Multiple grammars: Systemic variation across monolingual and bilingual systems

With the advent of a better understanding of grammatical architecture as well as the development of articulated models of language structure, it has become apparent that the same surface phenomenon may have different underlying representations. This realization undergirds the conception of multiple grammars within a given linguistic population. Researchers have noted instances of multiple grammars before, and in this talk I will review several such cases (Turkish relativization, Korean verb raising, and negation in Polynesian). However, the question has not been raised whether multiple grammars in the baseline also correspond to multiple grammars in bilinguals, heritage speakers in particular. This question constitutes the central theme of this presentation. 

As representative cases, I will consider externally-headed relative clauses and the scope of negation. Relative clauses can in principle be derived in a number of ways, with different underlying syntax. I show that at least two analyses of relative clauses are available to English and Russian monolinguals. However, English-dominant heritage speakers of Russian do not rely on two grammars for their relativization; instead, they seem to limit the formation of relative clauses to only one analytical option (Polinsky, to appear). On the other hand, the examination of scope in Chinese-dominant Tibetan speakers points to multiple grammars within the heritage-speaker population. According to Chen & Huan (2023), some Tibetan speakers some allow only surface scope of negation; others accept scope ambiguity in Tibetan (as seems to be the case in the baseline), and still others show scope ambiguity in both languages (transfer from the home language to the dominant language).

These results have several broader implications. They add to the growing body of work on multiple grammars in linguistic populations and lead to new questions concerning the relationship between multiple grammars in the baseline vs heritage systems. As the Russian data suggest, heritage speakers narrow down the options available in the input, which indicates that they rely on internally-driven learning principles. No such narrowing (“simplification”) is observed in Chinese-Tibetan bilinguals though. We should be able to predict which, if any, of the options available under multiple grammars would be chosen by heritage speakers.

Chen, Y., & Huan, T. (2023). Scope assignment in Quantifier-Negation sentences in Tibetan as a heritage language in China. Second Language Research, 0(0).  https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583231161164

Polinsky, M. (to appear). Heritage language gaps. In R. D’Alessandro et al. (eds.) Heritage languages and syntactic theory. OUP.