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Aspect in Heritage Greek: evidence from elicited production and online judgments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2021

Anastasia Paspali Open the ORCID record for Anastasia Paspali [Opens in a new window] ,
Vasiliki Rizou  and
Artemis Alexiadou
Anastasia Paspali*
Affiliation:
Institute of English and American Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099Berlin, Germany
Vasiliki Rizou
Affiliation:
Institute of English and American Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099Berlin, Germany
Artemis Alexiadou
Affiliation:
Institute of English and American Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099Berlin, Germany Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS), 10117Berlin, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. Email: paspalia@hu-berlin.de
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Abstract

This study tests grammatical aspect in adult Heritage Speakers (HSs) of Greek in Germany (HSs-Germany) and the US (HSs-US), a topic which has not been investigated before for this language, exploring the role of the dominant language and the default value as an acquisition strategy. In an oral elicitation task (Experiment 1) targeting the production of aspectual marking in Greek, Greek monolinguals (MSs) and HSs-Germany exhibited ceiling performance, while HSs-US were significantly less accurate. Education in Greek reliably predicted their accuracy. In a speeded Grammaticality Judgment task (Experiment 2) targeting the comprehension of aspect in a Grammaticality x Aspect repeated measures design, similar results were obtained for the grammatical conditions as in Experiment 1. In ungrammatical conditions, accuracy on aspect was affected for all groups, and this was more evident for HSs. HSs-US were overall less accurate with the morphologically marked form (perfective). Decision Times (DTs) revealed that only MSs and HSs-Germany were sensitive to aspect violations exhibiting longer DTs. Education in Greek reliably predicted accuracy and DTs. The results are discussed within the realm of heritage languages, language contact, and aspect acquisition in Greek bilingual populations. Finally, certain novel verbal forms produced by HSs are also discussed.

Keywords

heritage languagesheritage Greekbilingualismaspect acquisitionlanguage contact
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , March 2022 , pp. 301 - 332
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© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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