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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 13:2 (2023) ► pp.133–162

Variable V2 in Norwegian heritage language

An effect of crosslinguistic influence?

ORCID logo | UiT The Arctic University of Norway | NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology
| NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
ORCID logo | UiT The Arctic University of Norway

This paper discusses possible attrition of verb second (V2) word order in Norwegian heritage language by investigating a corpus of spontaneous speech produced by 50 2nd–4th generation heritage speakers in North America. The study confirms previous findings that V2 word order is generally stable in heritage situations, but nevertheless finds approximately 10% V2 violations. The cases of non-V2 word order are argued to be due to lack of activation of the heritage language grammar, making it vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence from the speakers’ dominant language. This crosslinguistic influence does not simply replace V2 by non-V2, but is argued to operate more indirectly, affecting (a) the distribution of contexts for V2 word order, and (b) introducing two new distinctions into the heritage language, one (indirectly) based on a similar distinction in the dominant language (a difference between adverbs and negation with respect to verb movement), the other based on frequency of initial elements triggering V2 in non-subject-initial declaratives. Together, these findings also indicate that crosslinguistic influence affects different contexts of V2 differently, providing support for analyses that treat V2 word order as the result of many smaller rules.

Keywords: attrition, crosslinguistic influence, word order, processing, verb movement
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1The syntax of V2
    • 2.2V2 variation
    • 2.3The development of V2
    • 2.4V2 in heritage languages
  • 3.Our study
  • 4.Research questions and predictions
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Overview of participants and dataset
    • 5.2Proportion of non-subject-initial declaratives and V2 violations
    • 5.3Comparing subject- and non-subject-initial declaratives
    • 5.4Syntactic and information structure factors
      • 5.4.1The effect of type of subject and verb
      • 5.4.2The effect of form, function and length of the initial element
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.20076.wes
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