Friday, June 03 @12:30 p.m., Karen Landahl Center for Linguistics Research

Language contact in the Polish-American community in Chicago

Abstract:

Heritage speakers are individuals who were raised in a home where a language other than the dominant language of a given society was spoken. Heritage speakers are to some extent bilingual in both the language of their home and the dominant language. Only recently have linguists started examining heritage languages, languages that have not been completely acquired (Polinsky 2007). In this talk, I focus on features of heritage Polish spoken by “fluent” bilinguals from the Chicago area. A special focus is put on lexical and structural features that differ from standard Polish as described by grammars of Polish. I demonstrate that the Polish language undergoes reduction in nominal morphology and displays different patterns of verbal morphology. Structural innovations are modeled on English structure; however, new independent phenomena are also observed. Additionally, I address the problem of baseline language and heritage speakers’ non-standard features of Polish which some Poles in Poland associate with being uneducated.