Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction: Advances in Korean psycholinguistics
- Part I Language acquisition
- 1 Acquisition of the subject and topic nominals and markers in the spontaneous speech of young children in Korean
- 2 The acquisition of argument structure and transitivity in Korean: a discourse-functional approach
- 3 Acquisition of case markers and grammatical functions
- 4 Do Korean children acquire verbs earlier than nouns?
- 5 The acquisition of the placement of the verb in the clause structure of Korean
- 6 Learning locative verb syntax: a crosslinguistic experimental study
- 7 Language-specific spatial semantics and cognition: developmental patterns in English and Korean
- 8 Acquisition of negation in Korean
- 9 The acquisition of Korean numeral classifiers
- 10 Acquisition of Korean reflexive anaphora
- 11 The Korean relative clause: issues of processing and acquisition
- 12 The accessibility hierarchy in Korean: head-external and head-internal relative clauses
- 13 Development of functional categories in child Korean
- 14 The acquisition of modality
- 15 The syntax of overmarking and kes in child Korean
- 16 Events in passive development
- 17 Universal quantification in child grammar
- 18 Acquisition of prosody in Korean
- 19 Korean as a heritage language
- 20 Maturational effects on L2 acquisition
- 21 L2 acquisition of English articles by Korean speakers
- 22 The acquisition of wanna contraction by adult Korean learners of English
- 23 Phonological abilities of Korean–English bilinguals
- 24 Parameters on languages in contact: an altered view of codeswitching
- 25 Influence of socio-psychological categories in bilingual interaction
- 26 Ontological concept versus shape in word learning from a crosslinguistic point of view
- 27 Notes on Korean Sign Language
- Part II Language processing
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
19 - Korean as a heritage language
from Part I - Language acquisition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction: Advances in Korean psycholinguistics
- Part I Language acquisition
- 1 Acquisition of the subject and topic nominals and markers in the spontaneous speech of young children in Korean
- 2 The acquisition of argument structure and transitivity in Korean: a discourse-functional approach
- 3 Acquisition of case markers and grammatical functions
- 4 Do Korean children acquire verbs earlier than nouns?
- 5 The acquisition of the placement of the verb in the clause structure of Korean
- 6 Learning locative verb syntax: a crosslinguistic experimental study
- 7 Language-specific spatial semantics and cognition: developmental patterns in English and Korean
- 8 Acquisition of negation in Korean
- 9 The acquisition of Korean numeral classifiers
- 10 Acquisition of Korean reflexive anaphora
- 11 The Korean relative clause: issues of processing and acquisition
- 12 The accessibility hierarchy in Korean: head-external and head-internal relative clauses
- 13 Development of functional categories in child Korean
- 14 The acquisition of modality
- 15 The syntax of overmarking and kes in child Korean
- 16 Events in passive development
- 17 Universal quantification in child grammar
- 18 Acquisition of prosody in Korean
- 19 Korean as a heritage language
- 20 Maturational effects on L2 acquisition
- 21 L2 acquisition of English articles by Korean speakers
- 22 The acquisition of wanna contraction by adult Korean learners of English
- 23 Phonological abilities of Korean–English bilinguals
- 24 Parameters on languages in contact: an altered view of codeswitching
- 25 Influence of socio-psychological categories in bilingual interaction
- 26 Ontological concept versus shape in word learning from a crosslinguistic point of view
- 27 Notes on Korean Sign Language
- Part II Language processing
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
Abstract
Heritage languages are quickly lost in predominantly monolingual environments such as the United States – usually by the second or third generation of immigrants. Such rapid loss is costly in many ways. This chapter will examine the acquisition, maintenance/loss and re-acquisition of heritage languages. We will explore factors that seem to predict acquisition, maintenance and loss. We will also explore how childhood experience with a heritage language may help adults re-learn the language. Korean is chosen as a focus because it seems particularly vulnerable to rapid attrition. Understanding its story may give us insights about other endangered heritage languages.
Introduction
Heritage languages are often lost rapidly in a predominantly monolingual environment, usually by the second or third generation of immigrants (Veltman, 1983; Krashen, 1996). The United States is a case in point. About 28.4 million people – or roughly 10 percent of the American population – are foreign-born (US Bureau of the Census, 2000), bringing with them an impressive collection of heritage languages. However, only a minority of their children and virtually none of their grandchildren manage to speak their heritage language with ease and credibility (Fillmore, 2000). This rapid loss is costly in many ways. The language barrier exacerbates generation gaps in linguistic minority families. Heritage cultures, along with heritage languages, are also lost. At a broader level, the nation loses valuable linguistic resources much needed for bridging cultures within the nation and across nations. What can be done to stem the tide?
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- Information
- The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics , pp. 268 - 275Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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