerable aspects of this system and shown tendencies toward case reassignment and/or erroneous use among heritage speakers. However, his focus on a case hierarchy that gives precedence to case functions rather than case markings has in all probability prevented him from seeing how the whole system works. For one, as his data indicate, some heritage speakers may in fact know weak cases, such as the instrumental, better than the so-called strong cases, such as the accusative. Additionally, research of monolingual Polish-speaking children has shown problems with acquisition of cases that are related to case markings

(Dąbrowska & Szczerbiński, 2006), which should also be considered.

3.3.4 Case in the Polish heritage language in Germany

Another study of heritage Polish that also attested case function reassignment was conducted in Germany by Brehmer & Czachór (2011). This study focused on only one case: the genitive. Brehmer & Czachór compared knowledge of the genitive in Polish HSs to knowledge of this case in first-generation immigrants. Particularly, they investigated the use of two types of the genitive of negation; one that is used instead of the nominative case after negated existentials and one that is used instead of the accusative in negated sentences. The findings revealed a higher preference for the genitive of negation after so-called existentials (which syntactically are in the subject position) than for the genitive of negation after transitive verbs (which replace the accusative as the object). The role of linguistic influences from German on the Polish HL was ruled out, and the authors concluded that grammar in heritage Polish is not consistently restructured. 100

3.3.5 Summary

Clearly, the above-mentioned researchers have offered different explanations for divergent knowledge of Polish cases in HSs. Kozminska (2015) suggests cross-linguistic influences, whereas

Brehmer and Czachór (2011) maintain that the divergent aspects of a HL are more likely examples of diachronic changes already in process in the language, which become accelerated in a language contact situation. Laskowski (2014) offers yet another explanation for the divergent morphological system of Polish HSs in Sweden. In his opinion, there are two independent factors at play: internal

(the relations of functional markedness within category of case: strong cases are substituted for weak cases) and external (i.e., cross-linguistic influence from Swedish).

Research on the Russian language has also suggested different explanations, such as convergence (Schmitt, 2004), cross-linguistic influence (Schwartz & Minkov, 2014), and incomplete acquisition / case restructuring due to limited input (Polinsky, 2008a).

3.4 Pilot study

In this section, I will discuss a pilot study (Wolski-Moskoff, 2015) on nominal morphology. As discussed earlier, Polish, despite being one of the twelve biggest minority languages in the United States, remains virtually unstudied. Other than the two above-mentioned articles, there are only two major publications about the language of Polish immigrants: one by

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Doroszewski18 (1938) and an unpublished dissertation by Lyra (1962). Owing to the different methodology applied in these early studies, as well as conflicting findings from more recent publications (Kozminska, 2015; Preston & Turner, 1984), I decided to conduct a pilot study to gain a better understanding of how cases function in the Polish HL, which would also help me in designing the present dissertation. The following section provides a detailed description of the pilot study, the findings of which (i.e., patterns in the Polish HL) allowed me to choose the preliminary topic of my dissertation.

3.4.1 Study goals:

In order to gain a better understanding of nominal morphology in the Polish HL, I set a general goal that was formulated as follows:

• to analyze the way cases are used in the Polish HL and compare data from HSs with those

of L2 learners and native speakers

The rationale behind this general goal was to gain a better understating of nominal morphology in the Polish HL as a whole system. This, in turn, would allow for discerning patterns to be analyzed more closely in my dissertation. In addition to Polish HSs, I included two other groups in this study in order to distinguish features that are specific to the HL. The first group, a monolingual control group, provided information on the spoken language in Poland. Recall that Kozminska's (2015) study compared the data to the prescriptive rules of the language and identified elements of

18 The book was published in Polish; the title of the original is Język polski w Stanach Zjednoczonych A.P.

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language that were problematic as well as erroneous in native speakers’ performance. By investigating through the use of my second group the language of L2 learners who knew the same two languages, I was able to discern linguistic novelties that appeared only in the Polish HL.

In addition to the general goal of this study, a second goal was to place this study within the available literature. Since the most recent publication (Kozminska, 2015) ascribed the divergent grammar of Polish HSs mainly to cross-linguistic influence, I set the second goal as follows:

• to analyze the role of transfer in the divergent grammar of HSs

I suspected that not all novelties in HL can be explained in terms of transfer. I was aware of the findings from research on the Polish HL in Germany and Sweden, but Kozminska's study did not reveal the same patterns in the Polish HL in the United States. Hence, the purpose of my pilot study was also to find out if the patterns in case use observed in those two countries were present in the Polish HL in the United States.

3.4.2 Methodology

Participants

There were three different groups of Polish speakers in the study: HSs (n=9), L2 learners

(n=4) and a control group of native speakers (n=6). The HSs’ mean age at the time of the experiment was 21 years, and they were all born either in the United States (n=8) or in Canada

(n=1). Three of the L2 learners were native speakers of English and one was a native speaker of

Russian but fluent in English. Their mean age at the time of experiment was 24.5 years; they had

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all learned Polish as a foreign language either in college or taken language courses as adults or adolescents (after the so-called critical period19). The mean age of the controls at the time of experiment was 29 years; they all resided in Poland and knew English to some degree.

Both the HSs and L2 learners were recruited from a pool of students at a U.S. university.

They were prescreened orally (a short OPI-like interview was conducted20) and only students of at least Intermediate Low level of proficiency were accepted. The rationale behind this was to include only those speakers who would be able to produce longer (possibly paragraph-long) discourse.

The language proficiency of individual HSs and L2 learners started from Intermediate Low and extended to Advanced High.21

Materials and procedure

A background questionnaire aimed at gathering socio-linguistic information on the participants was administered prior to the experiment. The participants were asked about their language-use history (including place of birth, Polish language courses, amount of exposure to

Polish and English in the past, visits to Poland, and language spoken at home) and their current language use (current amount of daily exposure to Polish, attitude to Polish language and/or culture, degree of literacy in Polish, and metalinguistic awareness). Both the HS and L2 learner

19 The term used in developmental psychology (as well as in language acquisition literature) for the maturational stage in the lifespan of an organism during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental stimuli.

20 I am not a certified OPI examiner but I followed the guidelines of ACTFL.

21 According to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines.

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groups completed the same questionnaire. The native controls were asked about their language background (i.e., whether they knew other languages, had resided outside Poland for an extended period of time, etc.).

A children's picture book, Frog, Where Are You? by Mercer Mayer, was used in the study.

This book has been used in psycholinguistic as well as in developmental research (Berman &

Slobin, 1994). Moreover, it has been successfully applied to heritage language studies (Isurin &

Ivanova-Sullivan, 2008; Polinsky, 2008a). After completing a questionnaire, the participants were interviewed individually by me.

I employed a controlled narration task to elicit semi-spontaneous speech samples. In order to detect problematic areas in morphosyntax, I followed the methodology by Isurin and Ivanova-

Sullivan (2008), who did not allow their subjects to look through the entire book prior to telling the story. They believed that unrehearsed narration methodology allows for discovering linguistic problems that would not have been observed had the subjects been given an opportunity to think about the content in advance. Moreover, they argued that advance planning could also cause the use of avoidance strategies.

3.4.3 Findings

The narrations given by the individual groups differed in terms of length, number of clauses and number of cases used. On average, the native speakers' stories were the shortest, with the smallest number of clauses, but at the same time were the most elaborate: they contained more modifiers as well as more non-nominative cases, which made their speech more descriptive. The

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L2 learners' stories, on the other hand, were the longest, on average, and included the smallest number of cases. The speech flow of the L2 learners was interrupted by numerous pauses (filled and unfilled), which were present to a lesser degree in the narrations of all the groups. Generally speaking, the speech of the HSs could be described as more fluent than that of the L2 learners, based on speed and pauses. As far as accuracy was concerned, the L2 group as a whole displayed a better knowledge of Polish cases, thus making fewer mistakes in case markings. Table 3.4 summarizes the main differences between the groups in the study.

Clauses Pauses Length (in Cases – Correct (average) (average) minutes) total cases (%)

HS 78.2 39.2 6.1 56.3 76

L2 71.5 71 9.4 46 88

NS 65.2 7 3.9 85.6 100

Table 3.4 Speech characteristics for each group in the study

A few distinctive patterns were observed in how cases were used by the HSs. These patterns corresponded with the language proficiency of the participants. HSs whose proficiency had been assessed as Advanced (n=5) used almost all Polish cases with high accuracy. Two participants whose language was assessed as Intermediate High made more errors than the above group but also used most cases in their speech. However, the two remaining participants who were assessed

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as Intermediate Low used the nominative case in the majority of functions, even after prepositions.

Table 3.5 summarizes the use of cases by particular HSs.

Total number of Correct Incorrect Nom as cases used dependent case

HS1 64 57 7 1

HS2 61 54 7 0

HS3 45 12 33 29

HS3 78 75 3 0

HS5 38 26 12 3

HS6 55 41 14 1

HS7 69 63 6 0

HS8 55 17 38 28

HS9 42 38 6 0

Table 3.5 Use of cases for each HS

Five out of nine heritage speakers in this study (HS1, HS2, HS3, HS7 & HS9) used most cases with very high accuracy. Almost all dependent cases (i.e., the accusative, genitive, instrumental and locative) were registered in their speech. Moreover, even a few instances of cases that were reportedly problematic or lost in this population, such as the dative and vocative (Preston

& Turner, 1984; Wolski-Moskoff, 2018), were observed. The study’s findings, albeit a small

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sample size, allowed for the conclusion that not only the morphological forms (endings and stem alternations) of cases are retained, but also all major functions of cases are known by HSs.

However, there were a few problematic morphological forms observed. The first one, which proved difficult for both HSs and L2 learners, was the genitive plural. The overextension of the ending –ów was observed: for example, dużo osów ‘a lot of wasps’ (st. Polish dużo os). In standard Polish, the genitive plural can be marked as ‘zero’ ending; that is, the last vowel is removed, or in words that end in soft or semisoft consonants, the endings –i or –y are added. It should be noted that monolingual Polish speakers, both children and adults, also exhibit problems with genitive plural markings (Handke, 1994; Smoczyńska, 1985), which, like the genitive singular, may be determined by lexical or semantic factors in addition to the main phonological factor. Additionally, HSs displayed difficulty in the declension of the noun zwierzę ‘animal’, which has an extended stem in oblique cases. It should be noted that nouns of this type are taught at school because their declension is hard for native speakers, too.

Although the use of cases by Advanced and Intermediate High speakers was generally correct, their speech included a few innovations that were not observed in the speech of the native speakers, and which were for the most part different from the speech of the L2 learners. The first major divergence in the systems of advanced HSs pertained to prepositional phrases (i.e., cases used with prepositions). The second most common error type was the use of the genitive.

As to the two heritage speakers of the lowest proficiency (HS3 & HS8), they used only one case correctly – the locative in its spatial function: for example, na dworze (outside), na głowie

(on the head). However, I believe that these instances should be treated as "chunks," which are

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remembered as adverbials, rather than as proof of knowledge of this case. Polinsky (2008a) observed similar behavior in Russian HSs.

Another similarity between my findings and Polinsky’s (2008a) was the use of the nominative by Intermediate Low HSs. In addition to using the nominative as both subject and object, these lower proficiency speakers also used this case in prepositional phrases. Moreover, a few instances were observed in which these speakers self-corrected the correct forms into the nominative (24).

24. Patrzają na t-ą (…) t-en żaba. They are looking at this-ACC.SG.F (…) this-NOM.SG.M frog.

The socio-linguistic data that I gathered revealed interesting tendencies (Table 3.6). Those

HSs who reported that they had spoken both languages from birth were the ones who used the nominative case in most functions, whereas all sequential bilinguals retained cases in their linguistic systems.

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participant correct current visits to simultaneous or formal

cases (%) language use Poland sequential education

HS1 89 daily – 20- no data sequential (4 or 5 y.) Saturday 30% school (8 y.)

HS2 88 weekly yearly sequential (2,5 or 3 y.) Saturday school (1y.)

HS3 27 monthly every 5 simultaneous Saturday years school (5 y.)

HS4 96 daily – less every few sequential (preschool) Saturday than 10% years school (8 y.)

HS5 68 daily – less every 4 simultaneous Saturday than 10% years school (8 y.)

HS6 75 daily – 20- 1 or 2 times sequential (elem. sch.) no 30% a year

HS7 91 weekly every other sequential no year

HS8 30 daily – less every 2-3 simultaneous 3 week than 10% years course in Poland

HS9 90 daily – less every other sequential (3 y.) Saturday than 10% year school (8 y.)

Table 3.6 Socio-linguistic data from the background questionnaire

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The use of cases by HSs - interpretation

The linguistic systems of HS3 & HS8 – characterized by a lack of any non-nominative cases, the use of a few prepositional cases as chunks, and a lack of any grammatical gender distinction – indicate that they did not, in fact, acquire the rules that govern Polish nominal morphology at all. Their HL bears more resemblance to an analytic language, i.e., English, where

Polish words serve only as lexical items and are not inflected. The relations between the words seem to be realized as in the dominant language (i.e., without cases and following the rules of

English word order).

A few innovative uses of case in the HSs pertained to the genitive as well as to post- prepositional cases. Since these innovations were not observed in the L2 learners, I believe that they are characteristic of heritage grammars, especially since they were observed in Polish HSs in

Sweden and Germany. In this section, I present these innovations and offer my interpretation of the phenomena.

The functions of the genitive, the most "versatile" of Polish cases, were reassigned in

Intermediate High and Advanced HSs. Least problematic were the post-prepositional and possessive functions, which were correct almost 100% of the time.

25. z dziur-y from hole-GEN.SG

26. żabka chłopczyk-a frog boy-GEN.SG 'boy's frog'

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Negated existentials – where the subject is assigned the genitive case in negated sentences – were generally used correctly as well (100%).

27. Nie ma żabk-i. Not have frog-GEN.SG 'There is no frog.'

However, in sentences where negated verbs required an object, the genitive was often replaced by the accusative, which is otherwise the most frequent case of the direct object in Polish.

28. Nie lubi zapach-Ø Not likes smell-ACC.SG ‘He doesn’t like the smell.’

Finally, whenever the HSs used verbs that require a direct object to be genitive, almost all of them used the accusative instead.

29. Szukaj-ą tą żabk-ę Search-PRS.3PL this-ACC.SG frog-ACC.SG ‘They are looking for this frog.’

It should be noted here that other studies on Polish HSs conducted in Germany and in

Sweden observed some of these tendencies as well. For example, Brehmer and Czachór (2011) reported that their participants had a higher error rate with the genitive of negation that replaces the accusative than with the genitive of negation that replaces the nominative. Laskowski (2014), on the other hand, noted the frequent tendency of the genitive of negation to be replaced by the accusative in Polish heritage speakers in Sweden. When interpreting his data, Laskowski noted that:

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the language acquisition mechanism is burdened here with the necessity to remember a rule

that constitutes an exception from the dominant principle of selecting morphological means

to express the function of the direct object. In such a situation, it is hardly surprising to

observe the tendency to simplify syntax by generalizing the syntactic schema for positive

clauses onto negative ones. (Laskowski, 2014, p. 194)

However, Laskowski (2014) explained most of the changes in HSs' grammar in terms of cross-linguistic influence from Swedish. Given the fact that (i) the tendency to use the accusative instead of the genitive of negation was also observed in German and (ii) L2 learners in this study did not exhibit this tendency, I believe that it is not the outcome of transfer. I argue that this divergent realization of the rules of the Polish language is the outcome of what Silva-Corvalan

(1994) referred to as the acceleration of independent intralinguistic processes, which might happen regardless of the nature of the second language.

In her seminal book on Spanish in Los Angeles, Silva-Corvalan (1994) named several different processes that are responsible for shaping divergent heritage grammars, such as direct or indirect transfer, forgetting or incomplete learning and finally the above-mentioned acceleration of intralinguistic processes. I interpret the reassignment of genitive functions in my study to be a result of such acceleration, which leads to the elimination of redundant functions. The reassignment in the genitive also signifies that nominal morphology in the Polish heritage language is a system with its own rules and capable of change, as has been suggested for other heritage languages (Yager, et. al., 2015).

In addition to the reassignment of functions of the genitive, the use of prepositions and cases exhibits some innovations absent in monolingual grammars, which suggest that prepositions 113

play a divergent role in heritage grammars. For one, prepositions that may be followed by two different cases appear to be problematic for this population; i.e., often only one case is used after a certain preposition. To illustrate:

30. wpad-ł w wodz-ie fall-PST.3SG in water-LOC.SG 'he fell into water'

instead of

31. wpad-ł w wod-ę fall-PST.3SG in water-ACC.SG 'he fell into water'

In standard Polish, the former case (as in example 30) would be used after different types of verbs

(often referred to as static), for example:

32. jest w wodz-ie is in water-LOC.SG 's/he is in the water'

Laskowski (2014), who also observed a tendency to use only one case with prepositions that require two different cases depending on the type of verb, interpreted his data in terms of case taxonomy (i.e., strong cases replacing weak cases). He found numerous examples of the accusative case being used instead of the locative after such a preposition as na ‘on.’ My data do not confirm this tendency; instead, there were more instances of the locative used instead of the accusative than the other way around. Also, it seems quite natural that if only one case form would be remembered for a preposition, the locative form should take precedence, since the accusative form may appear without any preposition (as a direct object) and is consequently more ambiguous.

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In addition to the above-mentioned problems with verbs and prepositions, I observed the overuse of prepositions in the Polish HL. Verbs and participles not followed by prepositions in standard Polish were used with prepositions by the HSs. It is interesting that the nouns in these novel post-prepositional functions were inflected correctly and were in agreement with both the preposition and the verb (33-35).

33. zainteresowani z tą żab-ą interested with this-ACC.SG frog-INS.SG 'interested in this frog' (SP) zainteresowani tą żabą

34. woł-a po tą żabk-ę call-PRS.3SG for this-ACC.SG frog-ACC.SG 'calls this frog' (SP) woła tą22 żabkę

35. zaskoczony z osa-mi surprised with wasp-INS.PL 'surprised by wasps' (SP) zaskoczony osami

Unlike in standard Polish (see examples above), these verbs and participles were accompanied by prepositions, as in the dominant English, but the prepositions were not always the direct translation of English equivalents (33-35). Instead, they seemed to be chosen based on the fact that they were governed by the same case as the verb or participle that precedes them. In other

22 The prescriptive grammar would require tę, but there is a difference between spoken and written Polish in the use of this pronoun

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words, the HSs used the same case as in standard Polish but added a redundant preposition (from the standard language point of view).

The overuse of prepositional cases may be caused by the fact that they exist in both languages, although in different forms. Several cases in the Polish language follow prepositions, and prepositions function in English similarly to cases in inflectional languages. The prepositions do not replace cases in the Polish HL, however, because the words are still inflected as they are in standard Polish. Therefore, we cannot interpret it as an overt transfer of a structural property from a dominant language, but rather as an element that allows for the opposite systems to meet

"halfway" because of increased similarities between the two languages. I interpret the role of the preposition, which, on the other hand, seems to be a facilitating feature in case retrieval, as an example of convergence understood as the "enhancement of inherent structural similarities found between two linguistic system" (Bullock, 2004, p. 91).

Another interesting observation regarding post-prepositional case was a problem with the possessive genitive after a preposition. The possessive genitive did not seem to be problematic when used on its own; many examples of phrases with this case were registered23:

36. dzieci żabk-i children frog-GEN.SG 'the frog's children'

37. jego szklank-ę his glass-ACC.SG 'his glass'

23 It should be noted that although case was marked correctly, word order often reflected English word order: e.g. żabki dzieci

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38. domek sow-y house owl-GEN.SG 'the owl's house'

Yet, in phrases such as

39. na nim głow-ie on him-LOC.SG head-LOC.SG 'on his head'

40. w środk-u tak-im pojemnik-u in middle-LOC.SG such-LOC.SG container-LOC.SG 'in the middle of such a container'

all words were in agreement with the preposition that requires the locative case, and the possessive genitive was not used, even though it would be used in English. In standard Polish the two different rules of the possessive genitive and preposition do not exclude each other, and such phrases allow for both cases to be used:

41. na jego głow-ie on his-GEN.SG head-LOC.SG 'on his head'

Based on the data collected, it is hard to determine whether the overuse of prepositions is signs of language attrition or language maintenance. It is quite possible that these innovations

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might be related to language processing. It would appear from these examples that prepositions might, in fact, facilitate the process of case-ending retrieval, and as such, they would be important for language maintenance.

On the other hand, the question emerges of whether these prepositional phrases should be treated as accurate uses of cases or as lexical chunks. In order to answer this question, I need more data on cases that might appear with or without prepositions, such as the accusative, genitive and instrumental.

As discussed earlier, Laskowski (2014) also observed the overuse of post-prepositional cases for Polish HSs in Sweden. He interpreted the phenomenon as an increase in the analicyty of heritage language upon contact with a language that is more analytic in nature. Although I agree that heritage Polish exhibits characteristics of an analytic language, I believe that the divergent grammars of HSs are the outcome of cognitive processes rather than language typology. In other words, I expect that Polish HSs in countries where the dominant language also has cases, such as

Ukraine, display similar case reassignment or overuse of prepositions.

3.5 Conclusion

The above chapter offered an overview of Polish cases as used by monolingual speakers, monolingual children as well as HSs. The first section provided descriptions of all Polish cases and their most common functions and endings. The second section described the process of case acquisition in Polish monolingual children. It focused on the processes and mechanisms involved in this acquisition, and named the most problematic areas in monolingual children’s case

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acquisition, which may serve as a means of comparison with the errors of HSs. Next, several HL studies from Slavic languages were evaluated. The emphasis of this review was to find some common patterns as well as to present other authors’ explanations for divergent grammars in HSs.

Finally, a pilot study with Polish HSs was summarized, its findings described and some sources of divergences offered.

The complexity of the Polish case system is related to at least two factors: numerous endings and many different functions of cases. One can also name case syncretism and irregular inflections (evaluation of which lies beyond the scope of this dissertation) as factors. It is not surprising, then, that some monolingual adult speakers exhibit difficulties with certain endings or inflections. On the other hand, research on monolingual case acquisition suggests a very low error rate and a general lack of case substitution. The errors that were observed in Polish monolingual children pertained to the use of endings for a different gender or reduction of allomorphy (i.e., the tendency to use fewer endings in the locative case). The results of studies with bilinguals showed that the case system undergoes reanalysis. The depth of the changes, however, is related to a speaker’s overall proficiency. The least advanced speakers displayed almost a complete lack of case use, whereas advanced speakers used most cases, although they might reassign some of the case functions and supply English grammar for some slots in a clause. As to the sources of these changes, different studies have suggested different explanations, such as cross-linguistic influences from English, diachronic change accelerated by bilingualism, case taxonomy and “some universal principles governing language development with limited input” (Polinsky, 2008, p. 161).

Except for Laskowski’s study, the respective data from the above studies did not find explicit evidence for any case taxonomy. To the contrary, the case substitution tendencies reported did not agree with any of the discussed frameworks. Nevertheless, it seems probable that inner case 119

qualities should be taken into account when evaluating the HL system. It seems quite likely that for a system as complex as that of Polish cases, where one case possesses numerous functions and markings motivated by different factors (i.e., phonological, semantic or lexical), one may expect that all of the aforementioned sources may be responsible for divergences found in HSs’ case systems. Such an interpretation was suggested for Spanish in Los Angeles by Silva-Corvalan

(1994).

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Chapter 4. Theoretical framework and research questions

4.1 Introduction

The present chapter provides the theoretical framework on which this dissertation is based.

First, the model that serves as this framework is presented in comparison to the previous traditional approaches discussed in detail in Chapter 2. Consequently, the main assumptions of the model are discussed. Additionally, a possible expansion of the model is suggested by adding parental input as an additional factor. Finally, the research hypothesis and questions are put forward and briefly discussed.

4.2 Bilingual acquisition and maintenance

Lately, a new model of heritage language development has been proposed by Putnam and

Sánchez (2013). Unlike the incomplete acquisition and/or attrition frameworks, it does not concentrate on comparison to a standard language, where monolingual speakers’ production serves as the baseline. As discussed in Chapter 2, incomplete acquisition and/or attrition models look at

HL as a language that either did not reach its full development or regressed to a less proficient state. Although helpful in characterizing HLs, these traditional approaches do not allow for fully describing the underlying processes leading to the divergences between HL and the language of

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monolinguals. But even more importantly, they do not account for the specifics of heritage language acquisition and maintenance, which involves the use of two languages.

The model put forward by Putnam and Sánchez (2013) emphasizes the bilingual environment in the development of HL. Additionally, it breaks out of the traditional view of HL as a language that did not reach its ultimate attainment. Moreover, it considers HL as an independent, systematic language which, due to the singularity of its acquisition and development, differs from the monolingual variant of the language. Finally, by focusing on the activation of both languages, the model accounts for HL fluidity, i.e., the possibility of various stages of activation of HL leading to different performance at different points in the lifetime of HS.

One of the main assumptions of Putnam and Sánchez’s model is “the relevance of language processing for comprehension and production” (2013, p.4). Based on Ullman’s (2001, 2005) argument that different memory systems are involved in comprehension and production of language, the authors claim that the frequency of exposure to input is not sufficient for a stable grammar to be acquired. Instead, they argue that it is the frequency of processing for comprehension and production purposes that influences language acquisition and loss. Thus, their model is based on intake, understood as “the operation the mind/brain participates in interpreting, extracting and storing these features, which serve as the fundamental building blocks of grammar”

(Putnam & Sánchez, 2013, p.17).

Putnam and Sánchez’s model (2013) provides a foundation on which to analyze heritage language grammars in terms of systematic structuring and restructuring because of different levels of activation of features in the grammatical system. As an activation-based model, it recognizes the underlying structural associations between features. Furthermore, the model acknowledges 122

“the interconnectedness of the way information is absorbed, processed, and stored. Additionally, by emphasizing the process rather than the result, it opens up the possibility for the production patterns that deviate from the baseline to be explored, not as deficiencies, but as potential innovations” (Yager, 2016).

As already discussed, the model focuses on the frequency of activation of respective languages in bilinguals. The notion of language activation has been investigated by many psycholinguistic studies (Bartolotti & Marian 2013; Green 1998; Paradis, 1993, 2004).

Conceivably, the psycholinguistic model with the most in common with the one proposed by

Putnam and Sánchez is the Activation Threshold Hypothesis (ATH) developed by Paradis (1993,

2004), which he also adapted for attrition studies. According to the ATH, an item is in an active state once it receives a sufficient number of neural impulses; this level of stimulus is called the threshold. Subsequent activation of the item lowers the threshold, resulting in speedy access. Since these items in bilinguals compete with items in another language, competitors have to be inhibited

(Green, 1998). Hence, while intensive exposure to a language leads to a lower activation threshold, lack of use leads to an inevitable rise in the activation threshold. By combining the ATH with a distinction between declarative24 and procedural25 memory systems, Paradis made the following predictions for L1 attrition, among others: (i) the most frequently used elements of L2 will replace their L1 counterparts; (ii) production is more vulnerable to attrition than is comprehension, as the neurological mechanisms involved require a higher level of activation; and (iii) elements

24 Declarative memory is memory of facts and events, and refers to those memories that can be consciously recalled.

25 Procedural memory is unconscious memory of skills and how to do things, which is typically acquired through repetition and practice and is composed of automatic sensorimotor behaviors that are so deeply embedded we are no longer aware of them.

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dependent on declarative memory, such as vocabulary, are more prone to attrition than those dependent on procedural memory, such as phonology, syntax and lexicon (Paradis, 2007).

Putnam and Sánchez (2013) expand this notion in their model by asserting that restructuring in the respective languages of bilinguals is not linear and that immersion of a bilingual in L1 may indeed cause the aforementioned thresholds to be lowered again. This way the fluidity of HL development is underlined in their model.

Additionally, the model proposed by Putnam and Sánchez (2013) blurs the traditionally used distinction between incomplete acquisition and L1 attrition, arguing that both are instances of the same process. According to Putnam and Sánchez, the process of acquisition is never interrupted, and input is sufficient in the development of HL. As predicted by the ATH, the activation for production is diminished, whereas the activation for comprehension may still be very high. In this way, the model can explain the big differences between HSs’ passive and productive knowledge that have been attested in many studies (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007, Benmamoun,

Montrul & Polinsky, 2013).

To the best of my knowledge, this model is the only approach to HL that accounts for the unique circumstances of HL acquisition, i.e., the status of minority language as well as bilingualism. However, it has some limitations. First, it has been developed mainly for sequential heritage bilinguals. Second, because of the focus on intake, the role of input is downplayed in this approach. Thus, two of the shortcomings of this approach are that it cannot be applied to all HSs and it does not account for the singular role of parental input. Nevertheless, the model serves as the theoretical framework for this dissertation because, unlike traditional approaches, it predicts changes such as linguistic innovations and cross-linguistic influences, to name two. However, to 124

address these problematic areas of research, the dissertation will draw on theories regarding input and acquisition of cases as well. The respective theories were discussed in more detail in Chapter

3 and will be summarized in the following section.

4.2.1 Theoretical framework

As discussed in Chapter 3, nominal morphology in heritage Polish is divergent from the monolingual standard. The restructuring of the case system is systematic and varies to a great degree for different language users. Additionally, Polish HL displays innovations that are not found in standard dialects of Polish, e.g., the overuse of prepositions.

The traditional approaches, discussed in Chapter 2, account neither for these innovations nor for variation in a speaker’s production and the vast range of possible outcomes in heritage grammars. The present chapter discusses the premises of the model by Putnam and Sánchez

(2013), which will serve as a theoretical framework. However, as mentioned above, I would like to expand this framework by including the role of parental input in shaping heritage grammars.

As already discussed, the model developed by Putnam and Sánchez (2013) focuses on the process of activation of both languages. The model is based on Ullman’s (2001, 2005) argument that different memory systems are involved in comprehension and production of language. Putnam and Sánchez claim that the frequency of mere exposure to input is not sufficient for a stable grammar to be acquired. Instead, they argue that it is the frequency of processing for comprehension and production purposes that influences language acquisition and loss.

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The model partly adopts Chomsky's (1993, 1995) generative framework by which language is understood as the integration of different linguistic components. According to this framework, grammatical knowledge fundamentally consists of a set of features: phonological (PF), semantic

(SF) and functional (FF). The model presented by Putnam and Sánchez (2013) posits that the level of lexicon activation and the strength of association between functional, semantic and phonological features fluctuates in HLs. When HSs become immersed in the dominant language, their use of

HL becomes less frequent. Their limited exposure to lexical items in the HL becomes much more restricted than their exposure to lexical items in the dominant language. This, in turn, results in lower activation of the associated functional features, which in consequence may cause a gradual replacement of these features with functional values from the dominant language. Reassembly of the features is also a possibility.

The different stages of activation can occur at different points in the lifetime of HSs.

Putnam and Sánchez (2013) emphasize the ongoing nature of this process. The assertion that there is no static result of acquisition allows for evaluating heritage grammars on their own terms rather than comparing them to a standard monolingual grammar. This way, it is possible to assess divergent grammar patterns in reference to the underlying associations and levels of activation.

Moreover, thanks to this approach, these patterns can be seen as examples of systematic innovations and restructuring.

Additionally, the model explains the big differences between HSs’ passive and productive knowledge, which have been attested in many studies (Benmamoun, et al., 2013; Polinsky &

Kagan, 2007). Based on the frequency of activation for comprehension and production, the model consists of four stages described as follows:

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“Stage 1: Transfer or re-assembly of some functional features (FF) from the L2 grammar to L1 phonological features (PF) and semantic features which may coincide with the activation of L2 lexical items on a more frequent basis from the standpoint of linguistic production;

Stage 2: Transfer or re-assembly of massive sets of FFs from the L2 to L1 PF and semantic features, while concurrently showing significantly higher rates of activation of

L2 lexical items than L1 lexical items for production purposes (i.e., they might code- switch more than bilinguals in the previous situation);

Stage 3: Exhibit difficulties in activating PF and semantic features (as well as other FFs) in the L1 for production purposes but are able to do so for comprehension of some high-frequency lexical items; and,

·Stage 4: Have difficulties activating PF features and semantic features (as well as other FFs) in the L1 for both production and comprehension purposes."

(Putnam & Sánchez, 2013, p. 23-24)

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Figure 4.1 Graphic representation of Putnam and Sánchez (2013) model (source Perez-Cortes

2016)

Putnam and Sánchez (2013) argue that a lack of certain elements in HL results from weak activation of some L1 functional features that are replaced by identical functional features from the L2. They argue that if heritage language grammars generate structures that are not similar to the L1, this signifies that the features (e.g., cases) were never sufficiently activated.

Additionally, Putnam and Sánchez (2013) believe that elements of both languages can coexist in HL, as exemplified by the convergence in tense features and aspect in the Quechua of

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Quechua-Spanish bilinguals as presented in the study conducted by Sánchez (2004). In Quechua, past tense features are linked to evidentiality in the matrix of features associated with the functional category of tense, while in Spanish, past tense features are linked to aspectual features. The study presents evidence that syntactic convergence among bilingual speakers is favored when the matrix of features associated with a functional category is partially divergent, as is the case for tense in

Spanish and Quechua. The Spanish results indicate that among bilinguals past tense is associated with evidentiality features and contrasts sharply with the results of the monolingual comparison group. The results are interpreted as an example of the convergence of functional features between the two languages (Sánchez, 2004).

Although Putnam and Sánchez (2013) did not offer in their initial publication any examples of functional feature reassembly that are of non-cross-linguistic origin, the aforementioned model has been successfully applied in several HL studies (Perez-Cortes, 2016; Yager, Hellmold, Joo,

Putnam, Rossi, Stafford and Salmons, 2015; Yager, 2016) that present innovations of that type.

The study by Yager et al. 26(2015) is of particular interest because it shows innovative development in the HL case system that cannot be explained by traditional approaches to HL. The evidence from several geographically distant German heritage varieties – i.e., Texas German, three varieties spoken in eastern Wisconsin, and a variety of German spoken in Argentina – suggests that speakers have not lost the dative but rather developed an innovative structure to mark it. More specifically,

German HSs in these different regions produce dative forms in line with established patterns of

Differential Object Marking (DOM), suggesting the reallocation of case mapping. According to

Yager et al. (2015), the dative case considered lost in heritage German has in fact developed in a

26 More extensively presented in the dissertation on case system in Wisconsin German (Yager, 2016).

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different way than it did in a monolingual variety bearing similarities to patterns of DOM – a case unknown in monolingual German.

To summarize, thanks to the emphasis on processing for production and comprehension, the aforementioned model predicts a substantial range of proficiency in HSs as well as interference from the dominant language. Additionally, contrary to traditional frameworks that operate by means of comparison to monolingual standard variety, it allows for linguistic innovations, which cannot be explained either by cross-linguistic influences or by language loss theories.

However, as discussed above, the model seems to downplay the significance of input in the development of heritage grammars. As much as I agree with its premises that mere exposure to input is not sufficient for language acquisition, based on the evidence from studies on bilingual development (Pearson, 2007; de Houwer, 2003; Miękisz, et al. 2016, to name a few), I argue that limited or fluctuating input in immigrant families is also responsible for the shape of HL. First, as data from bilingual families indicate, ¼ of children in potentially bilingual environments do not become bilingual due to limited input (Pearson, 2007; de Houwer, 2003). One can also find proof in comparable studies of sequential and simultaneous bilinguals (Montrul, 2008; Thomas, et al.,

2014), which clearly show that there is a minimum level of input necessary for the naturalistic development of a linguistic system. Second, the study of bilingual Polish-English children indicates (Miękisz, et al., 2016) that it is not only the amount of input that matters but also the consistency of input. Finally, as discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, the quality of input has been shown to influence the shape of HL grammars as well (Brehmer & Kurbangulova, 2017; Paradis

& Navarro, 2003; Pires & Rothman, 2009).

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To summarize, the present dissertation draws on the model put forward by Putnam and

Sánchez (2013) but expands it by considering the role of parental input. The existing evidence suggests that some linguistic divergences present in HL grammars can be found in the language of their parents. This model has been chosen due to its ability to (1) predict the vast range of proficiency in HSs, (2) account for changes in HL that are of cross-linguistic nature, and (3) predict the reassembly of functional features, to name a few. Moreover, the model has been formulated for sequential bilinguals only, so it cannot be applied to all HSs. Therefore, the model will be expanded by considering the role of input in accounting for divergences found in the language of first-generation immigrants and in providing an explanation for changes in the language of simultaneous HSs.

4.3 Research questions and hypotheses

Simply put, the present dissertation’s main goal is to investigate which cases Polish heritage speakers retain better than others, and why. As discussed in Chapter 3, heritage language research has proposed two different theories – both based on case typology - which posit that some cases are better retained than others. The first theory, rooted in Chomsky’s case distinction, assumes that so-called inherent cases – i.e., the genitive, dative, instrumental and locative – are preserved better than structural cases, i.e., the nominative and accusative (Benmamoun et al.,

2013). The second theory, based solely on research on Polish heritage speakers in Sweden and proposed by Laskowski (2014), suggests that strong cases – i.e., the nominative, accusative and genitive – replace weak cases, i.e., the dative, instrumental and locative.

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Based on research on Russian HL (Isurin & Ivanova-Sullivan, 2008; Schmitt, 2004;

Schwartz, 2014) and the aforementioned pilot study, I hypothesize that most cases are preserved in heritage language and that errors found in these grammars indicate case function reduction or problems with case allomorphy, i.e., numerous endings. In other words, I argue that divergences found in the case system of HSs do not represent a reduced number of cases but rather a reduced number of endings that mark them, and divergent use of case functions. These changes can be explained by a lower frequency of activation, which leads to functional feature reassembly as predicted by the model of Putnam and Sánchez (2013). At the same time, I believe that there are heritage speakers who – due to a lack of optimal conditions for heritage language development, i.e. insufficient input – do not acquire cases at all, and their heritage language is structured on the rules of their dominant language, to which Polish lexical items are added. Finally, I think that change in case use, although very subtle, is initiated by the generation of parents of heritage speakers – first-generation immigrants.

4.3.1 Research questions

Based on the above assumptions, I formulated the following four research questions:

1. Do the grammars of Polish heritage speakers contain fewer cases than the grammars of

first-generation immigrants and/or native speakers? Are there any permanent case

replacements observed?

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I hypothesize that all cases27 will be preserved in advanced Polish HSs; low proficiency speakers, however, may display very limited case knowledge, most likely only of frequently used nouns. I anticipate that case replacement will be related to case function reassembly rather than the reduction of case number in the grammars of HSs. It is expected that lower level HSs will replace most oblique cases with the nominative due to their overall limited knowledge and use of cases.

2. What are the main patterns in case errors displayed by Polish HSs? Which case inflections

pose greater difficulties for heritage speakers? Is there a difference in the inflections of

frequently used nouns and less frequently used nouns? Are errors in case use part of the

internal grammar of heritage speakers?

I anticipate several types of errors, which may point to different mechanisms or processes responsible for them. First, the types of errors found in monolingual children are expected to occur, but more frequently (Schwartz, 2014). Second, I expect errors that may point to cross-linguistic influence, such as the overuse of prepositions and others (Schmitt, 2004). Third, a new type of error may be caused by functional feature reassembly (Putnam & Sánchez, 2013). Finally, the errors will be more abundant for less frequently used inflections and/or words (Dąbrowska &

Szczerbiński, 2006).

Owing to their overall lower sensitivity to grammatical patterns and the group’s non- homogeneity, I hypothesize that the performance of heritage speakers will be very diverse in terms

27 However, due to its special pragmatic function, the vocative case is not being investigated here.

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of correctness of sentences. However, the most persistent errors, such as the genitive of negation, may show some regularity.

3. Does the language of first-generation immigrants exhibit any of the changes in case use

observed in heritage speakers?

In order to analyze the grammars of HSs, it is necessary to investigate the baseline language they are exposed to, namely the language of first-generation immigrants. I hypothesize that certain divergences seen in HSs will be observed in this language as well, hence pointing to parental input as the source of some errors. These patterns may also indicate diachronic change caused by internal case structure.

4. To what extent do extra-linguistic factors – such as age of onset of bilingualism, schooling

in heritage language, current language use and/or visits to Poland – modulate heritage

speakers’ use of cases?

In addition to parental input, I anticipate that some of the above variables may play a role in HL maintenance. I hypothesize that of all of them, the first variable, namely the age of onset of bilingualism28 (Montrul, 2008; Thomas, et al., 2014), will play the most crucial role, which will point to amount of input as a source of divergent heritage grammars.

28 The later the onset, the better the knowledge and use of grammatical features.

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Chapter 5. Methodology

5.1 Introduction

This chapter presents the methodology employed in this dissertation. First, I describe each group of participants, the methods of their recruitment and the procedure used in the study.

The relevant demographic data for all the groups will be discussed. Additionally, the results of the first task, which involved a language proficiency assessment, are presented for the first group of participants. Moreover, the analysis of extra-linguistic factors versus the language proficiency of the first group of participants is presented. Consequently, the questionnaires and four tasks used in the study are described. Finally, the chapter provides information on the ways data were coded and analyzed.

5.2 Participants

Overall, there were three groups of participants in the study: Polish heritage speakers (HSs)

(n=25), first-generation immigrants (FGIs) (n=12), and native speakers from Poland (n=12). The first two groups were recruited in Chicago. The city was suitable for the purpose of this research for two reasons: first, it has the largest Polish population in the United States, hence the recruitment process was relatively easy; second, residence in a large community constitutes another sociolinguistic factor that may influence the development and/or maintenance of HL. The demographic data presented below were collected through questionnaires, which will be discussed in more detail in Section 5.3.1.

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5.2.1 Polish heritage speakers

Heritage speakers were recruited from several Chicago universities with large Polish populations (of which the University of Illinois at Chicago and Loyola University provided the majority of participants), and they were all students enrolled in undergraduate (n=24) or graduate

(n=1) programs at these universities. Overall, there were 25 HSs, 19 females and six males. The

HSs’ mean age at the time of experiment was 21.2 years; they were either born in the United States

(n=24) or arrived as children before the age of six (n=1). By excluding people who emigrated after the age of six, I wanted to eliminate people who were schooled in the Polish language in Poland to avoid a potentially confounding factor. Table 5.1 summarizes the basic demographic information obtained from HSs.

% Education % Language Use

F / M Average Age High College English Polish School (start)

Number of 19 / 6 21.2 0 100 72.8 27.2 participants

Table 5.1 HSs – basic demographics

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Regarding their current language use, the greater part of HSs reported speaking Polish on a daily basis (n=20). It should be noted that the majority of participants from both universities lived with their parents and commuted to their schools. As far as daily use of the two languages, the majority of the participants used English more often than Polish; three participants reported using Polish less than 10% of the time, nine reported using it 20-30%, two reported using it 40% and only five between 50-80%. Finally, one participant reported using it more than 80% of the time. Table 5.2 presents HSs’ current use of the Polish language.

Current language use Number of participants

Monthly 1

Weekly 4

Less than 10% 3

20-30% 9

Daily 40% 2

50-80% 5

More than 80% 1

Table 5.2 HSs’ current use of Polish

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Language preference differed for various interlocutors. For example, the majority of HSs

(n=23) reported using mostly Polish when communicating with both parents.29 But only 11 participants reported using Polish when speaking with siblings. The majority of HSs (n=19) reported that they speak Polish with their Polish-speaking friends. However, when asked to describe these conversations,30 most of HSs stated that they were infrequent and consisted of only a few Polish words. Although these conversations were not recorded during my research, based on the descriptions provided by most HSs in this study, I argue that there exists a social dialect among

Polish heritage speakers in Chicago that is used to demonstrate and maintain in-group relationships. The Polish social dialect of HSs can be characterized as code-switching (when only a few Polish words are used), which allows speakers to express who belongs to a group and who is an outsider. Overall, the consistent use of Polish was limited to home communication for the majority of HSs. However, eight participants reported speaking Polish with other members of

Polish organizations (especially dance clubs) and/or Polish coworkers on a regular basis.

The second question in the questionnaire referred to use of the two languages in the past; i.e., the participants were asked where and when they learned the languages they speak. The majority of the HSs (n=21) reported using only the Polish language before age five, when most of them started school. Thus, HSs in this study were largely sequential bilinguals,31 and only four used both languages from birth. It is worth mentioning that according to the National Heritage

29 It should be noted, however, that 3 of these participants reported that they speak Polish regional dialects with their parents; two the Podhale dialect and one the Oravian dialect.

30 Participants did this during OPI.

31 I use the terms after Montrul (2008)

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Language Survey conducted by the National Heritage Language Resource Center (NHLRC),

70.2% of respondents reported speaking their HL until the beginning of school (Kagan & Carreira,

2011). Thus, overall, the behavior of Polish HSs in this study is similar to that of other HS groups in the United States.

However, unlike the majority of respondents in the above-mentioned survey (58.6%) who did not attend a community or religious school in the United States, 92% of Polish HSs in this study attended Polish Saturday School. Moreover, 43% of those who attended Saturday School did so not only for the duration of elementary school but also for the duration of high school. Thus, almost half of HSs in this study continuously studied Polish for 10-12 years at these institutions.

Additionally, 11 of them took Polish courses in college; for three of them this was their only formal education in HL, whereas for others it was a continuation of the education received in Saturday

School. The following table summarizes the participants’ type and length of formal schooling in the Polish language.

Didn’t attend Saturday School Saturday School College

Saturday (age 5-14) (age 15-18)

School

Number of 3 11 11 11 participants

Table 5.3 Formal schooling in Polish

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As far as language proficiency, all participants reported that their speaking, listening, reading and writing in English were excellent. However, their self-assessments of the same skills in the Polish language showed more variation. On average, HSs assessed listening as the highest of all four skills (4.5); this was followed by reading (4.3) and speaking (4.1). The lowest of the skills, according to this self-assessment, was writing (3.5), which was assessed by almost half of

HSs as either limited or poor. These results differ slightly from the above-mentioned NHLRC survey, in which respondents self-assessed their reading skills as lower than their speaking. The following table shows the ratings of each skill in the Polish language.

Excellent (5) Good (4) Limited (3) Poor (2)

Speaking 7 14 4 0

Listening 18 7 0 0

Writing 3 10 9 3

Reading 10 11 4 0

Table 5.4 Self-assessment of Polish language skills by HSs

In addition to the above self-reports, all HSs were interviewed by me using the Oral Proficiency

Interview (OPI) protocol to assess their skills in Polish. The following table summarizes the OPI ratings for all participants, and the task details will be described in section 5.3.2.

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Intermediate Intermediate Intermediate Advanced Advanced Advanced

Low Mid High Low Mid High

1 8 3 5 5 3

Table 5.5 OPI results for HSs

As shown in Table 5.5, the Polish language level of heritage speakers was assessed as either

Intermediate (n=12) or Advanced (n=13), almost equally distributed. The major difference between these two levels lies in a speaker’s ability to talk about a different range of topics as well as the length of speech produced. Intermediate level speakers are able to talk mainly about familiar topics mostly related to their daily life. The length of their speech usually does not exceed the sentence level, although strings of sentences are also possible. Advanced speakers, on the other hand, can engage in conversations on various topics, including those of local, national or international scope. They produce speech of an oral paragraph length, and they are able to use narration and description in all major time frames. These two skill levels are divided into sublevels based on how well speakers can handle the tasks associated with the respective levels; Low sublevel indicates that speakers are able to handle only a limited number of linguistic tasks typical for their level, Mid sublevel means that speakers can handle a variety of tasks associated with their level, and High sublevel speakers can usually perform not only tasks associated with their level but also those that characterize the level above. The OPIs of all HSs in this study were compared to their self-assessments from the background questionnaire. The questionnaire included questions about four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. The following table presents the OPI ratings for each HS compared with their self-assessments of their speaking skills.

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HS # OPI Rating Self-assessment (Speaking)

HS 1 Intermediate High Good HS 2 Advanced Mid Excellent HS 3 Intermediate Mid Good HS 4 Intermediate Mid Good HS 5 Advanced Low Good HS 6 Intermediate High Limited HS 7 Advanced Low Good HS 8 Intermediate High Good HS 9 Advanced Low Excellent HS 10 Intermediate Mid Good HS 11 Intermediate Low Good HS 12 Advanced Low Good HS 13 Advanced Mid Excellent HS 14 Intermediate Mid Limited HS 15 Advanced High Good HS 16 Advanced Low Good HS 17 Advanced Mid Excellent HS 18 Advanced High Good HS 19 Intermediate Mid Good HS 20 Intermediate Mid Good HS 21 Advanced Mid Excellent HS 22 Advanced High Excellent HS 23 Advanced Mid Excellent HS 24 Intermediate Mid Limited HS 25 Intermediate Mid Limited Table 5.6 HSs’ individual OPI ratings versus self-assessments 142

As shown in Table 5.6, most self-assessments were in line with the OPI ratings. All

Advanced HSs described their speaking skills as either excellent or good, and all Intermediate HSs considered their speaking abilities either good or limited. Recall that participants were given a choice of four adjectives to describe their skills: excellent, good, limited and poor. It should be noted that the scale they were given did not provide any examples or explanation, so some differences might also be related to how particular participants understood the meanings of the respective adjectives. All observed mismatches indicated an underestimation of skills rather than an overestimation. For example, two out of three participants in this study who were assessed as

Advanced High self-evaluated their skills as good. Additionally, four Intermediate speakers considered their speaking skills limited.

Extra-linguistic variables

Extra-linguistic factors that can contribute to language maintenance and/or loss in HSs have been the subject of much debate in the field. In addition, it has been observed that, due to the multiplicity of such factors and their interactions, their role is difficult to test empirically. Through the questionnaires, the present study attempted to investigate the impact of several extra-linguistic factors: namely age of onset of bilingualism, attendance of Polish Saturday Schools, visits to

Poland, and frequency of current language use. Additionally, the potential role of parental input was probed by examining the language of first-generation immigrants. These data will be presented in Chapter 6. The following table presents all extra-linguistic variables investigated in this study.

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Gender Age bilingualism Onset of OPI Poland toVisits School Saturday Current language use (Polish)

Daily Weekly Monthly

HS1 M 20 0 INT HIGH 3 20-30% 8 years HS2 F 23 5 ADV MID 7 40% 11 years HS3 F 23 5 INT MID 20 50-80% 6 years HS4 F 22 5 INT MID 1 less than 10% No HS5 M 30 5 ADV LOW 25 X 5 years HS6 F 20 5 INT HIGH 0 X 5 years HS7 F 20 5 ADV LOW 7 50-80% 12 years HS8 F 21 5 INT HIGH 4 20-30% 12 years HS9 F 19 5 ADV LOW 5 40% 11 years HS10 M 20 5 INT MID 2 20-30% 8 years HS11 M 25 5 INT LOW 12 20-30% No HS12 F 19 5 ADV LOW 5 50-80% 9 years HS13 F 23 5 ADV MID 10 50-80% 12 years HS14 F 20 5 INT MID 3 X 8 years HS15 F 22 5 ADV HIGH 7 20-30% 11 years HS16 F 20 5 ADV LOW 3 X 11 years HS17 F 20 5 ADV MID 30 20-30% 12 years HS18 F 20 5 ADV HIGH 2 20-30% 12 years HS19 F 21 5 INT MID 5 20-30% 8 years HS20 F 19 5 INT MID 5 20-30% 8 years HS21 F 20 5 ADV MID 2 more than 80% 12 years HS22 F 22 5 ADV HIGH 10 50-80% 12 years HS23 M 21 0 ADV MID 7 less than 10% 13 years HS24 M 19 0 INT MID 3 less than 10% 8 years HS25 F 21 0 INT MID 3 X no Table 5.7 Extra-linguistic data by individual HS

As shown in Table 5.7, there were only four participants in this group who reported using both languages from birth. This extra-linguistic factor has been considered one of the most predictive of HS proficiency. Such a low number of speakers with onset of bilingualism occurring before the age of five seems to be related to the location of the study. As mentioned in Chapter 1,

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Chicago has the largest Polish population in the United States, which allows for frequent interactions among community members. These interactions and the availability of Polish community seemed to play a role in parents’ choice of language when speaking to their children.

To evaluate the role of other extra-linguistic factors, I ran a statistical analysis. A logistic regression test was used to evaluate which of the extra-linguistic factors – namely frequency of use, schooling, onset of bilingualism, visits to Poland and age – were decisive in acquisition and maintenance of the language. In other words, all these variables were evaluated to see which played a role in HSs being assessed as Advanced. The results of the logistic regression found only one factor to have an effect: the years of attending Saturday schools ( χ2 = 4.695, df = 1, and p = 0.030).

The following table presents the results of the logistic regression analysis for all extra-linguistic variables.

Table 5.8 Logistic regression results for extra-linguistic variables

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As seen in Table 5.8, only years of schooling had an effect on the language proficiency of participants in this study. Simply put, the longer the HSs attended a Saturday school, the better they spoke Polish now. These results will be helpful in answering research question number four regarding extra-linguistic factors responsible for language proficiency. It should be noted, however, that in addition to the above self-reported variables, the present study provides some insights into the role of parental input in shaping the grammars of HSs.

To summarize, this analysis of extra-linguistic factors points to the length of studying HL at Saturday schools as the only significant variable in language proficiency. Contrary to expectations, the present study did not suggest a dependency on the age of onset of bilingualism, possibly due to a small sample size of simultaneous bilinguals, which on the other hand points to the role of community in the linguistic choices made by parents of HSs.

5.2.2 First-generation immigrants (FGIs)

First-generation immigrants were recruited in the Chicago area as well. I contacted several

Polish organizations, which posted my ad on their websites or sent it to their listservs. Also, I used my personal contacts to help recruit participants. Although many people responded to the ad, only a handful actually participated. First of all, the majority of people interested in participating were

Polish language teachers. After accepting three of them, I decided to look for participants elsewhere in order to gain data from a more diverse population. Unfortunately, even after I posted a paid ad in the most popular Polish newspaper in the city, Dziennik Związkowy, only a few people responded.

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Altogether, there were 12 participants in this group; their mean age at the time of experiment was 50 years (the youngest participant was 41 and the oldest 62). This age range was chosen to hypothetically match the age of the parents of HSs in this study.32 There were nine females and three males in this group, of whom five had a college degree and seven a Polish high school diploma. The average number of years lived in the United States after immigration for all of them was 23.5. The range of this period varied: the shortest stay was 13 years and the longest

37. FGIs came from different regions in Poland but only one of them reported speaking a regional dialect (Oravian) on a daily basis.

Regarding their current language use, FGIs reported using Polish every day. However, the majority of them stated that they use English most of the time; six used Polish 20-30% of the time and one less than 10% daily. Four participants reported using Polish more than 80% of the time and one 50-80% of the daily use. The following table summarizes the basic demographic information obtained from the FGIs.

32 It should be added that two of the participants in this group were actual parents of two HSs and were recruited by me through their children.

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% Education % Language Use

F / M Average Age High College English Polish School

Number of 9 / 3 50 58 42 55 45 participants

Table 5.9 First-generation immigrants' basic demographic data

As for language preference, the majority of the FGIs reported speaking mostly Polish with their spouses, the exception being two participants who were married to persons of non-Polish origin. Interestingly, Polish was not the only language they used in conversations with their children; six of them reported using as much Polish as English with their children, and the other five participants spoke only Polish. None of the FGIs reported using only English with their children.

The majority of the FGIs (n=9) self-assessed their skills in Polish as excellent. On the other hand, they saw themselves as much less proficient in their L2 - English; only five described their skills in English as good, six as limited and one as poor. No one in this group considered their skills in English excellent.

In addition to daily use of the spoken language, the majority of the FGIs (n=7) reported watching Polish television. Moreover, all the participants reported that they read in Polish on a daily basis. Surprisingly, only three of the participants in this group were members of Polish

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organizations, but all of them used Polish frequently to communicate with neighbors, relatives, or friends in the United States.

5.2.3 Control group

The last group of speakers was recruited in Poland. They matched FGIs in age and represented various socio-economic backgrounds. All participants in this group came from a small town in northeastern Poland. The region was chosen for recruitment convenience (being my home town) but primarily because the regional dialect spoken there is a mixed dialect, which in reality does not differ from standard Polish.

Altogether there were 12 native speakers in this study, and their mean age at the time of experiment was 53 years (the youngest participant was 42 and the oldest 70). There were six females and six males in this group, of whom three had a college degree, six had a high school diploma, and three graduated from a trade school (without a high school diploma). They all learned foreign languages at school, but none of them spoke an additional language in everyday life or had stayed abroad for a prolonged period of time. The following table summarizes the basic demographic information obtained from the native speakers in this study.

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% Language % Education Use F / M Average Age Trade High College other Polish School School

Number of 6 / 6 53 25 50 25 0 100 participants

Table 5.10 Control group's basic demographic information

5.2.4 Summary

Overall, there were three groups of participants in the study: Polish heritage speakers (HSs)

(n=25), first-generation immigrants (FGIs) (n=12) and native speakers in Poland (n=12). The first two groups were recruited in Chicago. Additionally, the statistical analysis run to evaluate the role of extra-linguistic factors in heritage language development/maintenance revealed that only one factor – the length of attendance of Saturday school – had an effect on language proficiency.

5.3 Materials & procedure

5.3.1 Questionnaires

The above-discussed demographic data come from background questionnaires, which were administered prior to the experiment in order to collect socio-linguistic information about the participants. There were two slightly different versions of the questionnaire: one for FGIs and one 150

for HSs. The questionnaire for HSs was partially adapted from Albirini et al. (2013). It consisted of questions regarding demographics, language use history, current language use, language proficiency and language attitude, among others. The questionnaire for FGIs comprised similar questions and was also partially adapted from Albirini et al. (2013). However, in addition, there were questions about the participants’ children, membership in Polish organizations and level of motivation to maintain language, which were adapted from Isurin (2011). Unlike the HS questionnaire, which was in the English language, the FGI questionnaire was translated into Polish and delivered in that language. Both questionnaires comprised discrete-point questions and open- ended questions. Altogether, the HS questionnaire comprised 42 questions, and the FGI questionnaire 47 (See Appendix A & B).

Finally, each native speaker was asked demographic questions at the beginning of the experiment. The questions referred to their age, education, occupation, places of residence, dialects spoken and dialects they were exposed to, among others.

5.3.2. Task 1: Spontaneous speech

The first task of the study aimed to record the natural speech of participants and was used only with the first group of participants, the heritage speakers. In this task, they engaged in conversation with a researcher in the target language (i.e., Polish). The structure of the conversations reflected the ACTFL (American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages) guidelines for the OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview).

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The OPI guidelines focus on the length of produced speech and the individual’s ability to perform various practical functions within the language. The so-called native accent does not determine whether someone is assessed as the most advanced speaker according to the ACTFL scale. Also, although accuracy is important in the OPI assessment inasmuch as it does not obstruct meaning, there is an emphasis on language fluency. In fact, most native speakers can reach different levels of proficiency, usually ranging from Advanced Low to Advanced High. However, well-educated native speakers typically reach the most advanced Superior33 level thanks to their ability to hypothesize, explain complex matters in detail, and provide lengthy and coherent narrations. I anticipated that both the first-generation immigrants and monolingual controls would possess language skills at the advanced or superior levels, as expected for native speakers (for an overview, see Martin, 2010). Since grammatical accuracy does not differ drastically for these two levels, conducting the OPI with the two groups seemed unnecessary.

It was anticipated that structuring the first task after the OPI would have several advantages. First, it allowed for assessment of the participants’ speaking skills according to the

ACTFL proficiency guidelines. Secondly, through guided questions, OPI-like structured conversation produced 20-30 minute samples of natural speech, hence providing ample data for analysis.

A typical OPI includes four major stages: warm-up, level checks, probes and wind-up.

Each stage plays a distinct role in the OPI; warm-up allows for getting to know the participant, level checks and probes are used to establish the level of proficiency, and wind-up is used to return

33 Recently, a new highest level of Distinguished was added, which is given to people who are usually trained public speakers.

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the participant to a comfortable linguistic level, allowing the conversation to end on a positive note. In addition, a traditional OPI may include a role play, in which the tester and interviewee engage in a conversational exchange that cannot be naturally elicited (such as buying a car or renting an apartment). Owing to the less naturalistic characteristic of this task, role play was excluded from this study. Instead, during the interview, the researcher was able to ask for clarification or additional information regarding the questions from the background questionnaire.

During this first task, just as during a typical OPI, a few various topics were discussed, the range and complexity of which were related to the proficiency of the participants. Typically, topics that could be discussed with all the participants related to their daily life and hobbies. The more advanced speakers, however, were able to discuss topics related to their community or general public interest. The speech samples were elicited through questions that always referred to matters that the participants themselves mentioned during the warm-up. This technique allowed for the inclusion of only topics that participants felt comfortable discussing.

Additionally, the spontaneous speech task was supposed to prepare the participants for the next, more challenging tasks. As studies on bilingualism have indicated, warm-up activities in the target language may have an impact on how the language is used by participants, prompting their answers (Marian, 2008).

5.3.3. Task 2: Story elicitation

The second task involved semi-spontaneous speech elicitation. This task was employed with all the groups in the study. A children's picture book, Frog, Where Are You? by Mercer

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Mayer, was used as a stimulus. The book has been used in psycholinguistic as well as developmental research (Berman & Slobin, 1994). Moreover, it has been successfully applied to heritage language studies (Polinsky, 2008a, Isurin & Ivanova-Sullivan, 2008). Additionally, it was used in my pilot study.

As in my pilot study, in order to detect problematic areas in morphosyntax, I followed the methodology used by Isurin and Ivanova-Sullivan (2008), who did not allow their subjects to look through the entire book prior to telling the story. They believed that unrehearsed narration methodology allowed for discovering linguistic problems, which would not be observed were the subjects given an opportunity to think about the content in advance. Moreover, they argued that advance planning could also cause the use of avoidance strategies (2008). Thus, all participants in the present study were presented with the book and asked to retell the story depicted in pictures.

This task allowed for the collection of semi-spontaneous speech samples from all participants.

Moreover, as a result of utilizing the same book, the elicited samples from all the groups were similar in nature, comprised of the same vocabulary and similar grammatical structures. These semi-spontaneous samples served as a basis for a between-group comparative analysis.

5.3.4. Task 3: Elicited sentence completion task (ESCT)

This task was used to evaluate the use of all the cases in their major functions. Additionally, the aim of this task was to measure case inflection in all three groups. Even though the two previous tasks provided ample material to investigate the nominal morphology of Polish HL, it was assumed that due to avoidance strategies as well as the specificity of certain case functions, some cases

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might not appear in spontaneous speech, or their rates might be too low for quantitative analysis.

Thus, the third task, which involved the use of all cases in several different functions, was employed not only to observe whether nouns were marked for cases but also to investigate which case functions were known to each group. As discussed in Chapter 3, the results of the pilot study indicated that some of the case functions might be reassigned (e.g., the genitive case). Additionally, by eliciting case marking for the same words from all participants, the task targeted the use of cases by speakers of different proficiencies; i.e., it investigated which cases were retained by most participants and which cases are retained by less proficient speakers, etc.

The ESCT was loosely modeled on the Wug Test (Berko, 1958) used in morphology acquisition studies. In the traditional Wug test, participants (usually children) are presented with a picture of an imaginary creature or activity and its nonsense name. Consequently, the participants have to finish a sentence with a certain form of this nonsense word. However, the ESCT in this study did not involve nonsense words. I anticipated that the task involving nonsense words would be too difficult for some participants owing to the additional cognitive load. Therefore, less frequently used nouns were employed instead, and the meanings of these words were explained to the participants, if necessary.

Overall, the task consisted of two types of nouns. First, participants were presented with high-frequency nouns (HFN), consequently, low-frequency nouns (LFN) were used. The high- frequency nouns consisted mainly of words referring to body parts – ręka /hand/, głowa /head/,

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kolano /knee/, brzuch /stomach/, lekarz /doctor/ – whereas the low-frequency nouns34 consisted of the following three words: postęp/progress, istota /creature/, miano /denomination/. Altogether, each of the above four high-frequency nouns belonged to a different grammatical gender,35 and each of the three low-frequency nouns belonged to a different grammatical gender36 as well. All high-frequency nouns employed in this study are some of the highest frequency words in the Polish language37 (Kurzowa, 2005). On the other hand, the second group of nouns does not belong to this group. The rationale for using different types of nouns representing different genders was to investigate whether noun frequency and/or gender play a role in case acquisition. A similar technique was employed by Dąbrowska and Szczerbiński (2006) in their study on case acquisition by monolingual Polish children. The researchers presented participants with toys that represented nonce-words and then asked them to finish a sentence using these new words. However, in the first round, participants of that study were asked to do the same with frequently-used nouns. In

Dąbrowska and Szczerbiński's (2006) study, the real words were a control condition, which allowed the researchers to determine whether the children had understood the task and whether they knew which case was required in the given context. The present study, however, aimed to examine the role of frequency in noun declension. It was assumed that knowledge of cases might be restricted to high-frequency nouns for some participants. On the other hand, since many

34 Originally, the task was to involve abstract nouns; however, during the search for naturally occurring sentences, some case functions were difficult to find. Hence one of the words istota – which has a double meaning; one abstract and the other concrete – was used in a concrete meaning as well.

35 In addition to three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), Polish has a different inflection for animate/inanimate nouns.

36 Abstract nouns do not have an animacy distinction.

37 They come from the dictionary of the most common words in Polish by Kurzowa

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sequential HSs switch to the majority language at the age of five or older, I anticipated that some of them would have developed schemata that unable speakers to inflect all nouns, including low- frequency nouns.

In this task, participants were given a noun (written on a piece of cardboard) and then asked to finish a sentence with this particular noun. The noun had to be inflected for various cases in their most common functions: the accusative (with and without a preposition), the genitive (with a negated existential verb, negated transitive, with a genitive verb, with a preposition, and in adnominal function), the instrumental (with and without a preposition, and after the verb to be), the locative, and the dative. In the actual task, the order of the sentences was randomized for each particular noun; that way sentences with the same cases would not be presented one after another, which could have a cueing effect. Altogether, there were either 11 or 1238 sentences for each noun

(For the complete list, see Appendix C). The choice of functions for this task was based on the findings of the above-discussed pilot study; hence, the emphasis was put on various functions of the genitive and the use of cases with and without prepositions. Note that the above selection of case functions, although correspondent with their frequency, does not provide a full representation of Polish case functions.

The following are examples of the sentences used in this task:

Accusative Singular Masculine: brzuch /stomach/

a. Lekarz bada ...... /The doctor is examining the stomach./

b. Dostałem zastrzyk w ...... /I got an injection in the stomach./

38 The difference is caused by the instrumental, which typically cannot be used as a predicate with inanimate nouns.

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Genitive Singular Masculine: brzucha

a. To jest badanie ...... /This is an examination of the stomach./

b. Modelka nie ma ...... /The model doesn't have a stomach./

All sentences used in the study came from the National Corpus of Polish (http://nkjp.pl/).

Each case form of every noun was searched for, and only sentences that appeared frequently

(typically found in the frequency sub-corpus) were used. Some sentences had to be slightly edited

(e.g., the word order was changed) in order to fit the task, which required the target noun to appear in the final position. Naturally, there were differences in the frequency of particular case uses; some cases or functions occurred less frequently than the others did (e.g., tokens in the dative were far less numerous than in the other cases). To maintain all planned case functions, however, sentences with cases of lower frequency were employed in the study alongside those of high frequency. The use of the National Corpus of Polish ensured that all sentences were naturally occurring in the Polish language.

5.3.5. Task 4: Grammaticality judgment (GJ)

To investigate whether the problems with cases observed in the pilot study were of a permanent nature, a grammaticality judgment task was designed. All three groups were asked to perform a GJ. In this task, I employed the methodology used by attrition studies (Jarvis, 2003, and

Isurin, 2007). Following the technique used by Jarvis (2003), I extracted the most common errors pertaining to case use from the speech of HSs observed in my pilot study. I included them in a set

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of 20 sentences. The set contained both standard Polish sentences as fillers (5) and sentences produced by HSs (15). All groups were asked to assess whether the sentences were correct. This task was presented to the participants in written form, following Jarvis (2003). The task did not cover all cases, but it included the most frequent novelties observed in my pilot study, such as the overuse of prepositions, problems with the genitive after negation, and problems with the genitive of possession after prepositions (for the complete list, see Appendix D).

5.3.6. Procedure

As already mentioned, participants were recruited in Poland and in Chicago. I traveled to

Poland and interviewed the group of native speakers there. They all came from a small town in northeastern Poland, where the regional variation of Polish is characterized as a mixed dialect because people from different regions were resettled there. On the other hand, the mixed dialect does not have any distinct features which would differentiate it from what is considered standard

Polish. Participants in Chicago were recruited through personal contact with teachers of the Polish language as well as Polish organizations.

Participants in all groups were given tasks in the same order: background questionnaire, spontaneous speech,39 story elicitation, elicited sentence completion and grammaticality judgment.

All participants were tested individually by the researcher, and their responses were audio-

39 Only HSs participated in this task.

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recorded and later transcribed. All participants signed a consent form and received an incentive in the amount of $15.

5.3.7 Data coding and analysis

All results were audio-recorded and transcribed and/or coded. First, the recordings of task one were analyzed and assessed according to the ACTFL levels of proficiency. Second, the results from task two were transcribed. Every oblique case used by participants was coded; that is, named and counted, as well as evaluated for correctness. Moreover, all similarities in erroneous case use, such as case substitution, were found and analyzed. Consequently, the data went through quantitative and qualitative analyses. The data from tasks three and four were coded; each correct answer was given one point and each incorrect answer given zero. Similarly, observable repetitive patterns in erroneous case use were described. The results of the analyses are discussed in the next chapter.

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Chapter 6. Results and analysis

6.1 Introduction

This chapter examines the results of four experimental tasks (described in sections 5.2.2-

5.2.5) completed by three participant groups: heritage speakers, first-generation immigrants and the monolingual control group. As discussed in Chapter 4, the objective of these tasks was to examine the case system of heritage speakers as well as first-generation immigrants. By contrasting the data from the three aforementioned groups I discern the patterns of case use. These patterns are evaluated from the perspective of case typology (structural vs. inherent case) contributing to the debate about which type of case is more prone to morphological erosion

(Benmamoun, et al., 2013). Additionally, by comparing HSs to first-generation immigrants, I investigate the role of parental input, and whether the change in HSs’ case systems is observed in the generation of their parents. Moreover, an analysis of error patterns in HSs’ different case inflections will provide in-depth knowledge of which cases or case functions are more or less vulnerable in the grammars of bilinguals.

The chapter presents the four experimental tasks used in this study, along with the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the results from each group. Section 6.2 provides quantitative results from task two (story elicitation), three (elicited sentence completion) and four

(grammaticality judgment), respectively. Section 6.3 presents the qualitative results of heritage speakers from all the tasks, focusing on the following three aspects: case use and knowledge, related nominal divergences and lexicon. Finally, Section 6.4 focuses on qualitative data from first- generation speakers and discusses case distribution, errors in inflections and lexicon. In addition to case analysis, the findings of pertinent grammar properties, such as grammatical gender and lexicon, are discussed inasmuch as they are significant for understanding the results as a whole. 161

The quantitative analysis of tasks two, three and four provided in this chapter includes percentile results as well as results from statistical tests such as ANOVA, t-test, Poisson regression and logistic regression,40 whenever applicable.

6.2 Quantitative Data

6.2.1 Task two: story elicitation

The second task involved a semi-spontaneous speech elicitation. A children's picture book,

Frog, Where Are You? by Mercer Mayer, was used as a stimulus. As in my pilot study, in order to detect problematic areas in morphosyntax, I followed the methodology used by Isurin and Ivanova-

Sullivan (2008), who did not allow their subjects to look through the entire book prior to telling the story. The aim of this task was to observe how language was used by each of the three groups.

Since all participants performed the same task, it allowed for contrastive analysis of data from the respective groups.

All groups performed the story elicitation task, and the data were audio-recorded and transcribed. Consequently, all clauses41 and oblique cases were counted for all participants. First, the total number of oblique cases was counted for all participants, including repetitive words.

Nouns and personal pronouns were counted as separate tokens, and pronouns and adjectives that

40 The choice of test was based on the type of data or type of analysis needed.

41 By clause I mean the smallest grammatical unit that consists of a subject and a predicate. Because Polish is a pro- drop language, however, the subject may not be stated. The predicate may consist of a verb phrase or a verb with object(s) and other modifiers.

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modified nouns were not included.42 Then the error rate was calculated by deducting the number of correct cases used. Finally, each oblique case was counted for each participant, i.e., how many times they used the accusative, genitive and so forth. For this analysis, each word form was counted only once; for example, the accusative form of the word frog, żabę, was counted only as a single occurrence of this case even if used several times by a participant. The difference between these two analyses – i.e., counting all tokens versus only single words – served different purposes. The aim of the former was to study the complexity of the language by looking at the complexity of each clause. The latter was conducted to evaluate all the groups’ usage of particular cases.

Consequently, the mean of each test was calculated. The following sections present data from these analyses.

Clause complexity

The mean of clauses containing oblique cases used by all three groups in this study showed major differences between the groups. Table 6.1 presents the average cumulative data of the use of clause and case, including error rate as recorded for all three groups in task two.

42 Modifiers were excluded because they are typically in the same case as the noun. However, in the speech of HSs a high error rate was observed in the use of modifiers, which will be discussed in Section 6.3.

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clauses - oblique cases oblique case error rate

mean - mean per clause

HSs 73.1 52.6 72% 15.7%

FGIs 104.7 84.3 81% 0.8%

CG 75.4 74.7 99% 0%

Table 6.1 Clause complexity and correctness

Overall, the mean of these clauses was different for each group; however, HSs and the control group had similar results. The most telling was the percentage of clauses containing an oblique case, i.e., the distribution of oblique case per clause. The control group used almost the same number of oblique cases as clauses; almost every clause contained an oblique case. However, both HSs and FGIs used a smaller number of oblique cases per clause (72% and 81% respectively).

The distribution of oblique case per clause for FGIs was lower by as much as 18% compared to the control group. For comparison, the difference of this distribution between FGIs and HSs was only 9%. These differences indicate that the language of the controls was more descriptive and made use of more elements in one clause than the language of the other two groups. In addition, even though the FGIs’ error rate was low, their reduced oblique case distribution per clause, as compared to the controls, provides evidence of language change. This evidence points to FGIs’ decreased language fluency rather than accuracy.

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A one-way ANOVA, testing for differences in the mean of distribution of oblique cases per clause, found a statistical difference between groups, F (2,46) = 8.92, p< 0.000529. Tukey post-hoc t-tests found a statistical difference between the control group and heritage speakers, t =

-3.21, p<0.006335. But there was no significant difference between heritage speakers and first- generation immigrants, and there was only a marginal difference between the control group and first-generation immigrants: p=0.06327 for HSs (M=0.72) and FGIs (0.83), and p=0.07212 for CG

(M=1.03) and FGIs (0.83). The following figure represents the results of the ANOVA of case distribution per clause for each group.

Figure. 6.1 Case distribution in each group43

43 Boxplot - graphically displays a variable's location and spread.

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The differences show that the mean of distribution of oblique cases per clause was already smaller in the group of first-generation immigrants. Although the error rate was very small for this group, this behavior clearly shows that the immigrant group used a smaller number of oblique cases in their speech compared to the controls, and that the pattern is further carried by HSs, who used the oblique cases even less often than the generation of their parents. These results as well as the previous percentile analysis will be relevant for answering research question number one, which refers to the case knowledge of HSs, as well as research question number three regarding case attrition in FGIs.

In addition to a decreased number of cases per clause (72%), HSs displayed the largest error rate in case use in this study (15.7%). The types of divergences will be discussed in the following sections, which will also provide the average frequencies of all the cases used by all the groups.

Individual case distribution

Another aim of the first task was to investigate how particular cases were distributed in the languages of the three respective groups. The first research question was directed at examining whether the grammars of Polish heritage speakers contain fewer cases than the grammars of first- generation immigrants and/or native speakers. The above analysis provided a partial answer to this question. However, to investigate what case(s) posed more difficulty for the participants, all the major cases had to be evaluated separately. For the purpose of this analysis, only single case uses for each word were counted. The HSs’ pronominal case use in this study showed a lower error rate

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(0.09) compared to their nominal case use (0.17). Because pronominal case use in HSs is typically better than their nominal case use, and because English marks pronouns for cases, personal pronouns were excluded from further analysis. However, personal pronouns were analyzed in the tests that measured clause complexity. In addition, all uses of case, including erroneous ones, were counted for this test. The average number of cases used by the three groups in this study is presented in Table 6.2.

Clauses Accusative Genitive Locative Instrumental Dative Vocative

HSs 73.1 12.6 11.1 7.4 4.4 0.7 0.1

FGIs 104.7 20.3 26.6 15.3 10.3 3 0.3

Controls 75.4 17.6 18.5 11.5 11.1 2.6 0.2

Table 6.2 The means of each group’s case use

The above data present the means of each group’s use of each case, without distribution per clause. As shown in Table 6.2, HSs exhibited a pattern that was absent in the other groups.

Unlike the first-generation immigrants and control group, HSs used the accusative as the most frequent case.

Since there was a large divergence in clause number between the groups, which signifies that distribution of a particular case could be affected as well, the distribution of all the individual oblique cases was calculated for each group. The group of first-generation immigrants on average 167

used the largest number of clauses and cases. But the ratio of these two variables showed that case use in this group was in fact less frequent than in the control group. This distribution was computed for all the oblique cases recorded in this study, including the vocative, which was not expected to be used by the participants due to its pragmatic function. Nevertheless, in some narratives, either the translation of the title was provided, where the use of vocative is expected, or the vocative was used when relating how the boy called his frog. The following figure presents the distribution of individual cases for each group.

25 24 22.4 21.8

20 17.216.7 15.1 14.5 HS 15 14 12.5 FGI

Frequency % Frequency 10.1 CG 10 8.4 6 5 2.52.9 0.9 0.10.30.2 0 Accusative Genitive Locative Instrumental Dative Vocative

Figure 6.2 The means of individual case distribution per clause in HSs, FGIs and control group

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As shown in Figure 6.2, the frequency of all the cases used by heritage speakers in this study was decreased compared to the other groups. In HL, not only was the genitive used significantly less frequently, but the rate of all cases was diminished compared to both of the other groups. Another observation pertains to the first-generation immigrants, whose use of all the cases was less frequent than the monolingual speakers’ use of cases. In particular, the accusative and instrumental were considerably less recurrent in the language of FGIs than they were in the monolingual sample. This divergence most likely explains the difference in overall case frequency presented in Table 6.1.

The difference between the groups in frequency of use of the instrumental was confirmed by the results of a one-way ANOVA. A statistical difference between groups was found, F (2,45)

= 15.8, p< 0.000, indicating that there was a group effect on the frequency of use of the instrumental.44 The following figure represents the means of the distribution of the instrumental.

44 Due to one person’s extreme results (using the instrumental very frequently) in the control group, the test was run without this participant.

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Figure 6.3 The means of instrumental distribution for each group

Additionally, the difference between the groups in frequency of use of the accusative was also confirmed by a statistical test. A one-way ANOVA, testing for differences in the means of accusative distribution, found a significant difference between groups, F(2,46) = 4.341, p=0.019.

The following figure represents the results of the ANOVA.

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Figure 6.4 The means of accusative distribution for each group

As Figure 6.4 shows, the difference between the FGIs’ and HSs’ means of accusative distribution was smaller than the difference between FGIs and the control group. A post-hoc t-test did not find this difference between all the respective groups significant, but as the above boxplots show, the frequency of use of the accusative was more similar between HSs and FGIs than between

FGIs and the control group. The HSs’ high frequency of the accusative was related to the case substitution pattern, which will be discussed in the next section. These results, as well as those from previous tests of the means of instrumental distribution and all individual case distribution, will be helpful in answering the first and third research questions of this dissertation regarding case

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use in HSs and FGIs. Qualitative analysis of the use of individual cases will be provided in Section

6.3.1 for HSs and Sections 6.4.1-6.4.2 for FGIs.

Case substitution

As discussed in the previous chapters, the current approach to case in heritage languages suggests that inherent cases are more resilient than structural cases (Benmamoun, Montrul &

Polinsky, 2013), whereas other researchers have suggested that strong cases can replace weak cases in these systems (Laskowski, 2014). The hypothesis of the present dissertation, however, is that no case typology can single-handedly explain the process of case reassignment in HL; instead,

I argue that most cases are preserved in HL and the errors found in these grammars indicate case function reduction or problems with case allomorphy. In order to prove this hypothesis, all case replacement instances were counted and analyzed. A summary of case replacement is provided in

Table 6.3. Since case substitution was not recorded in the samples from the control group, these data are not included.

Accusative Nominative Genitive Locative

HSs 2.2 2.6 0.1 0.9

FGIs 0.6 0.2 0 0

Table 6.3 The means of case substitution per clause for HSs and FGIs

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The above table presents the means of case replacement per clause for all participants as recorded in this study. The case used most frequently to replace other cases in HL was the nominative. The second-most-frequent case to replace other cases in this group was the accusative.

The first-generation immigrants displayed a very low rate of case replacement; however, they differed in that regard from the monolingual controls, who did not exhibit any case replacement in this task. The main patterns in the FGIs’ divergent use of cases will be discussed in Sections 6.4.1

– 6.4.2. These results are important because they are generally not in line with any previous theory about the type of cases most vulnerable in the grammars of HSs.

Task two - heritage speakers

As discussed above, the heritage speakers displayed the lowest case distribution per clause for all the oblique cases (72%) as well as the individual cases (Figure 6.2). Moreover, individual case frequency was different for this group compared with the others; unlike FGIs and the control group, HSs used the accusative most frequently. Additionally, as shown in Table 6.1, the error rate for this group was the highest. Most of the case errors in this task pertained to case substitution; however, I recorded many examples of allomorphic reduction (discussed later in this chapter) as well. As mentioned earlier, the present case analysis is based primarily on nominal case realization.

Although the rate of case substitution was very high for HSs compared to the other two groups, the high rate of case replacement in this group was observed mainly in the speech of lower- proficiency speakers. Therefore, because of the significant difference in the behavior of intermediate and advanced HSs, the results from the respective proficiency groups are shown and

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discussed separately. Additionally, cases that were replaced are presented and discussed. Table 6.4 presents case substitution among heritage speakers grouped by language proficiency.

Accusative Nominative Genitive Locative

Intermediate HSs 3.4 4.8 0.2 1.3

Advanced HSs 1.3 0.3 0.1 0.6

Table 6.4 The means of case substitution per clause for intermediate and advanced HSs

As shown in Table 6.4, intermediate HSs and advanced HSs behaved differently when using the strategy of case substitution. First, advanced speakers did not substitute as often as intermediate. Secondly, advanced HSs hardly ever used the nominative instead of an oblique case, a strategy quite frequent in the other proficiency group. The case used most frequently by advanced speakers to replace other cases was the accusative. These different patterns in case substitution for advanced and intermediate speakers indicates the differential general knowledge and case use in these proficiency groups.

The cases that were most often replaced were the genitive and accusative. Here too, a disparity in the behavior of intermediate and advanced speakers was observed. The accusative was often replaced by intermediate speakers, who used the nominative for that purpose most of the time. On the other hand, the genitive was replaced mainly by the accusative but also by the nominative and the locative to a lesser degree by both groups. Another case that was replaced by

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advanced speakers was the locative. Table 6.5 illustrates the patterns in case substitution for all

HSs as well as the respective proficiency levels.

A-G A-L A-D N-A N-G N-L L-A L-G

INT HSs 15 8 8 22 19 7 7 5

ADV HSs 9 2 0 2 0 1 2 5

ALL HSs 24 10 8 24 19 8 9 10

Table 6.5 Patterns in case substitution by proficiency level and for all HSs

As we can see, intermediate HSs used both the accusative and nominative to replace other cases, mostly the genitive but also the accusative and dative. Advanced HSs, on the other hand, replaced the genitive most of the time but also the locative to a lesser degree. The other pattern observed in intermediate HSs was that the participants either used the nominative or accusative to replace other oblique cases but rarely would one speaker use both cases to replace others. The only exception from this pattern was HS8, who replaced most oblique cases with the nominative but used the accusative instead of the dative in a very systematic manner. These observations will be relevant for answering research question number one, as they show different patterns in case use than previous studies in HL have shown (Polinsky, 2008a).

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6.2.2 Task three: elicited sentence completion task (ESCT)

Task three was used to evaluate the use of all cases45 in their major functions. Even though the two previous tasks provided ample data to investigate case in Polish HL, it was assumed that due to avoidance strategies as well as the specificity of some case functions, certain cases might not have appeared in spontaneous speech or their rate might have been low. All three groups completed the task, as it was anticipated that FGIs might display some problems with case inflections as well. The monolingual controls provided information on how cases are used in

Poland, and if any divergences from the prescriptive norms would be observed.

Recall that in this task participants were asked to inflect nouns that were presented to them on a piece of cardboard. I read sentences that participants had to finish by inflecting the nouns.

Altogether there were 81 sentences, and the first part consisted of high-frequency nouns (mainly body parts), whereas low-frequency nouns were used in the second part. Depending on gender and animacy distinctions, each noun was to be inflected 11 or 12 times. Most cases were used in several different functions. As in the previous tasks, the data were audio-recorded and the responses coded.

Each standard-like response was given one point, and each erroneous response was coded as zero.

The following quantitative analysis was based on the binary types of responses. However, when conducting qualitative analysis, I looked at the types of errors as well.

The contrastive analysis of the data from this task allowed me to compare the performance of the three participant groups. First, the mean of case accuracy was calculated for each group, and

45 Without the vocative, which was excluded from this study due to its specific pragmatic functions.

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the rates were consequently contrasted. The following table presents case accuracy for all three groups.

HSs FGIs Controls

HFNs 62% 96% 98%

LFNs 52% 96% 98%

All Nouns 58% 96% 98%

Table 6.6 Case accuracy by group

As shown in the above table, the respective groups displayed varying accuracy rates, of which the monolingual controls were almost error free. FGIs exhibited a low rate of errors as well, only slightly higher than the controls. HSs, on the other hand, displayed a much higher error rate, with low-frequency nouns inflected incorrectly almost half of the time. For the other two groups there was no change in accuracy for the different noun categories. The low error rate in FGIs signifies that speakers in this group did not exhibit difficulties with case inflections of the same scale as HSs – even though their accuracy rate in this task (96%) was lower than in the story elicitation (99%), and a pattern in their errors was observed, too. The qualitative analysis of their errors will be discussed in Section 6.4.2.

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Task three - heritage speakers

As in the previous task, the overall low rate of accuracy in HSs can be partially explained by the vast range of results yielded by these speakers, and the generally low rate of accuracy of intermediate speakers. The following table presents case accuracy for the respective proficiency levels of HSs.

Intermediate HSs Advanced HSs

High Freq. Nouns 42% 80%

Low Freq. Nouns 34% 71%

All Nouns 38% 76%

Table 6.7 Case accuracy by proficiency level of HSs

As shown in Table 6.7, intermediate HSs exhibited significantly lower accuracy in case inflection than advanced HSs. But unlike the results from the other two groups, where the types of nouns did not play a role, the accuracy for low-frequency nouns was lower for both HS proficiency levels. Recall that the reason why these two different types of nouns were used was to evaluate the role of noun frequency in case acquisition and/or maintenance.

Poisson regression did not find a statistical difference when measuring the response of the number of words correct and incorrect for HFNs and LFNs with a predictor if speakers are advanced or intermediate and if the word was frequent or infrequent (p>0.05). In other words, noun type played the same role for both groups. Additional post-hoc Wald tests, however, for

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pairwise comparison of the two variables of proficiency and word frequency showed that both had an effect, with p < 0.000 for both factors. The following figure represents the responses by proficiency group and type of noun.

Figure 6.5 Responses by proficiency group and noun type

As shown in Figure 6.5, both proficiency groups made fewer errors when inflecting high- frequency nouns. The data from HSs clearly indicate that a relationship between these two variables exists. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that the second part of this task also could have

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been challenging to HSs because the words used to elicit cases were more difficult, as in this example:

1. Atmosfera zaufania jest korzystna dla postępu. ‘The atmosphere of trust is conducive for progress.’

As the quantitative data presented above plainly indicate, HSs displayed difficulties inflecting nouns in this task. The task was difficult for all groups but especially for HSs. For example, some of the HSs who used cases in story elicitation had problems inflecting nouns in this task. These problems could be related to the speakers either remembering cases as chunks or lacking the vocabulary used in the sentences to elicit cases. The latter condition could explain the performance of some HSs when inflecting low-frequency nouns. Considering HSs’ very low accuracy rate for this group of nouns, especially for intermediate HSs, it can be inferred that the participants guessed their answers. Thus, it seems that a closer analysis of the errors found in the data from the lower proficiency speakers will not be very informative for this study. Therefore, in further analyses of types of divergences, I will focus mainly on advanced HSs,46 making references to the intermediate group whenever relevant.

Advanced HSs’ accuracy by gender

As shown in Table 6.7 and Figure 6.5, the type of noun, i.e., low- or high-frequency, was a decisive factor in HSs’ case inflection. Overall, low-frequency nouns presented a greater challenge than high-frequency nouns by almost 10%. There were, however, other divergent

46 Since the accuracy rates of HS1, who was assessed as Intermediate High, was on average as high as many advanced speakers, his results are included in the further discussion.

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patterns in case inflections pertaining to gender, case endings and others. The following table presents the means of case inflection accuracy for different genders.

Masculine Masculine Feminine Neuter

Animate Inanimate

All nouns 12.5 9.13 9.9 9.1

HFNs 12.5 9 10.2 9.7

LFNs - 9.25 9.75 8.6

Table 6.8 Means of inflection accuracy by gender in advanced HSs

The above table shows that advanced HSs displayed different accuracy rates for different genders. First, the least problematic was the masculine animate, followed by feminine, masculine inanimate and neuter. The least problematic inflection was that of the masculine animate noun – lekarz ‘doctor.’ Altogether only four tokens from advanced HSs (n=156) were erroneous. One reason why the masculine animate might be easier to inflect than other genders is the fact that masculine animate exhibits genitive-accusative syncretism. This syncretism is helpful in the case inflection of masculine animate nouns because the genitive and accusative do not have different endings. Recall that in the previous task, the accusative case was often substituted for the genitive.

Hence, inflecting a word that does not have different endings for these two cases must be easier.

Also, that type of replacement cannot take place because the word already has the same endings for both cases. It is worth mentioning that only two advanced HSs in this study made an error when marking masculine-animate nouns for the dative. One of these errors consists of attaching the

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ending –u, which is the neuter and masculine ending of the dative but used only with a restricted group of nouns.

Consequently, advanced HSs exhibited higher accuracy when inflecting feminine nouns

(ręka ‘hand’ and istota ‘essence/creature’) than when inflecting inanimate masculine and neuter nouns. The most common error types in the feminine inflection pertained to the genitive and dative cases.

HSs displayed lower accuracy with the two masculine inanimate nouns (brzuch ‘stomach’ and postęp ‘progress’) than with the feminine nouns. In addition to their problems with the genitive after verbs and the dative, there were other errors. This time, however, the errors were not related to the same case or to its function for both nouns.47

Overall, the neuter gender presented the biggest problem for HSs. The dative especially proved to be the most difficult for both types of nouns. Unlike the previously discussed gender inflections, HSs used various endings to mark the dative. HSs also exhibited differed patterns in inflecting various noun type. The noun kolano ‘knee’ was marked with the locative case ending by four advanced HSs and with the masculine noun ending -owi by three of them. On the other

47 The most persistent error for brzuch, after the problems with the dative, was the following sentence: Otarł dłonią pot z brzuchem. Wiped hand sweat from belly.INS ‘He wiped sweat from the belly with his hand’

(SP) Otarł dłonią pot z brzucha. Wiped hand sweat from belly.GEN

The preposition z which can be used with either the genitive or instrumental, depending on context, was erroneously used with the latter by ten advanced HSs. This error rate was higher than for their use of the genitive after verbs. With the instrumental, the sentence carries a different meaning where the belly is the agent rather the intended object. The divergent sentence produced by these speakers has the following meaning: ‘He and the belly wiped the sweat with his hand.’ Due to the sentence’s lexical complexity, however, the high error rate suggests problems with sentence processing rather than with case. The word dłoń is usually translated as ‘palm’ but can also refer to ‘hand’ and it is part of a higher register that may have not been known to the HSs.

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hand, the noun miano ‘denomination’ was marked with the instrumental case ending -em by four speakers in this group and with the masculine ending by two of them. The high error rate with neuter inflection points not only to speakers’ difficulties with morphological endings of gender but also possible difficulties with the vocabulary used in the sentences to elicit the dative.

Advanced HSs’ accuracy by case

As discussed in Chapter 5, one of the aims of the ESCT was to evaluate which cases and which case functions were more vulnerable in the grammars of HSs. Based on the findings of the pilot study, it was hypothesized that case frequency would play a role in case maintenance. Also, cases with many functions might display erosion in one of these uses but not in others. Finally, case substitution would take place when cases shared some properties, i.e., prepositions. The following table presents data for all cases and functions, as inflected by advanced HSs in this task.

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Case Function Masculine Masculine Feminine Neuter All Genders

Animate Inanimate

HFN LFN HFN LFN HFN LFN HFN LFN HFN LFN

Accusative as object 13 - 10 13 11 12 12 13 11.5 12.7

Accusative with 13 - 8 10 11 8 11 8 10.7 8.7 prepositions Genitive of negation 13 - 11 11 11 10 11 11 11.5 10.7 (existentials) Genitive of negation 13 - 9 9 9 8 11 7 10.5 8

Adnominal Genitive 13 - 11 7 12 10 12 11 12 8

Genitive after verbs 13 - 9 7 1 5 0 4 5.7 5.3

Genitive with 13 - 4 10 13 12 13 11 10.7 11 prepositions Instrumental of 12 - - 11 - 8 - 10 12 9.7 predicate nominal Instrumental of means 12 - 10 6 12 12 13 10 11.7 9.3

Instrumental with 12 - 13 13 13 13 12 10 12.5 12 prepositions Locative 12 - 11 10 10 11 11 9 11 10

Dative 11 - 3 4 7 8 1 0 5.5 4

Table 6.9 Means of inflection accuracy by case function and gender

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As shown in the above table, almost all inflections of HFNs had higher accuracy than

LFNs. The two exceptions were the accusative as direct object and the genitive with prepositions.

In both contexts, the lowest accuracy rate came from the inanimate masculine noun brzuch

‘stomach.’ The difficulty with the inflection of this word can stem from its morphophonological structure, especially the final consonant. Another general observation that can be drawn from the above table is that one case can exhibit varying accuracy rates for its different functions. For example, there were variations in the way particular functions of the genitive were inflected, with the genitive after verbs displaying the lowest rate of accuracy. The two uses with the highest accuracy were the genitive of negation after existentials and the genitive after prepositions. Also, the adnominal genitive was well preserved in the grammars of advanced HSs. These results indicate that despite the complex case marking mechanism, genitive endings were used accurately by advanced HSs. Case reassignment was observed only in the last function, the genitive after verbs.

Overall, the accuracy rates shown in Table 6.9 indicate that HSs’ use of individual case functions varied, and therefore the results of this study do not support any of the case replacement theories discussed in Chapter 3. The two inflections that seemed to be significantly more challenging for HSs were the genitive after verbs and the dative. Additionally, accuracy rates of the dative might indicate that the case was rare or lost in HSs.

To compare the proficiency groups’ knowledge of the dative, a statistical analysis was conducted. Poisson regression was run to see if there was a statistical difference between intermediate and advanced HSs in the dative inflection. The test showed that there was an effect of proficiency on the dative inflection, with χ2 = 15.310, df= 1, and p < 0.000. In other words, the above quantitative data indicate that intermediate HSs did not know the dative case.

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6.2.3 Task four - grammaticality judgment

The grammaticality judgment task was designed to investigate whether the problems with cases observed in the pilot study were of a permanent nature, i.e., were part of the HSs’ grammatical systems. Following Jarvis’s methodology (2003), I chose the most common errors pertaining to case use from the speech of HSs observed in the pilot study. I included them in a set of 20 sentences. The set contained both standard Polish sentences as fillers (5) and sentences produced by HSs (15). Overall, there were six sentences in which HSs had used the wrong case after prepositions, three sentences where prepositions were redundant, four sentences with the genitive, and one with the dative. Additionally, one sentence with a wrong ending of the masculine personal gender was included. All the groups in the present study were asked to assess whether the sentences were correct. This task was presented to the participants in written form, following

Jarvis (2003).

Overall, there was a considerable difference between the judgments of HSs and the other two groups. As in the previous task, FGIs and monolinguals behaved similarly, although a small difference in judgments of the dative was observed. This pattern will be discussed in the further section of this chapter. HSs, on the other hand, judged most of the sentences as correct. It should be noted that the performance of HSs in this task suggested that in many instances they were uncertain about the grammatical correctness of the sentences and judged something else, i.e., style or punctuation.48 The following table presents the rates of the sentences included in the task:

48 As a reminder, the participants were presented with a sheet of paper containing the sentences they were asked to judge.

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Average rate

HSs 52%

FGIs 96%

Controls 98%

Table 6.10 Rejection of erroneous sentences – all groups

Task four - heritage speakers

As shown in the above table, HSs accepted many of the erroneous sentences in this task, which would suggest that the divergences found in the pilot study are in fact a permanent part of the HSs’ grammars. But as in the previous tasks, the results of this task were substantially different for advanced and intermediate HSs. The following table includes the rejection rates of erroneous sentences for the two proficiency levels of HSs.

Average rate

Intermediate HSs 26%

Advanced HSs 66%

Table 6.11 Rejection of erroneous sentences by HS proficiency level

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As shown in the above table, the two proficiency groups’ rates differed notably.

Intermediate HSs accepted most of the sentences and/or found errors elsewhere, including in the correct sentences. Advanced HSs also found errors in the correct utterances, but to a lesser degree.

Also, advanced HSs assessed more divergences from the pilot study as incorrect. The first type of erroneous sentence most accepted by HSs was the genitive after verbs, also found in the other two participant groups. Recall that HSs displayed the lowest accuracy rate in this function of the genitive in the previous task. A statistical analysis was run to investigate if proficiency had affected the rejection of this type of error. Logistic regression run for intermediate and advanced speakers’ responses showed a statistical difference between the groups (χ2 = 13.104, df= 1, and p =

0.000295). In other words, the above tests indicate that advanced HSs were less willing to accept the accusative used instead of the genitive after verbs.

Another statistical test was run to find out if there was a difference in the use of the genitive of negation. A Poisson regression with random effects was run and the results showed that there was a statistical difference in the responses of intermediate and advanced speakers (χ2 = 61.165, df=2, and p < 0.000). The acceptance of the accusative by intermediate HSs in this context signifies that the genitive after negation may only be a part of advanced speakers’ grammars.

6.2.4 Quantitative analysis - summary

Section 6.2.1 – 6.2.3 presented the quantitative data from tasks two, three and four. In task two, a difference was found in case distribution between the groups. Monolingual controls used oblique cases most frequently (99% of clauses), FGIs displayed a lower rate of recurrence (81%), and for HSs only 72% of clauses consisted of oblique cases. Overall, HSs displayed the highest rate of case use divergences. These were divergences of two kinds; the first consisted of case

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replacement, and the second of incorrect case markings. In task three, the accuracy rate for all nouns and inflections in this task was 98% for monolingual controls, 96% for FGIs and 58% for

HSs. The HSs’ low rate was attributed to the lack of homogeneity in this group; i.e., lower proficiency speakers displayed an almost complete lack of cases. Additionally, statistical tests used to analyze the data from HSs showed that the proficiency level of HSs had an effect on their ability to inflect nouns. As far as the inflections of particular case functions, the genitive, accusative and instrumental showed varying accuracy rates for different uses. Especially for the genitive, whose six functions were evaluated, the accuracy of inflections yielded a hierarchy of functions.

6.3 Qualitative analysis – heritage speakers

6.3.1 The use and knowledge of case

The quantitative data presented in the previous sections represented all the groups’ use and knowledge of cases. To gain more in-depth understanding of the case use and knowledge of this study’s main group, the data were also analyzed qualitatively. The present section will provide a qualitative analysis of HSs’ data from all four tasks. First, by focusing mainly on the data from task two, I will present more in-depth discussion of case replacement. Second, by listing examples of divergent case use recorded in task two, three and four, I will discuss patterns in case inflections that will be helpful in answering the research question two. Whenever necessary, I will make reference to the data analyzed in the previous section. Additionally, I will examine other divergences observed in the use of nominals, such as problems with gender and agreement. Finally,

I will review aspects of HSs’ lexicon that might be related to case use and knowledge as well as helpful in understanding the cognitive processes involved in case and vocabulary retrieval.

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Recall from the previous sections that analysis of the quantitative data from HSs vis-á-vis those from other groups showed the following tendencies: increased case substitution, decreased case distribution per clause, decreased case frequency, increased error rate, significant difference between the performance of intermediate and advanced speakers in several tasks, as well as differential knowledge of one case’s various functions. In what follows, I will discuss all these tendencies and provide examples.

In regard to case substitution, quantitative analysis showed that the nominative and accusative were substituted for other cases most of the time. The case most often replaced was the genitive. A separate analysis of case substitution for intermediate and advanced speakers showed that the highest error rate was exhibited by the former group, with a preference to substitute the nominative for all the oblique cases. The nominative was rarely used by advanced speakers to replace oblique cases; however, such a pattern frequently emerged in the speech of intermediate speakers. Additionally, in regard to particular case functions, the strategy of substitution was used for the genitive case. This signifies that there is a gradual knowledge of different functions of the genitive, with advanced speakers knowing most of them and intermediate speakers knowing only one or two. Other instances of case replacement pertained to cases used with prepositions. First of all, the accusative-locative and locative-accusative replacement was frequent owing to the fact that these cases share prepositions. The choice of which case was used to replace the other was related to the speaker’s proficiency; those who did not know the ending of the locative typically did not use this case to replace the others. The other problems with these cases and prepositions could have stemmed from two factors: 1) the complexity of the plural ending of the genitive, which was replaced by the regular ending of the locative; and 2) prepositions used with the instrumental in standard Polish being reassigned to other cases like the accusative or locative, decreasing the use

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of the instrumental. The above results contribute to answering the first research question of this study regarding number of cases in the grammars of HSs as well as research question number two referring to patterns of errors in the grammars of HSs.

Apart from case replacement, the results from task two showed that HSs exhibited problems with case markings; i.e., they tend to attach non-standard-like endings. Most divergences of this type involved the locative, genitive and dative. Choosing the endings for these three cases is challenging. The genitive masculine of an inanimate object can be marked either by -a or -u; however, the choice of ending is motivated by a few different factors, usually lexical and morphological, which sometimes provide conflicting cues to a speaker. Similarly, the choice of ending in the genitive plural relies on several factors. The locative, on the other hand, is marked by four different vowels that are phonologically motivated and quite consistent, but these affixes cause an alternation to the majority of final consonants in the word stem. Finally, the dative has regular endings, but in masculine, around 16 nouns have a different ending -u, which happens to be the same as in neuter. Altogether, there were 32 tokens of divergent case marking, the majority of them pertaining to the above three cases. A remaining few tokens used case marking of a different gender.

As discussed in Section 6.2.1, the HSs’ frequency of case use in task two was significantly lower compared to the other groups. The data from task three permitted a further analysis of each individual case in its most frequent functions. Since the results varied significantly between proficiency groups and the responses of intermediate HSs involving low-frequency nouns fell below 50%, the following analysis of qualitative data focuses mainly on the advanced group’s results.

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Analysis of the accuracy of individual case inflections showed varied results in advanced

HSs. First of all, as anticipated, different genitive types were inflected with varying accuracy, of which the genitive after verbs seemed the most vulnerable to error. Additionally, for most cases, word frequency played a role; HFNs were easier to inflect than LFNs. The exception was the locative case, which overall proved to be a less vulnerable case. However, some errors found in this case point to allomorphic reduction and the use of the wrong case after certain prepositions that was observed in previous tasks. On the other hand, the dative proved to be the most vulnerable case with a very low accuracy rate. Unlike the frequency in the previous task, the accuracy rate for the instrumental in this task was high.

As discussed earlier in this chapter, the performance of HSs in task four indicated uncertainty and guessing. Additionally, many of them pointed at the correct elements of the sentences as erroneous. Nevertheless, there were sentences that many accepted as correct. For example, six erroneous sentences were rejected as incorrect only by four HSs. These sentences consisted of three types of errors: the use of the accusative instead of the genitive after verbs, the genitive of negation, and the use of the redundant preposition z with the instrumental. The following sections will provide more in-depth analysis of each individual case, providing examples from task two, three, and four.

The Accusative

Overall, the accusative was both the best-known and the most frequently used oblique case in Polish HL. The data from all three tasks confirmed that even the least proficient speakers used the accusative a few times. Also, HSs frequently used the accusative to replace other cases.

Additionally, the endings of this case seemed to be the least vulnerable. However, the post-

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prepositional accusative was somehow more problematic, especially after prepositions shared with the locative case. The data from tasks two and three showed that even advanced HSs exhibited slightly lower accuracy with the accusative after prepositions. All errors found pertained to case substitution, when the locative was used instead of the accusative. Recall from Chapter 3 that these two cases share a few prepositions, and it is the verb that tells the speaker which of them to use.

This type of divergence was also found in the pilot study.

Additionally, the findings from task three showed that the accuracy rates of two accusative functions were high for both types of nouns (LFN and HFN); however, the accusative as direct object was less difficult than the accusative after prepositions. The only exception was the inflection of the noun brzuch ‘stomach.’ There were three erroneous tokens in the data of advanced

HSs, all of which consisted of genitive-accusative substitution. Animate masculine nouns display the syncretism of these two cases, which is sometimes cited as the source of this type of error in inanimate nouns. In standard Polish, some groups of inanimate nouns behave like animate nouns and require the ending -a in the accusative case. Many of these groups, such as dances and games, became a part of the standard variation of the Polish language. This pattern of errors pertaining to the above noun, as well as a very low error rate with the inanimate noun postęp (‘progress’), may indicate problems with animacy distinction rather than difficulty with case inflection. The abstract inanimate noun that is not marked for the accusative case was easier for HSs to inflect.

The Genitive

The use and knowledge of the genitive was the most varied in the collected data. First, it greatly differed for proficiency levels. Second, various functions displayed differing accuracy as

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shown in the data from all three tasks. Also, the genitive was the case most often replaced by other cases.

As observed in task two, intermediate HSs who replaced the genitive with other cases used this strategy for almost all genitive functions attested in their data. There were examples of the genitive after verbs (e.g., szukać – ‘to search for’), the genitive of negation (2), as well as the genitive of quantity (3), which were replaced by either the nominative or accusative. The most resilient function of the genitive in this group was the genitive used with prepositions. Recall that the two main functions of the genitive after prepositions are spatial and temporal. In the present data, the temporal genitive did not emerge, but examples of the spatial genitive, such as do lasu

‘to the forest,’ z okna ‘from the window,’ and z drzewa ‘from the tree,’ were quite frequent and correct. Additionally, personal pronouns in the genitive were used correctly for almost all tokens.

But as discussed above, the error rate for pronouns was very low, compared to that for nouns.

2. nie ma dobrą minę. (HS6) not has good.ACC expression.ACC ‘He doesn’t look happy.’ (SP) nie ma dobrej miny.

3. więcej zwierzęta (HS6) more animals.ACC ‘more animals’ (SP) więcej zwierząt

The patterns looked different in advanced HSs’ case substitution; out of nine accusative-genitive replacements, six pertained to the genitive after verbs, as in example (4).

4. Szuka tą żabkę. (HS10) Search this.ACC frog.ACC ‘Searches for this frog’ (SP) Szuka tej żabki.

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In example (4), the verb szukać requires a direct object in the genitive. The rule is a departure from the more general one which posits that all direct objects of transitive verbs should be in the accusative. Of interest is the fact that this kind of case replacement was also recorded in the speech of first-generation immigrants in this study. In fact, five out of seven accusative-genitive case substitutions pertained to the verb szukać in the speech of FGIs.

The third case that replaced the genitive in the speech of all HSs was the locative. Four out of ten locative-genitive replacements pertained to the plural (5-8).

5. koło krzakach (HS13) by bushes.LOC ‘By the bushes’ (SP) koło krzaków

6. z dziurach (HS5) from wholes.LOC ‘From the wholes’ (SP) z dziur

7. do rękach (HS6) to hands.LOC ‘Into the hands’ (SP) do rąk

8. koło pszczółkach (HS16) by bees.LOC ‘By the bees’ (SP) koło pszczółek

Note that in addition to the above two examples (5 & 8) of the locative-genitive replacement after the preposition koło ‘by’, another divergence of this type was recorded with a verb in singular form: koło wodzie. This pattern may signify problems with prepositions of lower frequency.

However, since the pattern appeared mostly in plural, it may be related to the difficulty with the genitive plural marking that will be discussed later in this section.

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Of interest is one example (9) where the locative case replaced the possessive genitive because it was used after a preposition that typically requires the former (an identical example was recorded in my pilot study).

9. Na nim głowie (HS12) On him.LOC head.LOC ‘On his head’ (SP) Na jego głowie

In addition to case replacement, HSs’ problems with the genitive referred to case’s endings in plural. As recorded in task two, HSs overused the ending -ów despite gender and phonological constraints that may have required a zero ending. The zero ending entails a vowel addition if a stem consists of more than one consonant in the final position. The preference for the -ów ending in HSs was recorded in the pilot study as well. The following are examples of the -ów ending extension: żabków ‘frogs,’ (SP) żabek; pszczółków ‘bees,’ (SP) pszczółek. In both examples, standard variation would require the addition of -e to break up the consonant clusters.

The genitive was the most in-depth case studied in task three; altogether there were six different functions of the genitive investigated. These were the most frequent uses of the genitive

– the most versatile of the Polish cases. The aforementioned six functions consisted of the adnominal genitive, the genitive of negation after existentials, the genitive of negation (after verbs that require the accusative in non-negated sentences), the genitive after prepositions, and the genitive after non-negated verbs.

As discussed earlier in this chapter, the accuracy of these functions varied. The two with the highest accuracy were the genitive of negation after existentials and the genitive after prepositions. The former function of the genitive differs from the other genitive of negation

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syntactically. The genitive of negation after existentials (10) is used as the subject of a sentence, whereas the other genitive of negation is the direct object of a sentence (11).

10. Dziś nie ma lekarza. Today no have doctor.GEN ‘Today there is no doctor’

11. Mężczyzna nie wyciągnął ręki. Man no pulled hand.GEN “The man did not shake hands.’

These results with the two types of genitive show a higher preference for this case when it is used as a subject rather than the object, although the accuracy rates for the latter are not low either.

The genitive after prepositions was used with very high accuracy except for the above discussed problems with the noun brzuch ‘stomach’ and the preposition z. Also, the adnominal genitive was well preserved in the grammars of advanced HSs. These results indicate that despite a complex case marking mechanism, genitive endings were used accurately by advanced HSs.

Case reassignment was observed only in the last function, the genitive after verbs. The case in this function was replaced by the accusative. Recall that this was an error type observed in monolingual speakers and to an even higher degree in FGIs.

The results from task four confirmed the above discussed issues related to the genitive. The two erroneous genitive utterances consisted of the genitive after verbs and the genitive of negation:

12. Rano chłopak wstał z łóżka, patrzy, ale nie widzi żabę. Morning boy rose from bed looks but not see frog.ACC ‘In the morning the boy got up from the bed, he looks but does not see the frog.’

(SP) Rano chłopak wstał z łóżka, patrzy, ale nie widzi żaby. Morning boy rose from bed looks but not see frog.GEN

Unlike when HSs showed uncertainty about the correctness of other utterances, most participants in this group accepted the erroneous use of the genitive.

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Overall, the results from all the tasks showed that (1) the genitive was the case most often replaced by other cases, (2) the endings of this case were known to the majority of HSs, (3) the two functions used with the highest accuracy were the genitive after prepositions and the genitive after negated existentials, (4) the function used with the lowest accuracy was the genitive after verbs, (5) the accuracy rate of the genitive after verbs was lower than the others by roughly 50%, and (6) the accuracy of inflections depended on the frequency of nouns with the rates differing most in the genitive of negation and the adnominal genitive.

The Instrumental

As discussed earlier in this chapter, the frequency of the instrumental was significantly lower in the language of HSs than in the other two groups, even though FGIs also displayed a significantly lower frequency than the controls. The data from task two indicated that although the marking of this case was known to HSs (recall that this case has the least complex markings), the use of it in spontaneous speech seemed to be limited to only one function – that is, after the preposition z ‘with’ (in its function of accompaniment). Additionally, the case was replaced by other oblique cases in contexts of different other than z prepositions that in standard Polish also take the instrumental. Moreover, as in the pilot study, I observed the use of the redundant preposition z after verbs or participles that required the instrumental. In task four, this divergent use of the instrumental was accepted by most HSs. Task three revealed that the instrumental inflection was not as problematic as other cases; however, the function of nominal predicate was more difficult. However, as mentioned before, qualitative analysis of this task focused on the data from advanced HSs only, which indicated that the use of this case varied significantly between proficiency groups, with intermediate speakers using it only in the above mentioned function with

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the preposition z. In what follows, I will discuss examples of use and knowledge of the instrumental from all four tasks.

In task two, I recorded several instances of accusative-instrumental and locative- instrumental replacement. All examples of accusative-instrumental replacement were used with either the preposition za ‘behind’ (13) or pod ‘under’ (14).

13. Bo pszczoły za niego goniły. (HS16) Because bees after him.ACC chased ‘Because bees chased after him.’ (SP) Bo pszczoły za nim goniły.

14. Szukają pod łóżko. (HS6) Search under bed.ACC/NOM ‘They are searching under the bed.’ (SP) Szukają pod łóżkiem.

The accusative and instrumental share the above prepositions, and in another context, this would be standard-like usage of this case. In addition to meaning 'behind,' the preposition za bears a meaning denoting ‘instead’ when it is used with the accusative. Thus, in standard Polish, example

(13) would mean that the bees rather than the dog were chasing something/somebody. Example

(14) also pertains to accusative-instrumental replacement. The preposition pod can be used with both the instrumental and accusative. The choice of the case is governed by a verb, and only the motion verb requires the accusative in such a context.

The problem with the above two prepositions pertained to locative-instrumental replacement as well. Although the instrumental and locative do not share the preposition za (15) and pod, these prepositions emerged in the data with the locative. Additionally, the preposition pomiędzy ‘between’ (16) was recorded with the locative instead of the instrumental.

15. Za rozwalonym drzewie (HS21) Behind pulled.LOC tree.LOC

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‘Behind the pulled down tree’ (SP) za rozwalonym drzewem

16. Pomiędzy butach (HS7) Between shoes.LOC ‘Between the shoes’ (SP) pomiędzy butami

The problem with locative-instrumental replacement (15-16) is similar to the locative-genitive replacements. As in the earlier examples (5-8), speakers who otherwise produced the genitive in a different context replaced this case with the locative.

In task three, I investigated three inflections of different instrumental functions: the instrumental of predicate nominal, the instrumental of means and the instrumental after prepositions. Advanced HSs displayed differing accuracy rates for different uses of this case; however, they were not considerably varied.

The instrumental of predicate nominal was included in this task despite the fact that not all nouns are typically used with this case. Predicate nominal is a noun complement linked to a subject noun by the verb być ‘to be,’ stać się ‘to become,’ and others. Nouns denoting body parts could not be used in this context because they are rarely noun complements of this kind. Therefore, the instrumental of predicate nominal was used only with LFNs, and one HFN – lekarz ‘doctor.’ This function was included in the study because some monolingual speakers seemed to think it optional and used the nominative case instead. Also, regular use of the instrumental of predicate nominal is found in the Polish language only; other Slavic languages have either reduced their scope or never used it (Rothstein, 1986). It might suggest that this function of instrumental is more superficial than the others.

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All the investigated functions of instrumental were preserved in advanced HS grammar.

The use that proved the least problematic was the instrumental after prepositions. In fact, this function had the highest accuracy rate out of all the case functions used in this task. Most of the sentences with this function used the preposition z ‘with.’ There are two facts that might contribute to these high accuracy rates. First, as shown in the previous task, the instrumental with the preposition z is the type of this case best known to HSs. Secondly, as discussed in Chapter 3, the instrumental has only two endings to mark nouns in the singular: -ą for feminine and -em for masculine and neuter. Additionally, these endings are not used to mark any other case.

The other two case functions studied showed lower accuracy rates. As already discussed, the instrumental of predicate nominal was used with high accuracy as well. However, the number of nouns (n=4) was limited compared to other functions (n=7), so these results have to be approached with caution. Most challenging to HSs was the following sentence involving a low- frequency noun:

17. Niektórzy nazywają to postęp / postępem. Some call it progress.NOM progress.INS ‘Some call it a progress’

In the above example (17), five HSs used the nominative case instead of the required instrumental.

The verb nazywać ‘to call’ is typically followed by names or terms in Polish. Thus, the choice of the nominative used with the name of a thing or a person is well-founded here. However, because there is another word niektórzy ‘some’ that serves as a subject and one that is used as an object to

‘it’ in this sentence, the name has to be in the instrumental to distinguish between the object and the name it receives, respectively.

As discussed above, one utterance in the grammaticality judgment task included a divergent use of the instrumental, which the majority of HSs (n=21) accepted:

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18. Widzimy, że są zainteresowani z tą żabą. See that are interested with this frog. (SP) Widzimy, że są zainteresowani tą żabą. ‘We see that they are interested in this frog.’

The preposition z is redundant in this utterance. In standard Polish the participle zainteresowany ‘interested’ takes the instrumental, but a preposition is not required. In Polish HL there is a clear tendency to add the redundant preposition ‘z,’ which is otherwise the most common preposition of this case but also, as data from the previously discussed tasks indicate, the most resilient of all the instrumental functions.

Overall, use and knowledge of the instrumental were varied in Polish HL, depending on the speakers’ level of proficiency. Occurrences of the instrumental were significantly less frequent in spontaneous speech, and its use was limited to one preposition. It should be noted, however, that the present study explored only a very small fraction of all the possible uses of this case. The instrumental was also considered a weak case by Laskowski (2014).

The Locative

The data from task two and three showed that the locative inflection was the most difficult as far as endings were concerned. Several tendencies regarding this case were observed. One was the above mentioned locative-accusative replacement when a preposition could be used with both cases. Additionally, case allomorphy reduction was the most evident for the locative. Given the case’s most extensive marking inventory, this finding was not surprising. The findings of task three from advanced speakers, however, showed that this case’s inflection was stable across the genders and for both types of nouns (LFN and HFN). Interestingly, reduction of allomorphy was observed

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in intermediate and advanced speakers alike, although to a lesser degree in the latter proficiency group. In the following, I will present examples from task two and three.

Recall from Table 6.3 that in addition to replacement of the genitive with other cases, the most frequent substitution pertained to accusative-locative and locative-accusative pairs. Once more, this strategy was used by intermediate HSs significantly more frequently. As discussed in

Chapter 3, the accusative and locative cases share many prepositions. The same prepositions, however, are used to denote two different concepts. For example, the preposition na ‘on’ is used in the accusative to convey a target toward which action expressed by a verb of motion is directed.

On the other hand, the same preposition expresses location when used with a static type of verb.

19. Leży na głowę jelenia. (HS5) Lies on head.ACC deer.GEN ‘He is on the deer’s head.’ (SP) Leży na głowie jelenia.

20. Chłopiec spadł na ziemi. (HS6) Boy fell on ground.LOC ‘The boy fell on the ground.’ (SP) Chłopiec spadł na ziemię.

The above examples illustrate how the locative was replaced by accusative (19) and the accusative by locative (20). Both types of replacement were used with almost the same frequency.

Two participants, HS4 and HS11, who used the accusative to replace locative most often, exhibited problems especially with the latter. The recording of HS4 included only one example of the locative, whereas HS11 used it 11 times, of which three tokens were used in the wrong context

(replacing other cases) and two displayed non-standard-like endings: w lasu ‘in the forest,’ (SP) w lesie; w rekie ‘in the river,’ (SP) w rzece. This might indicate that the locative might be replaced by the accusative more often if a speaker exhibits difficulties with the locative markings. In

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general, case substitution after shared prepositions indicated the diminished role of the verb in the syntax of HSs.

In regard to reduced allomorphy in the locative, the recorded divergences showed the use of case marking, which was a possible ending for this case but a wrong choice for the particular consonant. The chosen erroneous endings, however, did not require a consonant alternation. This strategy allowed for allomorphic reduction of locative case endings. Recall that the locative has four different vowel endings; -ie, -e, -y and -i. They are phonologically motivated; the choice of the ending depends on the final consonant. Additionally, adding the ending -ie or -e can cause a final consonant alternation. Thus, case marking for the locative includes a two-step mechanism for nouns ending in dental and alveolar consonants in all genders, and velar consonants in feminine.

This mechanism was replaced by some HSs with a one-step mechanism of final vowel attachment.

For example, three HSs used the form w rzekie ‘in the river’ instead of w rzece. Recall that the ending -ie is the most common ending used to mark the locative. Feminine nouns ending in -k, -g and -h, however, undergo a consonant alternation, and the final consonants are replaced by -c, -dz and -sz, respectively. These nouns are marked by -e in the locative. Other words that were marked by a most common ending were: w dziurie ‘in the whole,’ (SP) w dziurze; na kamienie ‘on a stone,’

(SP) na kamieniu. Another example of allomorphic reduction was w lasie ‘in the forest.’ In the standard variation, the noun las takes the most frequent ending -ie but undergoes a vowel alternation of a into e. There was also another divergent ending for this form in w lasu, which could also be considered genitive-locative replacement; however, due to other errors of case allomorphic reduction exhibited by this speaker, allomorphic reduction seems more likely.

In task three, the locative case was used only with one utterance; however, two different prepositions were tested in this task, namely w ‘in’ (n=4) and o ‘about’ (n=3). Typically, the

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preposition w ‘in’ is used in the spatial function, so it was difficult to find sentences with it to inflect abstract nouns. Therefore, the preposition o ‘about’ was used because it follows verbs like rozmawiać ‘to talk’ or myśleć ‘to think,’ which allows for the use of the aforementioned nouns.

As discussed above, the accuracy rates for the locative were the most consistent across the genders.

Also, they did not differ for HFNs and LFNs in a significant way.

The divergences found in the locative inflection in task three were of two types. The first consisted of the correct ending of the locative used after the wrong consonant as observed in the previous task. Altogether there were eight tokens of such divergences found in the speech of advanced HSs. For example, two HSs inflected brzuch ‘stomach’ by adding the ending -ie, which is an otherwise correct ending for this case and gender, but it is not used after velar consonants in masculine, which require the ending –u. The opposite pattern was found in the inflection of kolano

‘knee’ and miano ‘denomination.’ There were four tokens of the ending -u rather than prescribed

-ie.

Overall, the two tasks that measured use of the locative shown similar patterns. First, the case was replaced by the accusative, or the other way around, if the two cases shared the prepositions. Second, allomorphic reduction was recorded, which allowed to use one-step mechanism of case ending attachment. The case inflection did not differ for various genders and the above problems were exhibited by lower and higher proficiency speakers alike.

The Dative

As discussed earlier in this chapter, data from the various tasks suggested that the dative case might be partially lost in Polish HL. First, the case was used very infrequently. In fact, altogether only 14 tokens of the dative were recorded in spontaneous speech. Consequently, this

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case’s inflection proved the most problematic in task three, even for advanced HSs. Also, this task showed that the dative might be better retained in masculine and feminine and lost in neuter, which is understandable because the case is often used to mark a human or animate recipient or experiencer. However, the dative did not occur in my data frequently enough for me to decide whether it is completely lost in the language of HSs or not. The patterns observed in the dative inflection were an overgeneralization of one ending as well as an attachment of endings of the wrong gender. Interestingly, no single token of the case was replaced by the prepositional phrase with genitive (dla +GEN), as was observed in other studies (Laskowski, 2014).

As for errors with markings of the dative, the divergences for this case, similarly to the genitive and locative, pertained to the overextension of one ending (21-22).

21. Powiedzieli synku, że musi iść spać. (HS3) Told son.DAT, that must go sleep. ‘They told the son to go to bed.’ (SP) Powiedzieli synkowi, że musi iść spać.

22. Chłopak mówi psowi, żeby był cichy. (HS10) Boy tells dog.DAT to be quiet. ‘The boy tells the dog to be quiet.’ (SP) Chłopak mówi psu, żeby był cicho.

The dative marking in the above examples should be -owi in (21) and -u in (22). The speakers overgeneralized one ending of this case into nouns that required different marking due to gender or lexical constrains. Example (22) represents overextension of the ending -owi, which is otherwise the correct ending for the masculine dative. However, the word pies ‘dog’ belongs to the group of 16 masculine nouns that require a different ending. Recall from Chapter 3 that this rule of standard Polish is sometimes problematic for even native speakers.

In task three, accuracy rates of the dative were the lowest of all the inflections. The most consistent divergence found in this task was the ending -u added to the inanimate noun brzuch,

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instead of the required -owi. As shown in Table 6.9, 11 out of 13 advanced HSs used the correct ending -owi with the animate noun lekarz ‘doctor.’ Nevertheless, the ending -u was used by more than half of the advanced HS to mark the aforementioned masculine noun brzuch. This behavior may signify several things: (1) HSs' misunderstanding of the verb przyglądać się ‘to watch/observe,’ (2) overgeneralization of the -u ending for inanimate nouns, or (3) problems with case ending retrieval. Note that the choice of verb przyglądać się ‘to watch/observe’ allowed for the use of inanimate nouns. The verb is frequent in standard Polish and is used to teach monolingual children how to inflect nouns in the dative.

To summarize, the use and knowledge of the dative case was the most problematic for

HSs. It is possible, as the previously discussed quantitative data shown that the dative is partially lost in Polish HL. HSs displayed differing use and knowledge of various genders. Also, there was significant difference between performance of intermediate and advanced HSs in regard to this case.

Case use and knowledge – summary

The above section provided qualitative analysis of case use and knowledge of HSs as displayed in all tasks. Several patterns were discussed. First, case substitution tendencies were described inasmuch as they bear significance to answering research question number two. Second, the analysis of individual case use and knowledge was presented, which indicated that in addition to overall lower case frequency, HSs displayed such divergences as allomorphic reduction, case function reduction and problems with prepositions. These findings will be essential in answering research question number two, and will be further discussed in Chapter 7.

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6.3.2 Other related nominal divergences

In addition to problems with case use and knowledge, the above tasks provided data on other nominal divergences that might be related to cases. These patterns consisted of the use of indefinite and demonstrative pronouns, the agreement between the noun and its modifier as well as grammatical gender.

First, a strategy pointing to problems with case marking retrieval was observed. Examples from the speech of four HSs showed that the indefinite pronoun jakiś ‘some’ was used before case replacement of oblique cases with the nominative (23). The indefinite pronoun jakiś is the closest equivalent to the English indefinite article a found in the Polish language.

23. Chłopiec wpadł w jakieś... jakaś rzeka. (HS10) Boy fell into some.NOM.N some.NOM.F river.NOM.F ‘The boy fell into a river.’ (SP) Chłopiec wpadł w jakąś rzekę.

In addition to the pronoun jakiś, the demonstrative pronoun ten ‘this’ was used in a similar manner, i.e., when the nominative case replaced oblique case. This strategy most likely demonstrates the speaker’s difficulty with oblique case ending retrieval or/and a word retrieval, as suggested by the change of gender from jakieś ‘some.N’ into jakaś ‘some.F.’ But this type of substitution, which involves pausing and the use of a pronoun, suggests that the strategy is used to deal with temporal difficulties with case inflections.

In addition, the most common divergences recorded in these data pertained to the agreement between the noun and its modifier – that is, either an adjective or pronoun. Overall, the number of modifiers, especially adjectives, was very low in the speech of HSs. In fact, only HS21 used adjectives more than once in her story. The type of modifier used more frequently by this group was the demonstrative pronoun ten or the aforementioned indefinite pronoun jakiś. In

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addition to the nominative substitution strategy involving these pronouns, in which they were in agreement with a noun, there were several instances of a lack of agreement between modifier and noun, as in the following example:

24. Chłopiec wziął jeden z tych mały żaby. (HS5) Boy took one of these.GEN small.NOM.SG frog.NOM.PL ‘The boy took one of these small frogs.’ (SP) Chłopiec wziął jedną z tych małych żab.

In the above example, the demonstrative pronoun ten was inflected correctly for case and number but the following adjective and noun were not. Moreover, the adjective was not in agreement with the plural form of the noun. The low usage of modifiers in the speech of HSs as well as the above type of errors point to problems with agreement and/or possibly grammatical gender. A more in- depth analysis of these phenomena lies beyond the scope of this dissertation, however.

Problems with grammatical gender

As discussed earlier, the study of HSs’ grammar elements other than case is beyond the scope of this dissertation. It was also mentioned that problems with agreement most likely indicate difficulties with grammatical gender, by which I meant grammatical gender in singular. As mentioned earlier, the case inflection patterns collected in the ESCT also indicated problems with grammatical gender. HSs exhibited differential knowledge of various genders; the least problematic was the masculine animate, followed by feminine, masculine inanimate and neuter.

As far as the non-personal-masculine and personal-masculine distinction found in plural, the data recorded in this study provide ample material to make a statement that most HSs in this study did not use this distinction. Recall that in addition to marking the nominative and accusative differently for masculine-personal nouns (referring to a group of people with at least one male),

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the past tense conjugation uses different affixes for the respective genders. The divergent markings of verbs indicated HSs’ lack of the distinction or divergent use of it (25-26)

25. Pszczoły zaczynali atakować. (HS1) Bees started.MP attack ‘The bees began attacking.’ (SP) Pszczoły zaczynały atakować.

26. Pszczoły byli. (HS21) Bees were.MP ‘The bees were.’ (SP) Pszczoły były.

The above examples suggest that HSs overused the masculine-personal endings for both groups, thereby eliminating the gender distinction by using the more common ones. However, an overextension of non-masculine-personal endings was recorded as well:

27. Chłopczyk i piesek wstały rano. (HS4) Boy and dog rose.NMP morning. ‘The boy and his dog got up in the morning.’ (SP) Chłopczyk i piesek wstali rano.

Most HSs in this study exhibited an overextension of one gender’s endings, using it to mark both. Since there was more than one pattern possible, it might suggest that the masculine-personal vs. non-masculine-personal distinction was lost in HSs, but the markings of both genders may have been overgeneralized to mark the plural forms of verbs.

6.3.3 Lexicon

Task one - OPI

Even though HSs’ proficiency fit into the binary system (presented in Tables 5.5 & 5.6), they displayed a vast range of abilities in oral speech production; i.e., there were significant 210

differences between those assessed as Intermediate and those who were at the Advanced level.

Half of them were only able to talk about familiar topics, such as their daily routine, family life, studies and so on. Their speech was characterized by numerous loanwords, especially pertaining to their studies. In fact, the major complaint of all HSs in this study, even the most advanced, was the lack of Polish vocabulary related to their studies. When asked about problems they experienced with the Polish language, many of them mentioned that they were unable to talk about the topics or subject matters they learned at school. Most of them, for example, had difficulties translating their major into Polish. On the other hand, advanced speakers were able to discuss more general topics and give an account of things that had happened in the past, such as favorite vacations, family gatherings, trips abroad, etc. Additionally, they could provide descriptions of various types

(e.g., Chicago’s neighborhoods, student life, etc.). Also, advanced speakers attempted to provide comparisons of various matters and ideas (American vs. Polish culture, problems of a global scope, etc.).

As indicated by previous research (for an overview, see Montrul, 2016), the lexicon of HSs displays all kinds of divergences, ranging from code-switching, loanwords and lexical-retrieval problems, to so-called calques (multiple-word substitution). In the present study, code-switching and lexical-retrieval problems were more recurrent in the second task. The OPI speech samples provided ample evidence for loanwords as well as multiple-word substitution.

As in previous studies on Polish in the United States (Gruchmanowa 1988, Kozminska

2015), the loanwords49 that I observed in this study can be classified as derivational blends and

49 By “loanword,” I mean a word that is adopted from one language into another. Additionally, such a word is adapted to the receiving language in terms of its phonetics and/or morphology.

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extensions according to Winford's typology (2003). The first group is a subtype of loanwords and denotes an imported stem with a native suffix. The second group represents loan meaning and denotes shifts in the semantics of a native word under the influence of a foreign word.

28. Idziemy50 na te kompetycje. (HS7) ‘We go to these competitions.’ (SP) Jeździmy na te zawody.

In the above sentence, the loanword kompetycja was created with an imported English stem from the word competition and by adding a Polish suffix -cja.51

29. Bym chciała zasejwować te pieniążki. (HS12) ‘I would like to save this money.’ (SP) Chciałabym zaoszczędzić te pieniążki.

Derivational blends are also found in verbs (29) and adjectives. In the above example (29), an English word to save was borrowed and adapted to the Polish conjugation system by adding two affixes; the final suffix -ować is a suffix of an infinitive, which permits conjugation according to the Polish paradigm. Of interest here is the fact that the suffix -ować has been used in the Polish language with foreign verbs, allowing for their adaptation into the conjugation system. For example, verbs borrowed from Latin were incorporated into the language thanks to this suffix. The second affix, the prefix za-, is commonly used to mark the perfective aspect, which signifies the completion of an action. Thus, the verb to save is not only adapted to the conjugation patterns but also assigned aspect to fully fit the grammatical system.

50 The verb idziemy represents a different type of loanword discussed below.

51 Note that the suffix -cja is also used in the creation of the loanword graduacja recorded by Kozminska (2015), which was found in this study as well.

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The other group of loanwords refers to a group where an existing word is used with a different meaning. It was perhaps one of the most persistent divergences in this sample. In addition to the words attested by Kozminska (2015), such as klasa or kontraktorski, I observed an erroneous use of verbs of motion. Verbs of motion in Polish represent a lexically more complex group than in English. For example, depending on the context, the meaning of the English verb to go is conveyed by at least four Polish verbs. First, there is a distinction between motion under one’s own power and motion by vehicle or other conveyance, represented by two different verbs iść and jeździć respectively. Additionally, basic verbs of motion make a distinction as to whether the action is ongoing (determinate) or habitual (indeterminate). For this distinction, the Polish language also has a pair of different verbs for most basic verbs of motion; for example, to go is conveyed by iść and chodzić, as well as jechać and jeździć for motion by vehicle, respectively. There is a clear tendency in HSs to use only one verb iść for all these four types of movement:

30. Przyjdę na klasę tutaj. (HS11) ‘I go to my classes here.’ (SP) Przychodzę na zajęcia tutaj.

31. Mama tutaj przyszła. (HS16) ‘Mom came here.’ (SP) Mama tutaj przyjechała.

In the above examples, speakers used the verb iść instead of the indeterminate chodzić in example

(3) but also instead of the verb jechać, which is required to express motion by vehicle (28 & 31).

The verbs, however, are correctly conjugated for person and tense, which may suggest that these errors are of a more permanent nature.

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32. Byłem zaakceptowany do programu. (HS5) ‘I was accepted to the program.’ (SP) Byłem przyjęty na program.

In example (32) the participle zaakceptowany is an existing word. Moreover, the whole phrase could pass as correct and would be understood by monolingual speakers. However, typically the word zaakceptowany is used in Polish as well-received instead of admitted, as was the speaker’s intention in this sentence.

In addition to the aforementioned loanwords, Polish HL distinguishes itself by a large number of multiple-word loans, commonly referred to as calques. Silva-Corvalan (1994) discerned two types of the calques. The first category consists of multiple-word calques that do not alter semantic or grammatical features, whereas the other type of calques has lexico-semantic and/or grammatical consequences on the borrowing language. Since examples of the first type were not recorded in this study, I will focus on the second type, which also includes calques of band collocations, idioms and proverbs.

An example of a calque with lexical consequence is the English collocation to lose one’s language. In Polish, this meaning would be expressed with the verb to forget. However, in the language of HSs, one can hear expressions, such as in example (33), which are literal translations of English collocations. Additionally, the verb zgubić undergoes a semantic shift. The standard variation has two different verbs to express the meaning of English to lose: stracić and zgubić.

The latter is typically used with physical objects. However, in this calque, it is used with the noun język in its abstract meaning. The Polish word for language, język, has a double meaning, also denoting a physical tongue. Therefore, the sense of the calque has a comic twist for a monolingual listener as in “not to drop one’s tongue.” 214

33. Żeby nie zgubić język. ‘Not to lose the language/ Not to drop one’s tongue.’ (SP) żeby nie zapomnieć języka/ nie stracić umiejętności w języku

In addition to idiomatic expressions, I observed a type of the multiple-word units that Silva-

Corvalan (1994) termed lexico-semantic calques. These calques alter either the meaning of a word in HL or cause change in grammatical restrictions. Example (34) illustrates a calque of the second type.

34. Nigdy byłyśmy do Polski. (HS6) ‘We have never been to Poland.’ (SP) Nigdy nie byliśmy w Polsce.

The entire sentence is a transfer of the English utterance: We have never been to Poland. It violates the rules of Polish negation, which require the particle nie ‘no, not’ in addition to the word never

(double negative is a norm in Polish). It also uses a different preposition and case do Polski, which is typically not governed by the verb być ‘to be.’ However, the markers of the plural first person past conjugation -śmy52 and the genitive of the noun Poland -i are correct. Thus, the syntactic structure of this utterance comes from the dominant language (English), but it is realized with the use of Polish lexical items, which are additionally conjugated and inflected according to the rules of HL.

The aim of the first task was to assess HSs’ skills in order to better organize data from the group traditionally described as non-homogenous. Additionally, due to the nature of the other tasks, the OPI was conducted only on speakers of at least Intermediate Low level.53 The ample

52 However, the gender marker -ły is used with non-personal masculine subjects, which most likely was not an intended subject of this sentence.

53 In my study design, I had planned to exclude speakers of lower than Intermediate Low level after conducting the OPI; however, none of the participants who signed up for this study were assessed as such.

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data gained by means of this interview allowed for an evaluation of HL, especially its lexicon.

These results are of value also because they are possibly related to the grammatical systems of

HSs. As stated, HSs’ knowledge of lexicon is linked to their grammatical proficiency (Polinsky,

2006). The topics chosen for the OPI, many of which referred to daily life, allowed for capturing the language used by HSs most of the time, in its most natural way. Finally, the binary skills division that emerged from this task – i.e., HSs were assessed either as Intermediate or Advanced

– were helpful in evaluating other issues pertaining to HL through comparison to speakers’ proficiency.

Task two - problems with retrieval of lexicon

The frog story proved challenging for many HSs because of their problems with lexicon.

Everyday objects like “jar” or names of animals were especially difficult. All HSs exhibited problems with lexical retrieval of at least one word. However, it is possible that there were more words they did not know, but they used avoidance techniques to hide it.

HSs used various strategies when they could not remember a word, some of them simply code-switching into English without pausing (35):

35. Nie wiem, co mam mówić o tym, jest na deer. (HS7) 'I don’t know what to say about it, he is on a deer.'

This strategy was used by four HSs in this study. Interestingly, three of them (HS14, HS19 &

HS20) were assessed as intermediate speakers, but HS7 who code-switched very often was otherwise quite fluent, and her OPI assessment was Advanced Low. Code-switching was not used by HSs as often as anticipated, although all HSs admitted to using this strategy when talking to other people. It should be mentioned that they were instructed to tell the story in Polish as much

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as they could without anyone’s help. Thus, in addition to code-switching they used other techniques whenever they had problems with lexicon.

Eleven HSs used another strategy of pausing and trying to recall a word, and when they failed to do so, they either asked for help or expressed their difficulty remembering the word. For example, HS2, who did not know the word for deer, admitted it by saying after a long pause:

36. Nie wiem, jak to się mówi. (HS2) 'I don’t know how to say it.'

Consequently, she shortened this part of the story involving the deer by simply stating that the boy and the dog fell into the water.

Another strategy recorded in the speech of eight HSs involved the recall of a word that represents a super-category. For example, a jar was called pojemnik ‘container,’ deer – zwierzę

‘animal’ and owl – ptak ‘bird.’ This strategy as well as circumlocution – i.e., using a description instead of a forgotten or unknown word (37) – allowed speakers to continue telling the story without as much interruption.

37. Złamał ten szklany rzecz. (HS8) He broke this glass thing ‘He broke the jar.’

In addition to these techniques, HSs’ problems with lexicon consisted of mispronounced words (żyba, (SP) żaba or żerzątko, (SP) zwierzątko) or using a wrong word such as camel, roe or reindeer instead of deer.

The above section provided analysis of the lexicon of HSs. Since previous research has indicated that vocabulary knowledge is related to grammar knowledge, it seemed understandable to discuss lexicon when analyzing cases. Also, there appeared to be a connection between the

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cognitive mechanisms that are involved in lexicon and grammar retrieval, which will be discussed in Chapter 7.

6.4 Qualitative data – first-generation immigrants

6.4.1 Case distribution – task two

As shown in Figure 6.1, case distribution varied for first-generation immigrants and monolingual controls. First, there was a discrepancy between these two groups in the overall frequency of cases per clause. FGIs displayed a lower frequency of case use. Consequent analysis of individual cases showed that the biggest difference lay in the distribution of the instrumental and accusative.

As discussed in Chapter 3, the instrumental is the most semantically diverse case.

Comparison of data from the above two groups showed that FGIs used it in fewer functions than the monolingual controls. The so-called figurative uses of the instrumental were especially rare in the speech of FGIs. However, this population used the instrumental of means, considered the most basic function of this case, infrequently as well. The two most common uses of the instrumental recorded in the speech of FGIs were the instrumental after preposition z ‘together with,’ known as the instrumental of accompaniment (also the most common in the language of HSs), and the instrumental in spatial functions following various prepositions such as: nad ‘over, above;’ pod

‘beneath, under;’ za ‘beyond, behind.’ Additionally, infrequent examples of the instrumental of predicate nominal (38) as well as the instrumental of time were recorded.

38. Złapali żabkę, która okazała się częścią rodziny. (FGI5) Caught frog which turned out part.INS family ‘They caught a frog which turned out to be a part of a family’

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On the other hand, monolingual controls used the instrumental in all aforementioned functions as well as in its figurative uses. For example, the so-called instrumental of accompanying action or emotion was used to describe how the action was done: z niepokojem ‘with concern,’ z ciekawością ‘with curiosity,’ z takim zaangażowaniem ‘with such a commitment.’ Another figurative use observed was the instrumental of cause. This type of instrumental is used with passive participles, such as: zmęczony tą zabawą ‘tired of this game,’ rozbawiony całą sytuacją

‘amused by the whole situation,’ przestraszony widokiem ‘frightened by the view.’ The last type of instrumental emerged in the speech of FGIs only once, a fact possibly related to their very rare use of passive participles.

As for the accusative, the difference in frequency between FGIs and monolinguals was more difficult to pinpoint. One way of explaining the decreased use of the accusative in the speech of FGIs might be that the clauses of monolinguals contained more elements and their language was more descriptive, hence there was a difference in case frequency. Overall, both groups used the accusative after prepositions and to mark direct objects. One small difference observed in the behavior of these two groups was how often they used the accusative in verb-preposition phrasal combinations such as: wyruszyć w podróż ‘to get on the road,’ wyglądać na zadowolonego ’to look pleased,’ or natrafić na ślady ‘to find tracks.’

The above section discussed the divergences in case distribution displayed by FGIs. As previously stated, the error rate in case use was very low for this group; however, case distribution per clause showed a significant difference between the case usage of monolinguals and of this group. Subsequent comparative analysis showed that FGIs did not use the instrumental and the accusative as often as the control group, especially in the figurative context. These results are of significance for this study because they show a change in case use in the generation that provides

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input to HSs. Also, these data will be helpful in answering research question number three. The following section will offer an analysis of other divergences observed in the speech of FGIs.

6.4.2 Errors in case inflections

As discussed earlier in this chapter, the error rate in case use in task two, three and four was only slightly higher for FGIs (0.8% in task two, 4% in task three and four) than for the control group (0% in task two, 2% in task three and four). In regard to task two, the error rate was low in

FGIs, and only one pattern was recorded in the speech of more than one participant. It pertained to the use of the accusative instead of the genitive after verbs that require the latter: szukać coś

‘look for something,’ (SP) szukać czegoś. This error was found in the speech of four FGIs. As discussed in Chapter 2, the genitive after verbs is the most erroneous function of the genitive in the speech of Poles. It was observed that monolingual speakers preferred to use the accusative, which is otherwise required in the syntactic function of the direct object.

In regard to task three, the data from FGIs and monolinguals were compared to analyze the kind of errors the former group exhibited. Like in the previous task, the error type that emerged in both groups was a lack of the genitive after the verb; this time, however, it was the verb słuchać

‘to listen.’ Almost half of the participants in both groups displayed a preference for the accusative in the following sentence:

39. Lekarz słucha brzuch Doctor listens stomach.ACC ‘The doctor is listening to the stomach.’

vs. Lekarz słucha brzucha. Doctor listens stomach.GEN

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It seems that linguistic custom allows for optionality in regard to this verb, and therefore some speakers showed a preference for the accusative case. However, other verbs that take the genitive used in this task did not yield such results. In sentences with other nouns, the verbs dotykać ‘to touch,’ szukać ‘to search for,’ pragnąć ‘to desire,’ and potrzebować ‘to need’ were used with the genitive as prescriptive grammars dictated by both groups most of the time.

FGIs, however, differed slightly in regard to the neuter genitive inflection. They made more errors with the neuter nouns kolano ‘knee’ and miano ‘denomination’ after verbs that take the genitive. The latter difference between the error patterns of FGIs and monolinguals was related to another pattern that emerged for FGIs and not for controls. Half of the FGIs made an error in the dative when inflecting the following neuter nouns (40-41):

40. Przyglądał się kolanowi. Watched knee.DAT.M ‘He watched the knee.’

(SP) Przyglądał się kolanu. Watched knee.DAT.N

41. Grecka bogini patronuje miano / mianem. Greek goddess patronizes denomination.NOM denomination.INS ‘The Greek goddess patronizes the denomination.’

(SP) Grecka bogini patronuje mianu. Greek goddess patronizes denomination.DAT

As the above examples show, FGIs in this study had problems with the neuter dative inflection. In example (40), they attached the marking of the masculine gender -owi, and in example (41), most of them left the noun uninflected or attached the marking of the instrumental

(although one speaker added the ending of the masculine dative, too).

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Overall, there were two patterns observed in the errors made by FGIs pertaining to the neuter gender: reassigning the neuter gender by adding either masculine or feminine endings, and leaving the noun uninflected. It is worth mentioning that the Polish language has a considerable group of neuter nouns that are uninflected; i.e., the nominative ending is used to mark all the oblique cases in singular.

In regard to the results from task four, monolingual controls and FGIs did not accept most of the erroneous sentences, but there were a few exceptions. As in task three, these exceptions pertained to the genitive after verbs and to the dative. First, there were three FGIs who accepted the following sentence, even though the direct object in this sentence is in the accusative case instead of the prescribed genitive:

42. Chłopiec zaczął szukać żabę po całym pokoju. Boy started search frog.ACC after whole room ‘The boy started looking for the frog in the whole room.’

In addition to this divergence, three FGIs also accepted a sentence with the accusative case instead of the dative:

43. Chłopiec każe psa, żeby był cicho. Boy commands dog.ACC to was quiet ‘The boy commands the dog to be quiet.’

Unlike all the monolinguals, who found the error and corrected it, these FGIs either misunderstood the sentence or overlooked the accusative ending. The importance of these results is that FGIs exhibited lower sensitivity to the markings of the dative case.

The above observations from all the tasks can be summarized as follows: (1) FGIs were more prone than monolinguals to use or accept the accusative after verbs that take the genitive in standard Polish; (2) neuter inflections were reassigned by half the FGIs (in the genitive and dative

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either feminine or masculine endings were used, or the noun was left uninflected); (3) FGIs displayed lower sensitivity to errors in the dative marking. These observations will be relevant in answering research question number three regarding attrition of case knowledge in FGIs.

6.4.3 Problems with lexical retrieval

The problems with lexicon exhibited by first-generation immigrants were less evident than in the group of HSs. For example, most of the time they did not substitute super-category nouns for a noun they could not recall. Overall, they used all the nouns required to name the objects and animals in this study. The only three nouns some of them admitted not remembering were beehive, cliff and pet. Two of these nouns, however, do not have a one-word representation in Polish. For example, beehive is translated as ul, but only in reference to man-made wooden boxes, while natural beehives are called gniazdo ‘nest.’ The second noun pet does not have a one-word equivalent in Polish. To express this meaning the word zwierzę ‘animal’ is used with an adjective domowe ‘domestic.’ These retrieval issues with nouns that do not have a one-word representation in the Polish language like they do in English, point to the role of L2 lexicon in the lexical retrieval process of these bilinguals as well as to the cognitive economy that often accounts for such retrieval failures in first-generation immigrants.

Another strategy observed in FGIs, which may point to problems with lexical retrieval, was their pauses, both filled and unfilled. Pausing was observed in all the groups in this study, and HSs used it most frequently. Although not as profound as in HSs, the frequency of pausing in the speech of FGIs was noticeably greater than in monolingual controls, who used this strategy relatively rarely.

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Finally, the language of FGIs differed from that of monolingual controls by number of unfinished or corrected utterances. Once more, the strategy of unfinished and/or corrected sentences was used by all the groups, but I observed that FGIs exhibited more problems of this kind than did monolingual controls, but fewer than did HSs. The following example (44) illustrates how FGIs dealt with lexical retrieval issues:

44. Chłopiec spadł z tego jelenia, z tej głowy do takiej .... do wody. (FGI3) ‘The boy fell from this deer, from this head into such … into water.’

Before a long pause, the speaker of this sentence used the pronoun takiej ‘such,’ which was in feminine gender and suggested a noun in feminine, possibly sadzawka ‘pond,’ which could not be recalled and was therefore replaced by the more generic noun woda ‘water.’

Example (45) shows how a speaker used circumlocution when having a problem recalling an adjective. This time, instead of just one word, the speaker used a whole utterance to describe the unusual appearance of the boy:

45. Wygląda jakby troszeczkę był (hmm), taką dziwną minkę ma. (FGI8) ‘He looks as if he was a little bit …, he has strange facial expressions.’

To summarize, FGIs’ problems with lexicon retrieval and possible problems with grammatical ending retrieval were not as visible as in the data from HSs; however, the above discussed strategies suggest that FGIs had problems recalling certain elements of the language. As more skilled speakers of the language, they used techniques that allowed them to mask these difficulties more successfully.

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Chapter 7. Discussion

7.1 Introduction

The present chapter offers an in-depth discussion of the findings presented in the previous chapter. The discussion is organized around the four research questions of this dissertation. I address all the research questions by providing a detailed analysis of the key research findings presented in Chapter 6. The results of the study are also discussed in relation to previous research studies. Section 7.2 discusses the general knowledge of cases in HSs, focusing on which cases were preserved and/or lost. Section 7.3 focuses on patterns in individual case divergences in HSs.

Section 7.4 offers an analysis of case knowledge and use in the first-generation immigrants.

Section 7.5 analyzes the role of extra-linguistic factors in shaping the grammars of HSs.

7.2 More and less vulnerable cases in HSs

The first research question of the present dissertation deals with a type of case that is more and/or less vulnerable in heritage language. In particular, the aim of this study was to see if the language of Polish HSs retained cases in a way that would suggest that certain categories of cases are less and/or more vulnerable. Thus far, the research on HL has suggested two main theories regarding cases.54 First, based on the findings of his research on Polish HSs in Sweden, Laskowski

(2014) suggested that cases belong to two categories: strong and weak. The first category consists

54 It should be noted that a new book by Maria Polinsky (2018) recently suggested a different approach to case retainment in HL. This publication appeared after the first chapters of this dissertation were written therefore its main assumption were not discussed earlier.

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of the nominative, accusative and genitive; the second is made up of the locative, instrumental and dative. This binary distinction is based on a case’s main function (whether syntactic or semantic), frequency of use and order of acquisition by monolingual children. According to Laskowski, cases that belong to the strong category are retained better in HL. The second typology, presented in

White Paper; Prolegomena to Heritage Speakers by Benmamoun, Montrul, and Polinsky (2013), also posits two types of case, but this theory is rooted in Chomsky’s distinction between structural and inherent cases. The first type consists of the nominative and accusative, while the inherent case group is made up of the genitive, locative, instrumental and dative (as well as other cases in other languages). Based on evidence from several heritage languages, proponents of this theory suggest that inherent case is better preserved in HL. Apart from the genitive, the above-discussed theories are contradictory, suggesting quite an opposite case retention.

The main hypothesis of this dissertation, as presented in Chapter 4, is that neither of the above theories can explain why certain cases will be retained in the language of Polish HSs in the

United States. Based on my pilot study as well as on findings from morphologically complex languages, I argue that case retention in HL is more contingent on case morphology and markedness of functions – i.e., the more marked the case function, the less it will be retained in

HL.

To evaluate the soundness of this hypothesis, I designed two major tasks and tested them on three groups of participants. The rationale behind using the first task of story elicitation was to observe how cases were used in semi-spontaneous speech. The goal of employing the second task, sentence elicitation completion, was to see how speakers dealt with elicited case inflections and if there was any difference between the results of the first and second tasks. Additionally, the

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rationale of recruiting three groups of participants – heritage speakers, first-generation immigrants and monolingual controls – was to contrast the results of the above-mentioned tasks to identify divergences in case use between the groups.

The results from task one showed that HSs used cases less frequently than the other two groups; an analysis of oblique case distribution by clause shows that they used it in only 72% of the clauses they produced, whereas the other two groups used it in 81% (FGIs) and 99% (CG) respectively. The error rate in case use was the highest for HSs as well. Additionally, the contrastive analysis of individual case distribution in these three groups showed that HSs used all the oblique cases less often than the other two groups, with the genitive, instrumental, and dative displaying significantly lower frequencies (Figure 6.1). Additionally, of all the groups, the HSs employed case substitution most frequently. The two cases used most often to replace others were the nominative and accusative. It is important to mention that lower proficiency HSs employed the most substitution in this group and used the nominative to replace the oblique cases most of the time. Finally, HSs often replaced cases in post-prepositional functions, with accusative-locative and locative-accusative replacements being most common.

The results from task two showed that HSs made significantly more errors when inflecting words than the other two groups in the study. Also, a significant difference between the accuracy rate of intermediate and advanced speakers was observed. Unlike in the other two groups, however, noun frequency was observed to have an effect on accuracy of inflection for HSs. Additionally, an analysis of inflections by individual case function showed that different case functions were more vulnerable in the grammars of HSs. For example, of the six genitive functions evaluated in this task, the genitive of negation after existentials and the genitive after prepositions were inflected

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with the highest accuracy. On the other hand, very low accuracy in the inflection of the genitive after verbs suggests that this function was reassigned to the accusative in the HSs’ grammars.

Moreover, very low accuracy in the dative inflection may suggest that the HSs’ knowledge of this case was restricted to masculine animate and feminine, and lost in neuter. Additionally, when knowledge of this case was compared between intermediate and advanced HSs, I suggest that the dative might be completely lost in lower proficiency speakers.

To summarize, the above-described findings from the first and second tasks indicate that the HSs as a group used all cases, although with decreased frequency and accuracy. However, lower-proficiency speakers may not have known or used the dative case as well as some functions of the genitive. Overall, case substitution strategies showed that (1) lower-proficiency HSs used the nominative case to replace all the oblique cases, (2) advanced speakers used the accusative case to replace the genitive, and (3) all HSs tended to over-generalize one post-prepositional case; that is, in instances when one preposition could be used with two different cases, they opted for one.

The frequency of all case use decreased in the HSs compared to the two other groups; this finding, however, cannot be explained by either of the case typologies mentioned earlier (see Fig.

6.2). Laskowski's (2014) strong and weak case theory would be more likely to explain how cases are retained if not for the reassignment of some functions of the genitive. On the other hand, the theory of inherent cases being less vulnerable (Benmamoun, et al., 2013) also cannot explain the cases used by Polish HSs. For one, the HSs’ limited knowledge of the dative contradicts the above theory. Additionally, the HSs used the accusative case to replace other oblique cases and

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exchanged the accusative for locative and the locative for accusative with almost the same frequency.

The mean of individual case distribution per clause for all HSs was significantly different across proficiency levels (Fig. 6.2). However, when we look at the results of advanced HSs separately, most of them are similar to those obtained from FGIs, with similar error patterns but intensified. Therefore, I would like to propose a new answer to the question of which cases are more or less vulnerable. As my findings illustrate, all cases were preserved in the language of the

HSs; their use, however, was significantly less frequent. This frequency was almost directly proportional to the frequency of case use in FGIs. The exception was the accusative case, which was used by HSs more often than by FGIs. The reason for the accusative’s higher frequency in HL was the replacement of some functions of the genitive, which on the other hand occurs proportionally less frequently than the other cases. An additional problem was HSs’ use of the dative. The problems related to these two cases, however, seemed to be of a different nature, and

I will address them in the following section.

The activation model by Putnam and Sánchez (2013) can explain the above results pertaining to the HSs’ use and accuracy of cases. English-dominant HSs activate their HL with varied frequency, which reflects their varied proficiency in Polish and case knowledge and use.

As discussed in Chapter 4, the model posits that the level of lexicon activation fluctuates in HLs.

The HL lexicon is tied to grammatical structures by means of association between functional, semantic, and phonological features. With greater exposure to English than to HL, not only may

HSs replace the semantic and phonological features of their HL with features from their dominant language, but also the connection between functional features and the other two types of features

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may lessen. These processes can lead to problems with lexical retrieval as well as retrieval of morphological elements such as affixes associated with it. The advanced HSs in my study displayed problems recalling less frequent case endings. On the other hand, the speech of lower proficiency speakers was almost devoid of cases. In fact, four participants replaced most of the oblique cases with the nominative:

1. Pies ma dobry czas, bo bawi z os-y, które są na pol-e. Dog has a good time because it plays with wasps.NOM who are in the field.NOM

(SP) Pies ma dobrą zabawę, bo bawi się z os-ami, które są na pol-u. Dog has a good time because it plays with wasps.INS who are in the field.LOC ‘The dog has a good time because it plays with wasps, which are in the field’

As seen in the above example, the speaker used the nominative case instead of the instrumental and locative, even though the words appear after prepositions.55 In my opinion, such utterances exemplifying the use of the nominative case instead of the oblique cases are proof of these four HSs lacking cases in their respective languages. The above four low proficiency speakers possibly never acquired the Polish case system, be it even in any impoverished form.

The model by Putnam and Sánchez (2013) can also help interpret the participants’ lack of certain elements in HL, i.e., cases. According to this framework, as the result of weak activation, some L1 functional features can be replaced by identical functional features from L2. Putnam and

Sánchez argue that if heritage grammars generate structures that are not similar to the L1, then these features were never sufficiently activated. In other words, the model predicts that if HSs’ grammars lack certain grammatical features, these features might have not been acquired due to insufficient activation. Bilingual children’s lack of acquisition of grammatical features (see Ch. 2)

55 In SP nouns used in post-prepositional positions always appear in oblique cases.

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suggests that there is a threshold of input necessary to acquire certain linguistic features

(Gathercole, 2002). Although Putnam and Sánchez (2013) disagree with the sole role of input in shaping HL grammars, I believe that it may play a larger role in the early development of HL than they are willing to admit. As previous research has shown (de Houwer, 2003; Miękisz, et al., 2016), bilingual children are very sensitive to the language choices made by their parents and always respond to any change by switching to the language spoken by a parent. This jeopardizes minority languages since parental input is typically the only input that bilingual children receive in these languages. In other words, language activation in young children is closely tied to input, since children respond in the language in which they are being addressed (Miękisz, et al., 2016).

To summarize, the different proficiency levels observed in the HSs in this study can be explained by the above activation for production model. The fact that advanced speakers retained all cases can be explained by their frequency of activation for production; i.e. speaking. On the other hand, in lower proficiency speakers the activation of cases was not sufficient for these grammatical features to be acquired, or the frequency of use decreased significantly and these functional features were replaced by features from the dominant language. In addition, the role of input has to be taken into account as it might have proved insufficient for early bilinguals to acquire cases. The model underlines the interconnection between functional and semantic features from the two respective languages of HSs.

To provide support from previous research, I would like to go back to Schmitt’s (2004) study on language attrition in young Russian children who arrived in the United States. Her study was interpreted in line with the Abstract Level model developed by Myers-Scotton and Jake

(2000). Although this model differs from the above model of Putnam and Sánchez (2013) in terms

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of what constitutes features of language, the study exemplifies the above-mentioned interconnections between the features. Schmitt argues that the structure of bilinguals’ language is modular. This means that the three levels of abstract structure – defined as lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure, and morphological realization patterns – can be split and recombined depending on the accessibility of information from the respective two (or more) languages. Based on data from five Russian children, Schmitt concludes that both Russian and

English contribute to the structure of the sentences produced by her participants. According to her,

Russian still provides the grammatical frame and supplies all case markers, but English plays a role in case marking as well.

2. (HR) Ona bud'-et uchitel'nits-a. She-NOM/3rd/sg will be-3rd/fut teacher-NOM/sg/fem

3. (SR) Ona bud'-et uczitel'nits-ei. She-NOM/3rd/sg will be-3rd/fut teacher-INS/sg/fem 'She will be a teacher.' (Schmitt, 2004, p. 309)

The lack of instrumental in example (2) is explained by Schmitt as the result of the influence of

English abstract-lexical structure at the level of the morphological realization pattern. According to her, when the context is not clear-cut, a default slot is projected by the Russian morphological realization patterns. Since the nominative is the most frequent case in Russian, it is typically used to fill the default slot. In other words, she does not claim that English’s lack of overt case is realized here but rather that English’s abstract level structure causes a lack of certainty in Russian’s morphological pattern, hence the default slot is chosen.

Similarly, I argue that in the structure of Polish HL one can observe how functional features from two respective languages coexist in one sentence. To illustrate, I would like to analyze example (4) from the speech of the heritage speakers in my study. 232

4. Chłopiec wpadł w jakieś... jakaś rzeka. Boy fell into some.NOM.N some.NOM.F river.NOM.F ‘The boy fell into a river.’ (SP) Chłopiec wpadł w jakąś rzekę.

As discussed in Chapter 6, the indefinite pronoun jakiś 'some' was used by four HSs in this study.

Each time, the required oblique case that followed it was replaced with the unmarked nominative case. Since this pronoun is Polish’s closest equivalent of the English indefinite article a, I think the pronoun marks the boundary of structural components realized by the elements of the two respective languages. The first part of the sentence followed the rules of Polish syntax and morphology, but then the speaker either could not access the ending of the required case or had too many competing options and hence filled the slot with the default case – nominative. Unlike

Schmitt, however, I argue that the choice of the nominative case is related to its low cognitive load.

The main problem that the speaker deals with in this utterance is difficulty with lexical retrieval, manifested by uncertainty about the gender of the indefinite pronoun. Eventually, the speaker remembers the word, but the process of searching and choosing this word takes up too much of the cognitive load and as a result, the word is used in the case that is easiest to produce and requires the least effort.

Other evidence pointing to problems with cognitive load is seen in the HSs’ difficulty with agreement between nouns and their modifiers. In fact, as discussed in Chapter 6, only one HS used adjectives more than once in her story. Most modifiers used by HSs consisted of demonstrative pronouns.

5. Chłopiec wziął jeden z tych mały żaby. Boy took one of these.GEN small.NOM.SG frog.NOM.PL ‘The boy took one of these small frogs.’ 233

(SP) Chłopiec wziął jedną z tych małych żab.

As seen in the above example, the demonstrative pronoun this is inflected correctly for case and number, but the following adjective and noun are not. The speech of HSs provided more such examples, where only the first word in a group was marked for case, whereas the rest was left in the nominative case. In addition to possible problems with grammatical gender, these examples indicate difficulty with cognitive load. Unable to process all the words in a group and mark them accordingly, a speaker chooses to use the least difficult case – the nominative – for the remaining words. I think the general tendency of HSs to avoid adjectives in this study provides more evidence that the processing of a group of words is challenging for these speakers.

The coexistence of structural components from two languages can also, in my opinion, explain the behavior of speakers of different proficiencies. I argue that structure consists of more

English features for lower proficiency speakers who failed to acquire cases altogether, and more

Polish features for higher proficiency speakers who use most cases. Because of lower proficiency speakers’ lack of or limited knowledge of case, they tend to rely on English syntax as functional features attached to Polish lexical items. On the other hand, advanced speakers' knowledge of case is sufficient to build basic utterances. The rules of English, however, are also utilized by these speakers when in doubt or when case-marking retrieval may be more problematic. Overall, I argue that these are rather compensatory strategies that allow speakers to maintain HL rather than signs of language loss.

This interpretation also points at the interconnection between grammar and vocabulary knowledge in HSs. Speech samples from low-proficiency speakers in this study suggested that their vocabulary was very limited, since words such as “river” or words referring to body parts

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should not have been as challenging as they proved to be. This explains why the functional features tied to these words were not sufficiently activated.

To summarize, the above examples suggest that the grammar of Polish HSs is based on structures from both Polish and English. The more proficient a speaker in HL, the less need for

English structures. They do coexist, however, to aid all speakers regardless of proficiency. Some of the online errors with cases can signify interim problems with vocabulary retrieval. These errors can be of a temporary nature and can possibly depend on frequency of activation, as suggested by the model by Putnam and Sánchez (2013). Nevertheless, the performance of a few participants in this study showed almost a complete lack of case use, and suggested that cases had never been acquired (or sufficiently activated to become part of grammar) by these speakers; all other participants used a full-fledged six-case system. The significant decrease in use of the genitive and dative discussed above signifies a singularity of HL development rather than a loss of case. In addition, the results of this study show that there is no permanent case replacement, although certain case functions may be diminished. In other words, the findings of the present study do not support any of the case typology theories discussed earlier. On the other hand, they point to problems with vocabulary and case ending retrieval, as well as the cognitive load associated with these processes. The idiosyncrasies of Polish HL regarding case use will be discussed in the following section in more details.

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7.3 Divergent patterns in case inflections

The second research question of this dissertation deals with the main patterns in case errors displayed by HSs as well as the role that noun frequency played in word inflection. Analysis of the last task is meant to discern whether the divergences found in task two and three are of a permanent nature.

To observe divergences in case inflections, the data from task two, story elicitation, were analyzed once more. As already mentioned, this task provided samples of semi-spontaneous speech that allowed for observing cases in their most natural use. The use of the same book produced lexically and grammatically similar samples from all the participants. I anticipated, however, that the nature of the task might also prompt some avoidance techniques. Therefore, I designed the third task, an elicited sentence completion task (ESCT), which allowed for the recording of inflections of the same words from all the participants. Owing to the complexity of

Polish cases and their functions, I decided to use the case functions that proved to be problematic in my pilot study. I especially focused on the different functions of the genitive but also included different functions of the instrumental and the accusative. Additionally, the aim of the ESCT was to evaluate the role of noun frequency in case inflections. Finally, to investigate which of the case divergences might be of a more permanent nature, I designed a grammaticality judgment task based on the errors made by the group of HSs in my pilot study. Thus, each task had its own aim in the study; however, I anticipated that the contrastive analysis of the data from all tasks would provide broader perspective and allow for more in-depth analysis.

As I discussed in Chapter 3, the Polish case system is very complex; it consists of 42 affixes, which are further complicated by case syncretism as well as the multiple functions of these 236

cases. Additionally, as mentioned, certain inflections may pose difficulties even for native speakers. Despite this complexity, however, monolingual children display a very low error rate when acquiring cases, and the process is completed by the age of four (at least for regular inflections). The infrequent errors observed in Polish monolingual children pertain to their reduction of case allomorphy (the locative) and use of the wrong gender endings for a particular case (Łuczyński, 2004; Smoczyńska, 1985). Due to a lack of studies regarding case use in young

Polish bilinguals, I referred to the study by Schwartz and Minkov (2014) on case use in Russian bilingual children living in Israel. Their results show a difference between sequential and simultaneous bilinguals, with the most common errors pertaining to the latter’s use of the nominative case instead of the oblique cases. Sequential bilinguals, on the other hand, display the same type of errors as monolingual children – that is, problems with plural forms of the genitive and prepositional, as well as singular forms of the prepositional and dative. The frequency of these errors in sequential bilinguals is intensified. Finally, a review of Polish and Russian heritage studies shows various results. An earlier study of Polish in the United States by Preston and Turner

(1985) reveals a very slight change in case regarding the use of the genitive. Recent studies by

Kozminska (2015) and Laskowski (2014) suggest a more profound reanalysis of the entire case system, with strong cases overtaking the weak cases. Additionally, Laskowski observes an overuse of post-prepositional cases, which has been also observed in other languages (Polinsky, 2018) and in my pilot study.

In Chapter 6, I presented the divergent patterns in case use observed in this study. To summarize, the most persistent errors displayed by HSs were a replacement of some uses of the genitive with the accusative or the nominative. This replacement showed a clear hierarchy of the genitive’s functions; the case ending, however, was recorded and assumed to be known by this 237

group. Similarly, the data from the ESCT showed that functions of other cases, like the instrumental and the accusative, could also be used with varying accuracy. In addition, the data from the last task also showed that HSs did not consider the use of the accusative instead of the genitive after verbs governing the latter case as erroneous. Also, a sentence with the accusative instead of the genitive of negation was accepted as grammatically correct by the lower proficiency speakers. Another divergent pattern discovered in this study pertained to the use of cases after prepositions. In general, there was a tendency to overuse one case after prepositions that in standard Polish can be used with two different cases. Also, there was a tendency to use cases that normally appear after prepositions – such as the locative or the accusative – with rare prepositions that require other cases. Another idiosyncratic pattern observed in HSs in this study involved the allomorphic reduction. It was especially frequent with case markings of the locative. Finally, as anticipated, HSs had greater difficulty inflecting low-frequncy nouns than did all the other groups in this study. Overall, the above divergent patterns displayed by HSs represent idiosyncrasies which are a result of bilingual development of HL. In the following part, I will address all these patterns and try to provide an explanation for them.

7.3.1 Case functions

As discussed in the previous section, HSs employed case substitution strategies by substituting the nominative and accusative for other cases in task one. The case replaced most frequently by all HSs was the genitive. I observed a correlation between the frequency of substitution and the speakers’ proficiency as well as the hierarchy of case function vulnerability

(i.e., the genitive after verbs was most vulnerable, while the genitive of negation after existentials 238

and the genitive after prepositions were least vulnerable). Additionally, the data from the ESCT showed that not all the genitive functions were used by this population. The data from both tasks showed an almost identical hierarchy of the genitive case functions, with the genitive after verbs

(10) being the least known function and the genitive after prepositions the most resilient function.

As anticipated, task three revealed a difference in knowledge between the genitive of negation of existentials and the genitive of negation of all other types of verbs. The first function was better known by this population than the latter; also, as the data from the grammaticality judgement showed, there was a relationship between language proficiency and a speaker’s knowledge of the genitive of negation. The difference between the two types of the genitive of negation lies in their respective syntactic functions; when used with existentials, the genitive is the subject of the utterance, whereas with all other verbs the genitive is the direct object. (Examples 6 & 7).

6. Nie ma żabk-i. Not have frog-GEN.SG 'There is no frog.'

7. Nie mogli t-ą żabkę znaleźć. Not could this-ACC.SG frog-ACC.SG ‘They couldn’t find this frog.’

The genitive after existentials, the adnominal genitive and the genitive after prepositions are the most resilient functions of this case. They were recorded in the speech of most of the lower proficiency speakers.

Similarly, a difference between the case functions retained by HSs was observed in the inflections of the instrumental in task three. The best retained function was the instrumental after prepositions and the least retained was the instrumental of predicate nominal and the instrumental

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of means. In standard Polish, these last two functions are used without prepositions, and the instrumental also possesses case markers that are not shared with any other cases and are the least difficult because they consist of only two endings in the singular. Thus, the reanalysis of certain functions of the instrumental cannot be related to the morphological complexity of this case. Even the less proficient HSs in this study used the instrumental, but only after the preposition z “with.”

The other functions of this case, which are typically used without prepositions, were reassigned to other cases. I argue that prepositions are key for semantic/inherent case retention, and I will discuss it in the following section.

The above examples of two cases whose different functions were studied provide interesting evidence regarding the retention of cases and their markings in HL. I argue that case functions are reassigned before any case endings are lost in HL. This is seen in the fact that most

HSs in this study were able to inflect nouns for the genitive or instrumental, but only advanced speakers knew the non-syntactic functions of these two cases. The data regarding the genitive and instrumental indicate that HL reduced the number of semantic/inherent functions of cases in favor of structural/syntactic ones. The latter were better retained possibly owing to their frequency and their crucial role in the sentence. Simply put, cases appeared in the language of the HSs in their most basic syntactic functions far more frequently than in others. Recall from Chapter 3 that for monolingual children, cases are first developed in their most basic syntactic functions, and then gradually all the other less frequent functions are added.

It is worth mentioning that the genitive of negation and the instrumental of predicate are two functions that are no longer used by other Slavic languages besides Polish (Franks, 1995). For instance, in Czech the genitive of negation is archaic, and in Russian the genitive of negation is

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not obligatory after all transitive verbs as it is in Polish (Franks, 1995). Additionally, the choice of nominative or instrumental for the predicate noun after the verb to be is considered free in Czech

(Rothstein, 1986). There is debate as to whether the above two functions are actually semantic or structural (Brecht & Levine, 1986; Franks, 1995). In fact, Franks (1995) argues that a case that is inherent in one Slavic language (genitive) can be considered structural in another. Although an in- depth discussion of the typological characteristics of case is beyond the scope of this dissertation, there are similarities between these diachronic changes in the Slavic language family and the findings of the present study. The above-discussed functions of cases that are more prone to erosion are those that have become optional in other languages. I would like to bring back some observations from Silva-Corvalan’s seminal book on Spanish in Los Angeles (1994). In her work, she suggested that the contact situation may accelerate a language change that typically takes place over a few generations. In other words, there exists a tendency for elimination/change of certain aspects of grammar, which Silva-Corvalan interprets as a “natural, internal trend in the ancestor variety” (p.132).

Thus, the change I observed in the HSs’ reduction of case functions indicates two possible interpretations. One is that HSs activate only those elements of the language which are necessary in their everyday communication with family; hence the others are lost or reassigned. Second, the reduction of semantic functions already lost in other Slavic languages may indicate that the bilingual development of HSs may speed up diachronic change, hence pointing at the internal qualities of cases.

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7.3.2 Prepositions

There is a possibility that whenever HL and English share structures, cases have a higher chance of being preserved. Since English has no overt case marking, the only instance when we can actually observe interactions between the functional features of the two respective languages is when cases are used with prepositions. Previous research on bilinguals (Schmitt, 2004) has suggested that even though cases are not marked in English, the language might provide a lexical level of speech that, when realized in HL, is assigned to the default case due to a structural ambiguity caused by the interaction of the two languages. Prepositions may offer an even more tangible example of this interaction since they replace cases in English. Thus, utterances with post- prepositional cases show instances when the dominant language and HL share properties even though the final realization is different, i.e., in English lack of overt case marking.

The unique role of prepositions in relation to the use of cases has been stressed by previous research (Laskowski, 2014; Polinsky, 2018). Additionally, I found many divergent examples of post-prepositional case use in my pilot study as well. The present study provided more material to look at these novel uses of case again.

The most persistent divergence found in the present study was the case replacement in prepositional slots when a given preposition is shared by two cases. Recall from Chapter 6 that the biggest number of this type of error referred to the accusative-locative and locative-accusative substitution. These two types of substitution were used with almost the same frequency. The error was more frequent in lower proficiency speakers. The difference between the monolingual variant of Polish and HL is that in the former, the verb governs case, with the final case marking depending

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on the type of verb. In HL, verb governance of cases is loosened, if not completely replaced by case dependence on prepositions.

I offer two possible interpretations of this phenomenon. First, it is possible that cases are stored with prepositions and the errors recorded here are examples of difficulties with online production. Second, it is possible that these divergences are of a more permanent nature and in fact exemplify the reanalysis of HL. I am inclined to support the latter when referring to less proficient speakers. In addition to quite a few examples of case replacement with shared prepositions, the results of this study included instances of the wrong case used with infrequent prepositions (8).

8. Za rozwalonym drzewie Behind pulled.LOC tree.LOC ‘Behind the pulled down tree’ (SP) za rozwalonym drzewem

These processes might signify that lower proficiency speakers develop a new

"prepositional case" that can be used with various prepositions, including those which in standard

Polish are governed by other cases. This new prepositional case can be marked by either the endings of the locative or the accusative. The choice seems to be related to the participants’ knowledge of locative endings, which were simplified in the speech of a few less proficient HSs in this study. Based on these recurring patterns, a new case system emerges for less proficient speakers. It is restructured to four oblique cases with the following functions:

1. the accusative as direct object (also after negation), and optionally as a prepositional case

2. the genitive case as adnominal genitive, genitive of negation after existentials and genitive

after frequent prepositions

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3. the instrumental used only with the preposition z ‘with’

4. the locative as a general prepositional case used not only with locative prepositions but

also with less frequent prepositions of other cases

As can be seen from the above schema, the dative case was not used by lower proficiency speakers.

Additionally, some cases retained only a few functions, and most of these functions were tied to prepositions. The dative case does not have any general-frequent prepositions that could help retain this case. I argue that this characteristic of the dative is the most likely reason for its disappearance from the language of less proficient HSs in this study.

To summarize, the findings of this study confirmed previous observations made about HL

(Laskowski, 2014; Polinsky, 2018) – that post-prepositional cases are better retained than those that appear directly after verbs. This suggests that the role of verbs in case retention is weaker than that of prepositions. Although the advanced speakers in this study exhibited fewer problems of this kind, the tendency seemed to be quite general. It points to syntactic relations between the parts of a sentence. In standard Polish, verbs take precedence in the governance of cases. Monolingual speakers do not have difficulty choosing the right case when one preposition can be shared by two different ones due to a verb. In HL, the relation between the verb and the case it governs is weakened if there is a preposition.

One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that because both languages use prepositions, they allow for the strengthening of case retention in HL through reliance on the structural components of the two languages. This, however, does not signify a direct transfer from the dominant language. Instead, I argue that cases, especially ones with semantic functions, are retained as a result of being linked to prepositions. The instrumental provides clear evidence of 244

this process. As discussed in Chapter 6, the instrumental used with other prepositions besides z is less known in this group, and additionally the instrumental of means (or tools) is often preceded by a preposition in HL even though in standard Polish it is not:

9. zainteresowani z tą żab-ą interested with thisACC.SG frog-INS.SG 'interested in this frog' (SP: zainteresowani tą żabą)

In the above example, a redundant preposition was added before the instrumental. However, the preposition used in this sentence is not a direct equivalent of the English preposition but rather the preposition that is frequently used with this case. Thus, this sentence was built by means of not only Polish lexicon but also Polish morphology, where cases are marked as they should be after this particular preposition. However, the deeper syntactic structure of this sentence is no longer based on the rules of the Polish language because it is not the verb (or participle) that governs the case as in standard Polish. Overall, it seems that with the exception of the genitive of negation after existentials, lower proficiency speakers used only one case directly after verbs in syntactic function, namely the accusative as direct object.

That said, I would like to stress that the case system of the advanced speakers consisted of all 5 oblique cases (with instances of the use of vocative case). The tendency to reduce case functions took precedence over the tendency to reduce cases in HL. The data from this study showed that the examined functional features – i.e., cases and their functions – were not replaced or reanalyzed randomly but rather according to a hierarchy. The syntactic functions of cases seemed to be more resilient, whereas semantic functions were less so. Also, post-prepositional cases were less vulnerable.

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The differences between the case use of advanced and intermediate speakers was related to the frequency of HL activation. One supporting piece of evidence is the fact that the language of advanced HSs was characterized by not only a smaller number of errors but also more frequent occurrence of cases. On the other hand, the language of lower proficiency speakers, especially the four who hardly used the oblique cases, was characterized by a very low frequency of case use and also a reliance on English structures when constructing their utterances in HL.

7.3.3 Dative

As I have already discussed, the dative case seemed to be missing in the knowledge of the lower proficiency speakers, as confirmed by statistical analyses from two tasks. Knowledge of this case was also problematic for the advanced speakers. First, in task one, the case was used by only

14 HSs, who used it to mark personal pronouns but rarely nouns. Overall, all the groups used the dative very infrequently. It should also be mentioned that FGIs displayed some errors when using the dative. In task two, the lower proficiency speakers made many errors, hence the analysis was based on the answers of the advanced HSs only. Interestingly, a difference between grammatical genders was observed here, with the masculine animate being the least problematic for speakers and the neuter practically unknown.

Overall, the above findings might suggest that the dative case is lost in HL, at least partially.

However, I believe that the dative did not emerge in the data frequently enough in the speech of

HSs to allow analysis, especially when they had to use it as an indirect object. Therefore, I would like to suggest only that the dative is partially lost in Polish HL. The case is problematic to

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monolinguals (Dąbrowska, 2012), and the overall frequency of this case is very low (Figure 6.2), which by itself may explain why the case might be considered lost. Such a change has been observed in the Polish spoken in Ukraine (Dzięgiel, 2015). In this variety of Polish (as well as in some local dialects of Polish), the prepositional phrase with the genitive case (dla + G) is permanently used in place of the dative. Such a pattern was not observed in the present study. The pronouns used with dative verbs were correct, and the data from the ESCT indicated problems with certain grammatical genders, with neuter being most problematic and masculine personal the least difficult. The latter can be explained by the fact that the dative is typically used to mark the indirect object, understood as the person or other animate being for whom or which something is done, or to whom or which something is given. The monolingual speakers in this study did not seem to have a problem extending this rule to the non-animate objects that were used in the ESCT but the HSs did. The first-generation immigrant speakers also had problems marking this case, although not very frequently (see section 7.4. for more details).

7.3.4 Allomorphic reduction

The model by Putnam and Sánchez (2013) presupposes that both languages can impact the grammar of HSs. As discussed earlier in this chapter, I found that both languages contributed to the final realization of an utterance; additionally, it was possible that owing to cognitive load constraints, certain case endings could not be retrieved when needed and therefore the default case was used. I argue that the allomorphic reduction observed in this study was also an outcome of cognitive economy. This system reduces the number of possible endings for a given case, i.e., the locative. The overgeneralization of endings lessens the speaker’s cognitive burden and at the same 247

time allows the language to function according to the same rules; e.g., the locative case is marked but in a divergent way.

As mentioned earlier, a very small error rate regarding the locative was observed in monolingual children. Smoczyńska (1985) reported an overextension of the ending –u in Polish children. Recall from Chapter 6 that HSs in this study overextended two different endings (-u, and

-ie). The divergent endings of that type were used by eight of the less proficient HSs. Additionally, most of the examples observed appeared in the speech of more than one speaker: w drzewu (HS3,

HS18) instead of w drzewie, w rzekie (HS3, HS10, HS11) instead of w rzece, and w dziurie (HS 6,

HS10) instead of w dziurze. Additionally, there were other individual examples of ending overextension. The locative is a very complex case in terms of morphological affixes. In addition to four different vowels, fifteen consonants and two vowel alternations are used to mark this case.

Case markings for the locative are based on the phonological form of a word. To attach a correct affix, one has to know not only the grammatical gender of a noun but also the last consonant of its stem. As seen in the examples above, these rules were simplified in the language of less proficient

HSs, especially in regard to endings that require consonant alternation. Choosing the endings –u and –ie allowed speakers to avoid changing the final consonant.

The choice of the ending –ie, which is considered a default ending of the locative, resulted in the soft –e ending being used in the prepositional in Russian. The influence of Russian was ruled out here because none of the participants who marked the locative in this way had studied the language. Instead, I argue that the above allomorphic reduction is caused by cognitive economy.

Speakers reduce the number of endings in order to be able to recall these endings more easily.

Additionally, since these endings also allow for the avoidance of consonant alternations, the

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process of case ending attachment is less burdensome to the cognitive load. Interestingly, a similar process of allomorphic reduction was observed in the minority language of an aboriginal group in

Australia (Schmidt, 1985). Ergative, which is one of ten cases used in Dyirbal, shares similarities with the Polish locative in terms of its number of allomorphs. Schmidt (1985) observed a reduction of these allomorphs through several stages. One of the final stages consisted of attaching a different ending, –du, which was not conditioned by the words’ phonological environment. As a result, the form of the stem was not altered as it would have been in the full-fledged variety of this language.

These examples from Dyirbal are evidence of language attrition rather than HL development. But the morphological complexity of this language, and its similarity to the process I observed in the

Polish language, provides evidence of a general language trend.

The above discussed overgeneralizations of endings that do not require final consonant alternations can be a proof of either the incomplete – divergent schemata of this case or default – divergent schemata of this case, which is the outcome of low activation of the locative ending. I opt for the second explanation, which suggests that HSs develop a more general ending that is easier to attach to any noun, hence allowing the speakers greater flexibility. At the same time, even though a small error rate of a similar nature was observed in the speech of monolingual children,

I do not consider allomorphic reduction to be proof of so-called incomplete acquisition. Instead, I argue that it is evidence of HL idiosyncratic development, during which the number of more marked and/or less frequent grammatical elements is reduced. The scope of this process is dependent on activation for production frequency.

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7.3.5 Noun frequency

Another HL idiosyncrasy found in this study was a difference between the inflections of high-frequency nouns vis-à-vis low-frequency nouns. These two types of nouns were chosen for the study in order to observe the above-discussed schemata as well as the possibility of case endings being stored only for frequently used nouns. Recall from Chapter 6 that HSs were the only group in this study that displayed a higher error rate when inflecting low-frequency nouns; when their proficiency levels were evaluated separately, this division was also visible. Moreover, the results of a statistical analysis did not find any significant difference between advanced and intermediate speakers as far as word frequency.

The above-discussed difference in inflecting low-frequency nouns and high-frequency nouns was supposed to provide information on the case schemata discussed by earlier studies of

Polish monolingual children’s case acquisition (Dąbrowska & Szczerbiński 2006). The study in question suggested that 4-year old monolingual children’s knowledge of cases was comparable to that of adults. The authors explained that this ability was possible owing to the children’s development of a schema that allowed them to inflect all nouns, including previously unknown ones (in fact the study used nonce-words). One of the present study’s aims was to see whether these schemata were in place for Polish HSs. Thus, the methodology included two types of nouns.

As discussed in Chapter 6, despite findings that would suggest HSs do not have such schemata, the study’s design had some shortcomings that could have impacted accuracy. The HSs in this study had problems with the vocabulary used in task three – the elicited sentence completion

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task – and their choices of case endings could have been an outcome of uncertainty as to the meaning of context. As I suggested earlier, case context (i.e., knowledge of when a certain case should be used) is more vulnerable in this group than case endings. In other words, despite these differences between the inflections of familiar and non-familiar words, I believe that at least the advanced heritage speakers develop the schemata for all cases but might have more problems recognizing when certain cases are needed.

7.4 Cross-generational change

The third question of this dissertation refers to the changes in the language of first- generation immigrants that are observable in the language of HSs as well. To investigate if any divergences found in HL might be attributed to the attrition of the parents’ language, the group of immigrants was recruited.

The data of the first-generation immigrants differ from the data of the control group significantly only in regard to the case distribution recorded in task two. FGIs used the oblique cases less frequently than did the monolingual controls, and the difference between groups in the distribution of oblique case per clause was significant (Fig. 6.1). Also, the mean of case distribution in FGIs was smaller than in the control group but bigger than in HSs, placing this group’s results in between the results from the other two. Furthermore, closer analysis showed that this difference was especially evident in the frequency of the accusative and instrumental. A qualitative analysis showed that FGIs used the instrumental in fewer functions than did the monolingual controls. The so-called figurative uses were very rare; however, the instrumental of means, considered one of

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the main types of the instrumental, did not occur often in FGI data either. For example, the controls often used this case to describe how things were done, using the so-called instrumental of accompanying action or emotion: z niepokojem ‘with concern,’ z ciekawością ‘with curiosity,’ z takim zaangażowaniem ‘with such a commitment.’ Such phrases did not appear in the data from

HSs. Additionally, the accusative was also significantly less frequent in the FGI data, as confirmed by the statistical analysis. This time the use of the accusative was more difficult to pinpoint.

However, one small difference observed in the behavior of these two groups was how often they used the accusative in verb-preposition phrasal combinations such as: wyruszyć w podróż ‘to get on the road,’ wyglądać na zadowolonego ’to look pleased,’ or natrafić na ślady ‘to find tracks.’

Again, FGIs used phrases like that very rarely compared to the controls.

Furthermore, although the error rate was not significantly higher for FGIs than for the monolinguals, the two patterns observed showed similarities to the patterns displayed by HSs.

First, FGIs did not use the genitive case after every verb that required it. For instance, the verb słuchać was used with the accusative by almost half of the participants in this group, while other verbs did not yield such results (Example 10).

10. Lekarz słucha brzuch Doctor listens stomach.ACC ‘The doctor is listening to the stomach.’

vs. Lekarz słucha brzucha. Doctor listens stomach.GEN

Additionally, FGIs made errors in the genitive as well as in the dative inflections of neuter nouns. Half of FGIs made an error in the dative when inflecting the following neuter nouns (11-

12):

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11. Przyglądał się kolanowi. Watched knee.DAT.M ‘He watched the knee.’

(SP) Przyglądał się kolanu. Watched knee.DAT.N

12. Grecka bogini patronuje miano / mianem. Greek goddess patronizes denomination.NOM denomination.INS ‘The Greek goddess patronizes the denomination.’

(SP) Grecka bogini patronuje mianu. Greek goddess patronizes denomination.DAT

The types of errors displayed in both of the above sentences as well as in the genitive after verbs were also recorded in the speech of HSs. Due to a limited number of words in the neuter, I could not run a statistical analysis to confirm these findings; however, I argue that the error pattern could not be random, and that the issues pertaining to the internal qualities of these two cases played a role in how case was maintained by the bilinguals. For one, the frequency of the dative in the monolingual language variant suggested that the case might be problematic even to native speakers, an idea supported by an earlier study done by Dąbrowska (2012), who found a correlation between speakers’ education and their knowledge of the dative case. She suggested that the dative is used more often in the written language and therefore might be less known to people who do not read on a regular basis. On the other hand, similar errors with the genitive were also found in the speech of a few monolingual speakers. As I discussed earlier, there seems to be an optionality in the use of the genitive after verbs in contemporary Polish. Some verbs seem to retain the genitive better than others; this is possibly related to their semantics. Many verbs that are used with the genitive describe addition, loss, lack, sufficiency or related matters (Swan, 2002). Perhaps słuchać

‘to listen,’ becomes optional because it is not semantically related to the other genitive verbs.

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The quantitative analysis of the data from task four did not yield any significant difference between FGIs and the controls. However, FGIs were less accurate in accepting the sentences. A few of them accepted erroneous utterances with the accusative instead of the genitive of negation and the accusative instead of the dative.

Overall, it can be argued that the language of FGIs underwent changes in regard to case use. Although their knowledge of cases and the underlying system seemed to remain intact, FGIs used them significantly less frequently than did the controls. Thus, the input that HSs received during language development was arguably different from that received by monolingual children, both quantitatively and qualitatively. However, it can be argued that the quantitative change in the language of FGIs cannot directly explain all the divergences observed in HSs. The error rate of their speech was too low to indicate any direct impact. However, given the fact that HSs overall have access to limited HL input, which is often restricted to their interactions with parents, the observed limited case frequency in FGIs may provide a partial explanation for some divergences found in this study.

To exemplify the impact of parental input, I would like to review the knowledge of the instrumental in two respective groups. As discussed earlier, this case in the speech of lower proficiency HSs seemed to be restricted to its one function related to the preposition z “with.”

FGIs, on the other hand, displayed a significantly lower frequency in using the instrumental in its more figurative functions as compared to the controls. It was also observed that a function as basic as the instrumental of means was very rare in the speech of FGIs in this study. Similarly, HSs did not use this function in their spontaneous speech and displayed a higher error rate when inflecting this case in the ESCT. These findings suggest that a correlation exists between HSs’ use of the

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instrumental and the use of this case by the generation of their parents. The parent generation, who in this study used the instrumental mainly with prepositions, might have provided input that was already divergent in how the instrumental was used. First, it was used with significantly lower frequency. Second, only a limited number of its functions was used.

At this point, I should add that the above findings of FGIs using cases significantly less frequently than the controls, were not predicted at the outset of the present study. Instead, I had anticipated a slightly higher error rate in case inflection. Therefore, the present study’s design did not focus on the spontaneous speech of FGIs, which should be closely studied in order to gain a better understanding of case use in natural speech.

I interpret the lower frequency of cases used by FGIs, especially in their figurative roles, as the outcome of the complementary principle (Grosjean, 2008). FGIs, who are late bilinguals, use their Polish in fewer situations than their monolingual counterparts. At the same time many of them study their second language, which they might use at work or other places. It is possible that the basic family language does not require these figurative elements. Additionally, it is possible that they are replaced by similar idioms or collocations from their L2. It is also possible that late bilingualism may lead to changes in one’s L1 in how figurative language is used (Cook, 2003).

The problems with vocabulary retrieval exhibited by this group might also be further evidence of this change promoted by bilingualism.

I should add that the factor of education has to be ruled out here. Recall from Chapter 5 that FGIs and the control group were carefully chosen to represent various backgrounds. In fact, on average the participants of the FGI group had received a better education than the participants in the control group. Additionally, three teachers of the Polish language were included in that 255

group. I argue that FGIs enrolled in this study displayed a lot of effort to maintain the language.

As discussed in Chapter 1, Polish speakers in Chicago have the opportunity to maintain their language thanks to a large Polish population as well as many immigrant organizations, clubs, and churches. Based on the questionnaire, the present study confirmed that the FGI participants were involved in Polish clubs or organizations, attended masses in Polish, and interacted with other

Poles on a regular basis. Additionally, they had received relatively high levels of education (as compared to the control group). These factors were typically favorable for the language maintenance of the immigrant group. Despite all this, however, the language of FGIs exhibited change, especially evident in so-called figurative speech but also frequency of case use. These findings indicate that the language of immigrants may undergo change even when a speaker makes a lot of effort to maintain it, as was observed in previous research (Isurin, 2007; Jarvis, 2003).

7.5 Extra-linguistic factors

I used questionnaires to investigate what extra-linguistic variables contributed to language maintenance. In particular, I looked at the age of the onset of bilingualism, attendance of Polish

Saturday schools, visits to Poland, and frequency of current language use, among others.

Additionally, as discussed in the previous section, one of the study’s aims was to investigate a potential interrelation between the attrition of the language of the first-generation immigrants and

HSs’ use and knowledge of cases.

In Chapter 2, I discussed the role of these various factors and mentioned that one of them, namely age at the onset of bilingualism, has been credited as having a significant influence on HL.

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For example, Thomas et al. (2014) conducted a study with bilingual Welsh-English children, which showed that children who acquired Welsh before being submerged in English displayed a knowledge of plural morphology similar to that of monolingual speakers. On the other hand, simultaneous bilinguals produced fewer target forms than the former group. Other studies presented similar results (for an overview see Montrul, 2016). In fact, Montrul (2008), argued that this factor is one of the most decisive in the development of HL.

The results of the statistical analysis did not confirm these assumptions. There were only four heritage speakers who self-reported speaking two languages from birth. The OPI showed that the proficiency of three of these speakers was lower than the others. Nevertheless, the age of the onset of bilingualism does not explain why there were more intermediate speakers who self- reported speaking only Polish up to the time when they began school.

I believe that this fact is best explained by the results of a study of early Polish-English bilinguals (Miękisz, et al., 2016) which investigated 53 toddlers’ knowledge of Polish and English vocabulary. Despite the fact that 85% of the parents addressed their children mainly in Polish,

Miękisz, et al. (2016) interpreted the L2 input (in English) as a confounding variable in the children’s development of Polish. The authors, however, found that mere exposure to English did not influence vocabulary size, and they attributed the smaller vocabulary of these bilingual children to their parents’ lack of consistency in using one language when addressing them.

Even though the above study focused on vocabulary, I think its main findings can also explain grammar knowledge, especially in light of the earlier discussion of the interrelation between vocabulary and grammar, as well as my previous interpretation of the impact of lexical retrieval on grammar. I believe it is possible that those HSs who reported using only Polish from 257

birth but who were assessed as intermediate might have been exposed to inconsistent speech from their parents. Proof might be found in the personal story of the mother of one of the HSs. I was able to recruit two mothers of HSs who participated in this study. One of these HSs was assessed as Intermediate Low. He self-reported speaking only Polish from birth. His mother, however, reported that she switched to English when addressing her son after she observed his speech problems. I think this example may explain why some of the self-reported sequential bilinguals might have been exposed to more English from their parents than they remember. That being said, it is possible that some of these speakers indeed used only Polish before beginning school, but might have stopped using it as often later in life. Until there are more longitudinal studies done on

HL acquisition and development, we cannot be sure what extra-linguistic factors are responsible for some speakers being able to use more standard features than others; that matter might be further complicated by the role of socio-motivational factors in the development of the language of HSs.

Nevertheless, one of the factors measured by the present study turned out to be significant.

Since all of the above-discussed factors were analyzed statistically, the results of a logistic regression test revealed that the participants’ years of attending Saturday schools had an impact on their proficiency levels. In other words, the longer the participants attended a school, the better their Polish (Table 5.8).

It should be noted that the role of Saturday school has been evaluated in previous studies that yield conflicting results. For example, a study of Japanese HSs indicated a positive role of

Saturday schools, which support Japanese language development by enforcing Japanese identity

(Chinen & Tucker, 2005). On the other hand, other studies did not find any positive effects

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(Wolski-Moskoff, 2018), or even suggested Saturday schools’ detrimental impact on HSs’ language development (Kagan, 2010).

Two facts should be discussed here. First, Polish Saturday schools in Chicago may overall suffer from various shortcomings such as many teachers’ lack of appropriate pedagogical training

(and reliance on their experiences teaching monolingual children in Poland), but they are numerous and generally offer language instruction for many different age and proficiency levels. Also, by attending Saturday school, children are often able to participate in other extra-curricular activities.

Being the home of the largest Polish community in the United States, Chicago offers many such clubs and organizations. For comparison, my previous research with Polish HSs from Ohio showed that attending Saturday schools did not correlate with the HSs’ knowledge of the polite forms of address. I interpret this study’s overall positive findings regarding Saturday schools in Chicago as being related to the availability of various additional clubs and the structure of these schools – which are more proficiency-sensitive than schools in small Polish communities can ever be.

A second matter helpful in understanding the above results is the reason why some of the

HSs attended these schools for a longer time while others did not wish to continue. During my conversations with HSs, I asked those who did not attend Saturday school or those who did for a shorter time why they had not wanted to continue. In addition to lack of access or time (e.g., they began attending other clubs in high school), two HSs mentioned that they did not want to continue studying Polish because they felt they did not speak the language well. In other words, from the testimony of two intermediate speakers, I gathered that they did not feel motivated to continue their language learning due to self-perceived low proficiency. On the other hand, those speakers

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who were assessed as advanced often described their drive to learn the language as related to their high proficiency.

To summarize, the evaluation of extra-linguistic factors that might have modulated the use of cases by HSs showed slightly unexpected results. First, the age oat the onset of bilingualism could not be fully analyzed (statistically) because there were only four HSs who reported speaking both languages from birth. Although three of these speakers were assessed as Intermediate, there were other speakers in this study who reported switching to English after starting school at the age of five whose proficiency was also low. Second, contrary to my expectations, there was a positive relation between the length of Saturday school attendance and language proficiency.

7.6 Summary

The above chapter offered a detailed discussion of case use and knowledge in both Polish

HSs and FGIs. As anticipated, no case typology could single-handedly explain the process of language change in HL. Instead it was suggested that various mechanisms and factors might be responsible. First, some of the case replacements were interpreted as an outcome of the coexistence of two languages’ functional features, which could have contributed to the grammar of HL.

Although it was suggested that some of the divergences were of a temporary nature, other divergences indicated idiosyncrasies characteristic of the development of HL. For example, case replacement and allomorphic reduction were credited as lowering the cognitive load. Additionally, some changes in case use bore similarities to case use in other Slavic languages, which suggests that the internal qualities of these cases should be considered too. In addition, varying proficiency

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levels were explained by several possible factors: the role of input as well as frequency of activation. Moreover, the language of FGIs who used cases less often than their monolingual counterparts suggested that HSs received input in which cases appeared less often. Finally, the relation between the proficiency of HSs and their length of Saturday school attendance was discussed as well.

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Chapter 8. Conclusion

In recent years, the language of heritage speakers has become a topic of heated debate.

Thus far the main focus of heritage language research has been on comparing the linguistic abilities of HSs to those of monolingual speakers. Focusing on what has been termed “incomplete acquisition” or “attrition,” this approach has often presented heritage speakers as those who have inadequately acquired the language of their parents. The present study contributes to the heritage research in two major ways. First, it shows that the language spoken by persons in the generation of heritage speakers’ parents is different from the monolingual variant, thus demonstrating that the input that heritage speakers receive is already divergent. Second, by emphasizing elements that are still present in heritage grammars, this dissertation points at mechanisms that allow heritage speakers to maintain the language of their home.

The main objective of the dissertation was to analyze and describe the nominal case morphology of Polish heritage speakers. In doing so, I also aimed at discovering whether the data

I collected are in line with any of the extant theories concerning case in heritage language. In addition to the widespread opinion that nominal morphology is the most vulnerable element of HL grammar (Benmamoun et al., 2013; Montrul, 2016), there were two theories that I considered when writing this dissertation. The first, proposed by Benmamoun et al. (2013) and rooted in Chomsky’s case theory, has suggested that structural cases are more prone to attrition than inherent ones.

Based on results from several languages (Russian, Spanish, Hindi, and Dyirbal), Benmamoun et al. (2013) concluded that inherent case is less vulnerable in the languages of heritage speakers.

The second theory I considered was proposed by Laskowski (2014) to evaluate the Polish heritage language in Sweden. Like the typology of Benmamoun et al. just mentioned, his is also a binary 262

theory that assumes that there are two types of cases, strong and weak. This theory is based on case frequency as well as acquisition order by monolingual children. Laskowski’s (2014) typology initially seemed to me more applicable to the language of HSs than did that of Benmamoun, but it focused mainly on internal qualities of cases; and both typologies downplayed the role of external case marking, especially the role of frequency and complexity of case endings.

As anticipated, the results of the present study did not support either of the above typologies, and by showing that advanced heritage speakers possess knowledge of all oblique cases, they also challenged the widespread opinion about increased vulnerability of nominal case morphology in heritage languages. Instead, the findings of this dissertation showed that differences between the languages of HSs and monolinguals point to the role of bilingualism and the influence of the dominant language. Such divergences as allomorphic reduction, the increased role of prepositions, and the reduction of case functions relate to cognitive economy and represent strategies that allow speakers to maintain their weaker language. On the other hand, as predicted by the theoretical framework (Putnam & Sanchez, 2013) adopted (and modified) in this dissertation, the extent to which heritage speakers rely on their dominant language is in direct correlation to language activation for production. Simply put, the more often heritage speakers speak their heritage language, the less they depend on structures from the dominant language. I further argued that because of the limited use of the heritage language at the early stages of speech development, a few heritage speakers in this study did not acquire cases at all. Finally, it was discovered that some aspects of heritage speakers’ nominal morphology may be divergent because of the deviating input that they receive, as seen in the data from the first-generation immigrants.

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Overall, the results of this study showed that knowledge of individual cases in Polish heritage speakers depends on such aspects as case frequency, complexity of case endings, case prepositions, and whether some case functions may become optional. Because these characteristics can be applied to both structural and inherent cases as well as strong and weak cases, the two aforementioned case typologies cannot be applied to interpret the results of this study. Instead, the findings of this study show that, irrespective of case type, heritage speakers may overgeneralize case endings and/or functions as well as overuse one case after prepositions that require two cases.

Reducing the cognitive load, these processes represent accommodation strategies used by speakers to maintain their home language.

8.1 Study limitations

As discussed earlier, the performance of heritage speakers in the ESCT showed much uncertainty and guessing, especially in the second part of the task involving low-frequency nouns.

The study goal was to find whether inflections of well-known words are easier for participants than inflections of rare ones. However, it seemed (and was confirmed by questions and comments of heritage speakers) that it was the context of case rather than the inflection which posed more difficulty to heritage speakers. Owing to the complex vocabulary, the utterances used to elicit cases of low-frequency nouns may have been more challenging than inflections. In particular, as the results of other tasks revealed, heritage speakers have greater difficulties with vocabulary than I had anticipated. However, the rationale behind choosing more challenging sentences was to use the same task with all groups of participants, and it was expected that first-generation immigrants would make significantly more errors than monolinguals when inflecting low-frequency nouns. 264

As discussed earlier, first-generation immigrants’ error rate was rather low; instead, they exhibited problems with case frequency in semi-spontaneous speech.

Another limitation of this study was the sample size of the group of immigrants

(n=12). By using several tasks, I was able to collect ample data from all groups, but it was only task two that showed a significant difference between the first-generation immigrants and monolinguals. The results of the first-generation immigrants’ diminished use of cases would have more bearing if the sample size were larger. However, as explained in Chapter 6, while many people initially responded to my ad, due to time constraints, only a few of these would actually participate.

8.2 Implications for further research

As discussed in Chapter 2, studies on Polish heritage language in the United States are very sparse. This dissertation presents a quite clear, albeit general, picture of nominal morphology in Polish heritage language. Thanks to its focus on all oblique cases, it provides a comprehensive description of the whole nominal system. Future studies should focus on more specific issues, such as one particular case, for instance the genitive, locative, or dative. For example, the knowledge of the dative should be further investigated. The low frequency of this case in the present study did not allow me to evaluate how and if heritage speakers mark indirect objects, especially such as recipients or experiencers. Overall, the data collected for this dissertation may provide a background for more specific future studies of any case, inflection, or lexicon-knowledge issue discussed in it. In addition, insofar as this is one of the first studies of

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Polish heritage language, the tasks used in it could, with some amendments, be replicated to investigate whether the observations discussed above are confirmed by future research.

The language of first-generation immigrants requires further investigation as well. As mentioned, I did not anticipate such a great gap between case frequency in monolinguals and first- generation immigrants. Future studies should consider additional tasks that would allow for measuring the spontaneous speech of immigrants – for instance, a task in which participants retell a story depicted in a short film, or simply engage in a conversation with the researcher.

8.3 Pedagogical implications

The results I have presented are of great value for Polish language teachers.

Heritage speakers still make up a considerable part of enrollments in Polish courses in the United

States. Armed with a better understanding of the grammatical competency as well as vocabulary knowledge of Polish heritage speakers, one can design better curricula for them, focusing on the vulnerable parts of their grammar. For instance, the existing textbooks for Polish heritage speakers suggest teaching irregular or rare inflections, but they do not consider such problematic areas as the genitive of negation, the endings of the locative, or the role of verbs and prepositions in inflections. A pedagogical approach that considers actual grammar knowledge and targets the divergent elements of heritage nominal morphology would be more effective than the existing curricula. On the other hand, one must take into account that there are heritage speakers whose knowledge of Polish is limited to vocabulary, i.e., whose grammatical structures rely on the dominant language entirely. Even though such speakers might possess an intermediate-level

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knowledge of the lexicon, they have to be taught grammar from the beginners’ level. In any event, the situation calls for approaches other than a typical L2 pedagogy – approaches that take the existing knowledge of heritage speakers into account.

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Appendix A - Questionnaire - Heritage Speakers

I. Personal information

1. Name:

2. Gender:

3. Country of birth:

4. Year of birth:

5. If not born in the U.S., year arrived:

6. Education: Elementary school, High school, College (if attending, please provide year and major) ……………………………. Other (specify)……………………………………………………….

7. Parents’ country of origin:

Father:

Mother:

8. Siblings (provide age and country of birth):

……………………………………………………………………………………..

II. Language History

1. Languages (including dialects) spoken at home:

Father:

Mother:

Siblings:

Others (grandparents, relatives – if living in the same household):

……………………………………………………………………………………..

2. List languages that you have used in the past and that you use now.

______

281

Language Where When name learned learned First language: Second language: Other:

III. Current Language Use 1. Do you still speak Polish? …. Yes …. No

2. If yes,

a. Do you speak Polish with your parent(s)?

…. Yes ….No

If with only one, please specify ......

b. Do you speak Polish with your siblings?

…. Yes …. No

If not currently but you used to speak, please specify ......

c. Do you speak Polish with other relatives (grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins etc.) or pets ?

…. Yes…. No

If yes, please specify ………………………………………………..

d. Do you speak Polish with your friends?

…. Yes…. No

If yes, please specify ………………………………………………..

e. Do you speak Polish in your neighborhood?

…. Yes…. No

282

If yes, please specify ……………………………………………….. f. How often do you speak Polish:

- daily - weekly - monthly

- a few times a year - less than that, namely ……………………. In case you answered “daily”, what would be the amount of time when you speak Polish?

- less than 10% - 20-30% - 50-80% - more than 80% g. When did you start speaking English? …………………………….. h. In general, what language do you speak predominantly in society? …………...... i. What language do you speak when you are talking about something personal? ...... j. What language do you speak when you are angry/upset/excited? ...... (please circle) k. Can you think of any topic that is hard for you to talk about in any of your languages?

…. Yes…. No

If yes, please specify ………………………………………………...... l. How often do you visit your parents’ country of origin and how long are your visits? ……………………………………………………………………………………. m. Do you watch Polish TV / films?

….. Yes …… No

If yes, how often ...... 283

n. Do you read Polish books, magazines, newspapers, internet, others?

If yes, please specify …………….

If yes, how often ...... o. Do you have any other contact with Polish that was not specified above (such as Skype conversations, Facebook interactions, phone calls, coworkers etc.)

…. Yes …. No

If yes, please specify………………………………………… p. Did/do you parents encourage you to speak Polish?

…..Yes ….No

If yes, please specify (as a child, now) ………………………………………… q. Did you attend Polish language/culture school or course? …….. Yes …… No

If yes for how long and how often did you go there? …………………………………….

What type of school was it?...... r. Are you able to read in Polish?

…. Yes …. No s. For each of the languages you know, put an X on the line that you think most describes your ability to converse in that language.

Excellent Good Limited Poor Unable to communicate

Polish

English

Other t. Put an X on the line that you think most describes your abilities in the following skills in Polish:

Excellent Good Limited Poor None

Speaking

284

Listening

Writing

Reading

u. Put an X on the line that you think most describes your abilities in the following skills in English:

Excellent Good Limited Poor None

Speaking

Listening

Writing

Reading

v. Which of the following language aspects you find the most problematic in Polish and why? (please circle and explain)

vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, other

………………………………………………………………………………………..

IV. Language Attitudes Circle the number that best describes how you feel about Polish

Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 1. It is useful in my daily life. 1 2 3 4 5 2. I enjoy speaking it. 1 2 3 4 5 3. It is important to speak it to my family. 1 2 3 4 5 4. It makes me feel part of the community I live in. 1 2 3 4 5

285

5. It is the language of the people before me. 1 2 3 4 5 6. It is a beautiful language to speak. 1 2 3 4 5 7. It is important to speak it correctly. 1 2 3 4 5 8. I am proud that I can speak it. 1 2 3 4 5 9. I want to improve my ability to speak it. 1 2 3 4 5 10. Knowing it will help me in the future. 1 2 3 4 5

V. Is there anything else you would like to add? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………

286

Appendix B - Questionnaire – First- Generation Immigrants

I. Dane osobowe:

1. Imię i nazwisko ......

2. Płeć ......

3. Kraj urodzenia ......

4. Rok urodzenia ......

5. Rok emigracji ......

6. Wykształcenie (uzyskane w Polsce): podstawowe, średnie, wyższe (proszę zakreślić). Jeśli kontynuowane w Stanach Zjednoczonych, proszę podać poziom ukończony ......

7. Kraj pochodzenia współmałżonka/współmałżonki (partnera/partnerki) ......

8. Dzieci (ile i wiek) : ......

II. Używanie języka/języków w przeszłości:

1. Język/i i dialekt/y używany/e do tej pory w rodzinie (w Stanach Zjednoczonych), proszę podać: wpółmałżonek/współmałżonka...... partner/ka ...... dzieci ...... rodzice ...... inni (jeśli mieszkają w tym samym gospodarstwie domowym) ......

2. Proszę podać języki używane do tej pory:

nazwa języka gdzie nauczony kiedy nauczony

Język rodzimy:

Drugi język:

Inne języki:

III. Język w użyciu obecnie: 287

1. Czy używa Pan/Pani języka polskiego w Stanach Zjednoczonych?

Tak... Nie....

2. Czy rozmawia Pan/Pani po polsku ze współmałżonkiem/współmałżonką (partnerem/partnerką)?

Tak.... Nie ....

3. Czy rozmawia Pan/Pani po polsku ze swoimi dziećmi?

Tak.... Nie ....

Jeśli tak, proszę podać wiek dzieci i jak często rozmawia Pan/Pani z nimi po polsku: ......

4. Czy rozmawia Pan/Pani po polsku w pracy?

Tak.... Nie ....

5. Czy rozmawia Pan/Pani po polsku z innymi członkami rodziny (mieszkającymi razem)?

Tak.... Nie ....

Jeśli tak, proszę podać z kim i jak często ......

6. Czy rozmawia Pan/Pani po polsku z przyjaciółmi (mieszkającymi w USA)?

Tak.... Nie ....

Jeśli tak, proszę podać jak często ......

7. Czy rozmawia Pan/Pani po polsku z sąsiadami?

Tak.... Nie ....

8. Czy uczęszcza Pan/Pani na polskie msze?

Tak.... Nie ....

Jeśli tak, proszę podać jak często ......

9. Czy jest Pan/Pani członkiem polskich klubów/ stowarzyszeń?

Tak.... Nie ....

Jeśli tak, proszę podać jakich ......

10. Jak często używa Pan/Pani polskiego?

- codziennie 288

- raz w tygodniu

- raz w miesiącu

- kilka razy do roku

Jeśli odpowiedział Pan/odpowiedziała Pani codziennie, proszę podać orientacyjnie jaką część czasu:

- mniej niż 10%

- 20-30%

- 50-80%

- więcej niż 80%

11. Ogólnie którego języka używa Pan/Pani jako głównego? ......

12. Którego języka używa Pan/Pani, kiedy mówi Pan/Pani o czymś osobistym? ......

13. Którego języka używa Pan/Pani kiedy jest Pan/Pani zdenerwowany/a lub smutny/a? ......

14. Którego języka używa Pan/Pani kiedy jest Pan/Pani podeskcytowany/a? ......

15. Czy mógłby Pan/Pani wskazać taki temat, o którym jest Panu/Pani trudno rozmawiać, w którymś z Pani/Pana języków? ......

16. Czy zdarza się Panu/Pani zapomnieć jakiegoś polskiego słowa?

Jak często? ......

17. Jak często jeździ Pan/Pani do Polski? Na jak długo?......

18. Czy ogląda Pan/Pani polskie filmy/seriale? ......

Tak ..... Nie ......

Jeśli tak, jak często? ......

19. Czy czyta Pan/Pani polskie książki czasopisma, internet lub inne? ......

Tak ..... Nie ......

Jeśli tak, jak często? ......

20. Czy ma Pan/Pani inne niż powyżej wymienione kontakty z językiem polskim (np. rozmowy telefoniczne z Polską, kontakt przez Skype lub przez Facebook)

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Proszę podać jakie i jak często ......

21. Czy zachęca Pan/Pani swoje dzieci do mówienia po polsku? Jeśli tak, proszę opisać jak ......

22. W jakim języku Pana/Pani dzieci zwracają się do Pana/Pani?

......

23. Czy Pana/Pani dzieci kiedykolwiek uczęszczały na zajęcia w polskich szkołach dokształcających (sobotnich czy przykościelnych)?

Tak ...... Nie ......

Jeśli tak, jak często.....

24. Czy kiedykolwiek poprawiał/a Pan/Pani język polski swoich dzieci?

Tak ...... Nie ......

Jeśli tak, jak często.....

25. Czy kiedykolwiek poprawiał/a Pan/Pani poprawność przypadków swoich dzieci?

Tak ...... Nie ......

Jeśli tak, jak często.....

26. Jeśli Pana/Pani dzieci nie mówią po polsku lub nie rozumieją tego języka, czy żałuje Pan/Pani tego?

Tak ...... Nie ......

Jeśli tak, proszę opisać ....

27. Dla każdego języka, który Pan/Pani zna, proszę postawić X w linii, która Pana/Pani zdaniem najlepiej oddaje umiejętności komunikacyjne w tym języku:

Doskonale Dobrze Średnio Słabo Bardzo słabo

Polski

Angielski

Inny

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IV. Stosunek do języka

Proszę napisać cyfrę która najlepiej oddaje to, jak Pan/Pani postrzega język polski (Zupełnie się nie zgadzam (1), Nie zgadzam się (2), Jest mi to obojętne (3), Zgadzam się (4), Zupełnie się zgadzam (5))

1. Jest mi potrzebny w życiu codziennym

2. Lubię mówić w tym języku

3. Jest ważne, żeby używać go w kontaktach z rodziną

4. Dzięki niemu czuję się częścią społeczności, w której mieszkam

5. To jest język moich przodków

6. To jest piękny język

7. Jest ważne, żeby mówić w nim bez wtrącania angielskich słów

8. Jestem dumny/a, że umiem się nim posługiwać

9. Nie chciałbym/chciałabym go zapomnieć

10. Chciałbym/chciałabym, żeby moje dzieci mówiły dobrze po polsku

V. Uwagi dodatkowe:

......

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Appendix C – Elicited Sentence Completion Task brzuch

1. To jest badanie ......

2. Rozmawiamy o ......

3. Otarł dłonią pot z ......

4. Od lat mam problemy z ......

5. Można się wreszcie cieszyć ......

6. Modelka nie ma ......

7. Lekarz słucha ......

8. Lekarz przyjrzał się ......

9. Lekarz nie bada ......

10. Lekarz bada ......

11. Dostałem zastrzyk w ...... lekarz

1. W gabinecie wisi dyplom ......

2. Pan Zawadzki jest ......

3. On ma rzadkie kontakty z ......

4. Od godziny czekam na ......

5. Niski, niepozorny mężczyzna okazał się ......

6. Nigdy więcej nie rozmawiali o ......

7. Nie znam ......

8. Myślę, że trzeba zawiadomić ......

9. Muszę pójść do ......

10. Dziś nie ma ...... 292

11. Dał prezent ......

12. Ciągle szukam ......

ręka

1. Swoimi palcami dotknął ......

2. Przyglądał się ......

3. Pomachała ......

4. Pies wziął jedzenie z ......

5. Niepełnosprawny nie ma ......

6. Mężczyzna nie wyciągnął ......

7. Mężczyzna miał problemy z ......

8. Mężczyzna całuje kobietę w ......

9. Lekarz trzymał wyniki w......

10. Lekarz bada ......

11. Krawiec mierzy długość ...... kolano

1. Zdjął rękę z ......

2. Swoimi palcami dotknął ......

3. Przyglądał się ......

4. Odczuwam silne bóle w ......

5. Niepełnosprawny nie ma ......

6. Mężczyzna pomasował ......

7. Mężczyzna nie może zgiąć ......

8. Mężczyzna miał bliznę pod ......

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9. Mężczyzna cierpi na infekcję ......

10. Drzwi otworzyły się, kiedy popchnął ......

11. Chłopak uderzył się w ......

postęp

1. Trzeba iść z ......

2. To jest sprawa, w której pragnę ......

3. Ten mężczyzna to fanatyk ......

4. Ta zmiana jest ......

5. Rozwój technologii służy ......

6. Niektórzy nazywają to ......

7. Nie wymuszaj ......

8. Naukowcy są odpowiedzialni za ......

9. Jego ojciec jest zakochany w ......

10. Czy zrobiłeś ...... ?

11. Bez nauki nie byłoby ......

12. Atmosfera zaufania jest korzystna dla ...... istota

1. Wczoraj znowu pytał mnie o ......

2. W sklepie nie było ......

3. Od dawna interesował się ......

4. Nikt nie wiedział, jaką była ......

5. Nagle dotarłem do ......

6. Na ulicy nie widział ......

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7. Na krześle siedziała siostra ......

8. Kupiłam nowy płaszcz ......

9. Kiedy szedłem na dworzec zauważyłem ......

10. Długo rozmawiali o ......

11. Często jadł kolację z ......

12. Bardzo długo szukał ......

miano

1. Zajmował się ......

2. Udało mu się odcyfrować część ......

3. Ten mężczyzna był określany ......

4. Ta miejscowość kandyduje do ......

5. Sytuacja ta zasługuje na ......

6. Potrzebuję ......

7. On nie ma ......

8. Nic nie kojarzyło się z ......

9. Ludzie nie znają ......

10. Jakie nosisz ......

11. Grecka bogini patronuje ......

12. Całe znaczenie jest zawarte w ......

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Appendix D – Grammaticality Judgment

1. Wieczorem w swoim pokoju chłopiec razem ze swoim psem obserwował żabę. 2. Żaba siedzi w środku takim pojemniku. 3. Jest noc, późno. Widzimy, że są zainteresowani z tą żabą. 4. W nocy, kiedy chłopiec razem z psem spali, żaba wymknęła się ze słoikiem. 5. Rano chłopak wstał z łóżka, patrzy, ale nie widzi żabę. 6. Nie ma żaby. 7. Chłopiec zaczął szukać żabę po całym pokoju. 8. Przeglądał ciuchy, sprawdzał pod łóżkiem, przejrzał cały pokój przy pomocy psa, aż pies zablokował swoją głowę w słoiku, w którym siedziała żaba. 9. Chłopiec wygląda przez okno i woła po tą żabę. 10. A pies spadł z okna i stłukł słoik, który był na nim głowie. 11. Szukają dalej, ale nie mogą znaleźć żabę. 12. Coś wylazło z dziury, jakieś zwierzę i chłopak nie lubi zapach. 13. Pies też próbuje szukać, ale mu to nie idzie dobrze, bo jest trochę zaskoczony z osami. 14. Uciekając przed puchaczem, chłopiec wskoczył na skałę, złapał się gałęzi, a te gałęzie okazały się porożem jelenia. 15. Chłopiec jakoś dostał się na głowie jelenia, razem biegną. 16. Chłopiec i pies wpadł w wodzie. 17. Teraz chłopiec i pies siedzą mokre w rzece. 18. Chłopiec każe psa, żeby był cicho. 19. Znaleźli całą rodzinę żab w wodę. 20. Chłopiec zabrał swoją żabę z rodziny i tak się skończyła bajka.

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