Papers by Francesca R . Moro
Journal of Language Contact, 2020
This paper examines the influence of language contact and multilingualism on the encoding of tran... more This paper examines the influence of language contact and multilingualism on the encoding of transfer events in the heritage variety of Javanese spoken in Suriname. Alongside Javanese, this community also speaks Sranantongo and Dutch, of which Sranantongo had the longest contact history with Javanese. It is shown that this long period of contact had a structural influence on the expression of transfer events in Surinamese Javanese: Surinamese speakers use double object constructions and two-predicate constructions more frequently than homeland Javanese speakers, a change which we argue to be due to contact with Sranantongo. In addition, Surinamese Java-nese speakers overgeneralize one of the two applicative suffixes found in transfer constructions , a phenomenon that results from simplification processes.
Journal of Language Contact, 2019
This paper discusses historical and ongoing morphological simplification in Alorese, an Austrones... more This paper discusses historical and ongoing morphological simplification in Alorese, an Austronesian language spoken in eastern Indonesia. From comparative evidence, it is clear that Alorese lost almost all of its morphology over several hundred years as a consequence of language contact (Klamer, 2012, to appear). By providing both linguistic and cultural-historical evidence, this paper shows that Alorese has historically undergone morphological simplification as a result of second language (L2) learning. The first part of the paper presents a case study comparing the use of subject agreement prefixes in Alorese L1 speakers (n=6) and Alorese L2 speakers (n=12). The results show that L2 speakers deviate from the native norm, and tend to use one prefix as default agreement. The variation found among L2 speakers reveals an ongoing change possibly leading to the restructuring of the Alorese agreement system. The second part of the paper applies models of linguistic change (Kusters, 2003; Trudgill, 2011) to the Alorese community and shows that Alorese has been, and still is, spoken in a community with a large number of L2 speakers, where morphological simplification is expected to occur.
Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 2019
This paper investigates variation in possessive marking in Abui, a language spoken in a minority ... more This paper investigates variation in possessive marking in Abui, a language spoken in a minority bilingual community in eastern Indonesia. Abui youngsters grow up acquiring both Abui (Papuan) and Alor Malay (Austronesian), but only become active speakers of Abui when they reach adolescence. Due to this delay, their Abui is expected to show signs of both imperfect acquisition and contact-induced effects. This language background makes them an interesting population on which to carry out a cross-sectional study on contact-induced variation. Abui distinguishes between a reflexive and non-reflexive possessive marker, while Alor Malay makes no such distinction. Combining methods from descriptive linguistics, bilingualism research, and variationist sociolinguistics, and using both a production and a comprehension task, we study the variation between four age-groups of Abui-Malay bilinguals: (pre-)adolescents, young adults, adults, and elders. Our results reveal that (pre-)adolescent males are the drivers of variation, and generalize the non-reflexive possessive marker to reflexive environments. This suggests that over the next decades the reflexive possessive prefix may be lost in Abui. This paper is a direct answer to a call by Ross (2013) to conduct in-depth variationist studies to establish more synchronically informed approaches to the study of language contact. In addition, by combining production and comprehension studies and applying them to an indigenous minority language, it expands the empirical support for a prominent hypothesis of bilingual processing: the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Prévost & White 2000b).
Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This article examines the role of
social-psycholo... more Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This article examines the role of
social-psychological factors in the development of heritage Ambon Malay in the Netherlands.
More specifically, it aims to answer this question: Can social-psychological factors account for the
different frequency of Dutch-like structures among heritage speakers?
Design/Methodology/Approach: Data from 32 Ambon Malay heritage speakers and 27 Ambon
Malay homeland speakers were collected by means of video stimuli and a sociolinguistic interview.
Data and Analysis: The database provides six linguistic variables and three social-psychological
factors. The linguistic variables are as follows: the pre-verbal marker ada; the definite marker
=nya; the double object construction; the prepositional phrase and adjectival phrase in resultative
constructions; the pre-nominal order for the demonstrative itu and the numeral satu ‘one’. The
social-psychological factors are where the speaker lives, onset of Dutch bilingualism and attitude.
The effect of the social-psychological factors on the linguistic variables was assessed using a
multivariate general linear model.
Findings/Conclusions: The results show that place where the speaker lives is the best predictor.
Heritage speakers living outside a Moluccan ward have a higher rate of Dutch-like features than
speakers living inside a Moluccan ward. In some cases, sequential bilinguals are more innovative
than simultaneous bilinguals. Finally, speakers with only a mild positive attitude towards the
heritage language have a higher rate of Dutch-like features.
Originality: Unlike previous studies, this article does not test the role of social-psychological
factors against self-ratings of heritage language proficiency, but it uses real language data.
Significance/Implications: The theoretical significance of this study is to bridge the gap
between the sphere of language structure and the sphere of language use and language attitude.
An additional value lies in its findings that frequent use of the heritage language means not only a
higher rate of maintenance but also accelerated change.
This article discusses the plural word hire in Alorese, an Austronesian language spoken on the is... more This article discusses the plural word hire in Alorese, an Austronesian language spoken on the islands of Alor and Pantar, in eastern Indonesia. Following the methodological requisites for contact-induced change, I claim that the plural word hire emerged through contact with Papuan Alor-Pantar languages, because (i) Alorese was and still is spoken in close contact with Alor-Pantar languages; (ii) Alorese and the neighboring Alor-Pantar languages share the presence of a plural word, and their plural words have similar syntactic and semantic properties; (iii) Alor-Pantar languages had plural words before they came into contact with Alorese; and (iv) Alorese did not have the plural word hire before it came into contact with Alor-Pantar languages. The innovation of hire is a case of contact-induced grammaticalization, whereby the form is inherited and developed from an original third person plural pronoun going back to Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *si-ida, while the function of the plural word is borrowed from the neighboring Alor-Pantar languages.
Abstract
Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This paper investigates the effects of D... more Abstract
Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This paper investigates the effects of Dutch on the tense-aspect system of heritage Ambon Malay, a variety spoken by Dutch-Ambon Malay bilinguals
in the Netherlands. The study asks whether the cross-linguistic contrasts between the two languages – Dutch obligatorily marks past/non-past and finiteness, whereas Ambon Malay lacks a grammaticalized expression of these distinctions – has an effect on the aspectual system of heritage Ambon Malay.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The database for the study consists of video descriptions provided by 32 bilingual speakers (the experimental groups) and by three control groups: 27 homeland speakers of Ambon Malay, 5 first generation speakers of Ambon Malay in the Netherlands (late bilinguals), and 10 monolingual speakers of Dutch.
Data and Analysis: The frequency and distribution of aspect markers is analysed statistically in the four groups.
Findings/Conclusions: The analysis of the data reveals that, under the influence of Dutch, the Ambon Malay progressive marker ada has undergone a shift in temporal status and frequency and it is now interpreted as a marker of present tense, as well as of progressive aspect. The other two aspect markers, the iamitive/perfective su and verbal reduplication (iterative) are used significantly less by heritage speakers.
Originality: This study shows that when a grammatical category is present and productive in the dominant language of a bilingual heritage speaker, but not in the heritage language, there is a great likelihood that it will undergo contact-induced grammaticalization, even in a relatively short time contact situation. The study also shows that input-related factors, such as transparency and phonological salience, contribute to the (in)stability of aspectual forms in the heritage language.
Significance/Implications: This finding has implication for the incomplete acquisition perspective on heritage languages, which sees these languages as grammatically simplified systems (see, e.g., Montrul, 2009; Polinsky, 2008), because it shows that heritage languages can also gain grammatical distinctions previously absent in the (homeland) language.
Heritage languages (HL), like other contact varieties, are subject to considerable transfer. Howe... more Heritage languages (HL), like other contact varieties, are subject to considerable transfer. However, the question remains of whether structures are really transferred from one language to another. Two case studies, one about datives in heritage Spanish, and the other about resultatives in heritage Ambon Malay, serve as a basis for discussion around the nature of structural transfer in HLs. The main conclusion is that structural transfer can be characterized as a redistribution of already available structures, driven by lexical and conceptual properties. In order to account for this, we explain structural transfer in terms of cross-linguistic activation in a psycholinguistic model inspired by Hartsuiker et al. (2004).
This article reports the preliminary findings of a study examining the semantics of modal verbs i... more This article reports the preliminary findings of a study examining the semantics of modal verbs in heritage Ambon Malay, a language variety spoken by Dutch-Ambon Malay bilinguals in the Netherlands whose dominant language is Dutch. In this study, I examined the use of the necessity modal musti [must] in the speech of heritage language (HL) speakers and compared it to that of monolingual homeland Ambon Malay speakers and monolingual Dutch speakers. The findings show convergence between the modal system of the heritage language (Ambon Malay) and that of the dominant language (Dutch). More precisely, the heritage necessity modal musti [must] has extended its semantic range to resemble its Dutch equivalent moeten [must.] I discuss three main factors that account for this innovation, namely (i) psychological factors – semantic convergence is one of the strategies adopted by bilinguals to reduce their cognitive load, (ii) universal principles of language development in contact settings ̶ conceptual naturalness facilitates semantic influence from Dutch, and (iii) social factors ̶ the language history of HL speakers shows that the innovation correlates with type of bilingualism and amount of exposure to Ambon Malay. Finally, the findings of this study support the Functional Discourse Grammar hierarchy of language change and, to a lesser extent, the typological hierarchy of Matras (2007).
The domains where languages show variable syntax are often vulnerable in language contact
situati... more The domains where languages show variable syntax are often vulnerable in language contact
situations. This paper investigates one such domain in Ambon Malay: the variable
encoding of give-events. We study give-expressions in the Ambon Malay variety spoken by
heritage speakers in the Netherlands, and compare the responses of heritage speakers with
those of homeland speakers in Ambon, Indonesia. We report that heritage Ambon Malay
shows an innovative higher incidence of do constructions compared to the homeland variety,
and a significant decrease in the frequency of ‘two predicate’ constructions. The change
that heritage Ambon Malay is undergoing is thus not categorical, but rather involves a
change in frequency of certain constructions. We argue that this ‘restructuring by changing
frequency’ is due to a combination of factors: influence from Dutch, universal tendencies in
language acquisition, and the language history of individual speakers. Apart from a quantitative
difference, we also observe a qualitative difference between the give-constructions of
heritage and homeland speakers of Ambon Malay: both groups use different prepositions
in the prepositional object construction, a reflection of their different social histories.
Domains where languages have two or more competing syntactic constructions expressing the same me... more Domains where languages have two or more competing syntactic constructions expressing the same meaning may be problematic for bilingual heritage speakers. One such variable domain is the resultative constructions in heritage Ambon Malay, a variety spoken in the Netherlands by Dutch-Ambon Malay bilinguals. In Ambon Malay, resultatives are expressed mostly by means of verb serialization (SVC), although resultative prepositional phrases (PP) and adjectival phrases (AP) also occur. In Dutch, resultative constructions usually involve verb particles, PPs and APs. This overlap of structures poses the conditions for transfer effects between the two languages. The frequency distribution of SVCs, PPs and APs is investigated in semi-spontaneous speech from heritage speakers of Ambon Malay and compared to that of baseline speakers. Heritage speakers show an increase in the frequency of constructions shared by both languages (PPs and APs), while they underuse the constructions attested only in the heritage language (SVC).
This article discusses Malay and Chinese heritage languages as spoken in the Netherlands. Heritag... more This article discusses Malay and Chinese heritage languages as spoken in the Netherlands. Heritage speakers are dominant in another language and use their heritage language less. Moreover, they have qualitatively and quantitatively different input from monolinguals. Heritage languages are often described in terms of change. This article focuses on three types of stability in heritage speakers: stability in form, based on two case studies on progressive and definite marking, stability in function, based on a study on classifiers in Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, and stability in form and meaning based on a study on the non-completion of the grammaticalization process of punya. We relate (non)- change to the influence of the dominant language as well as to more general effects of bilingualism.
Nordhoff, Sebastian (ed.). The Genesis of Sri Lanka Malay. A Case of Extreme Language Contact.
This presentation is based on Moro & Klamer. Give-constructions in heritage Ambon Malay in the Ne... more This presentation is based on Moro & Klamer. Give-constructions in heritage Ambon Malay in the Netherlands. To appear in Journal of Language Contact.
Books by Francesca R . Moro
As the result of migration, many languages have a homeland variety and one or more so-called heri... more As the result of migration, many languages have a homeland variety and one or more so-called heritage varieties spoken in the countries of migration, often in Europe, North America, or Australia. One of these is Ambon Malay, a language originally spoken in the Central Moluccas, Indonesia, but also spoken as a heritage language in the Netherlands.
When one language is spoken alongside another one, contact-induced change is expected to occur. This change inevitably leads a heritage language to diverge from its homeland counterpart and to converge toward the socially dominant language. This dissertation explores contact-induced change in heritage Ambon Malay, as spoken by Dutch-Ambon Malay bilinguals. In order to investigate divergence and convergence, the present study systematically compares heritage Ambon Malay to its homeland variety, to Dutch, and to the language of first generation speakers in the Netherlands. The comparison, both quantitative and qualitative, is based on semi-spontaneous speech data and it focuses on four grammatical areas: nominal modification, aspect marking, give-constructions and resultative constructions.
The most pervasive type of contact-induced change encountered in heritage Ambon Malay is ‘change in frequency’, namely a change in preference for one construction over another equally possible construction when the preferred construction is shared with Dutch. As a result, heritage Ambon Malay grammar is converging toward Dutch and diverging from the homeland variety. Beside Dutch influence, divergence from the homeland variety is also accounted for by the quantitatively and qualitatively different language input that heritage speakers have received in the county of migration.
Thesis Chapters by Francesca R . Moro
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Papers by Francesca R . Moro
social-psychological factors in the development of heritage Ambon Malay in the Netherlands.
More specifically, it aims to answer this question: Can social-psychological factors account for the
different frequency of Dutch-like structures among heritage speakers?
Design/Methodology/Approach: Data from 32 Ambon Malay heritage speakers and 27 Ambon
Malay homeland speakers were collected by means of video stimuli and a sociolinguistic interview.
Data and Analysis: The database provides six linguistic variables and three social-psychological
factors. The linguistic variables are as follows: the pre-verbal marker ada; the definite marker
=nya; the double object construction; the prepositional phrase and adjectival phrase in resultative
constructions; the pre-nominal order for the demonstrative itu and the numeral satu ‘one’. The
social-psychological factors are where the speaker lives, onset of Dutch bilingualism and attitude.
The effect of the social-psychological factors on the linguistic variables was assessed using a
multivariate general linear model.
Findings/Conclusions: The results show that place where the speaker lives is the best predictor.
Heritage speakers living outside a Moluccan ward have a higher rate of Dutch-like features than
speakers living inside a Moluccan ward. In some cases, sequential bilinguals are more innovative
than simultaneous bilinguals. Finally, speakers with only a mild positive attitude towards the
heritage language have a higher rate of Dutch-like features.
Originality: Unlike previous studies, this article does not test the role of social-psychological
factors against self-ratings of heritage language proficiency, but it uses real language data.
Significance/Implications: The theoretical significance of this study is to bridge the gap
between the sphere of language structure and the sphere of language use and language attitude.
An additional value lies in its findings that frequent use of the heritage language means not only a
higher rate of maintenance but also accelerated change.
Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This paper investigates the effects of Dutch on the tense-aspect system of heritage Ambon Malay, a variety spoken by Dutch-Ambon Malay bilinguals
in the Netherlands. The study asks whether the cross-linguistic contrasts between the two languages – Dutch obligatorily marks past/non-past and finiteness, whereas Ambon Malay lacks a grammaticalized expression of these distinctions – has an effect on the aspectual system of heritage Ambon Malay.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The database for the study consists of video descriptions provided by 32 bilingual speakers (the experimental groups) and by three control groups: 27 homeland speakers of Ambon Malay, 5 first generation speakers of Ambon Malay in the Netherlands (late bilinguals), and 10 monolingual speakers of Dutch.
Data and Analysis: The frequency and distribution of aspect markers is analysed statistically in the four groups.
Findings/Conclusions: The analysis of the data reveals that, under the influence of Dutch, the Ambon Malay progressive marker ada has undergone a shift in temporal status and frequency and it is now interpreted as a marker of present tense, as well as of progressive aspect. The other two aspect markers, the iamitive/perfective su and verbal reduplication (iterative) are used significantly less by heritage speakers.
Originality: This study shows that when a grammatical category is present and productive in the dominant language of a bilingual heritage speaker, but not in the heritage language, there is a great likelihood that it will undergo contact-induced grammaticalization, even in a relatively short time contact situation. The study also shows that input-related factors, such as transparency and phonological salience, contribute to the (in)stability of aspectual forms in the heritage language.
Significance/Implications: This finding has implication for the incomplete acquisition perspective on heritage languages, which sees these languages as grammatically simplified systems (see, e.g., Montrul, 2009; Polinsky, 2008), because it shows that heritage languages can also gain grammatical distinctions previously absent in the (homeland) language.
situations. This paper investigates one such domain in Ambon Malay: the variable
encoding of give-events. We study give-expressions in the Ambon Malay variety spoken by
heritage speakers in the Netherlands, and compare the responses of heritage speakers with
those of homeland speakers in Ambon, Indonesia. We report that heritage Ambon Malay
shows an innovative higher incidence of do constructions compared to the homeland variety,
and a significant decrease in the frequency of ‘two predicate’ constructions. The change
that heritage Ambon Malay is undergoing is thus not categorical, but rather involves a
change in frequency of certain constructions. We argue that this ‘restructuring by changing
frequency’ is due to a combination of factors: influence from Dutch, universal tendencies in
language acquisition, and the language history of individual speakers. Apart from a quantitative
difference, we also observe a qualitative difference between the give-constructions of
heritage and homeland speakers of Ambon Malay: both groups use different prepositions
in the prepositional object construction, a reflection of their different social histories.
Books by Francesca R . Moro
When one language is spoken alongside another one, contact-induced change is expected to occur. This change inevitably leads a heritage language to diverge from its homeland counterpart and to converge toward the socially dominant language. This dissertation explores contact-induced change in heritage Ambon Malay, as spoken by Dutch-Ambon Malay bilinguals. In order to investigate divergence and convergence, the present study systematically compares heritage Ambon Malay to its homeland variety, to Dutch, and to the language of first generation speakers in the Netherlands. The comparison, both quantitative and qualitative, is based on semi-spontaneous speech data and it focuses on four grammatical areas: nominal modification, aspect marking, give-constructions and resultative constructions.
The most pervasive type of contact-induced change encountered in heritage Ambon Malay is ‘change in frequency’, namely a change in preference for one construction over another equally possible construction when the preferred construction is shared with Dutch. As a result, heritage Ambon Malay grammar is converging toward Dutch and diverging from the homeland variety. Beside Dutch influence, divergence from the homeland variety is also accounted for by the quantitatively and qualitatively different language input that heritage speakers have received in the county of migration.
Thesis Chapters by Francesca R . Moro
social-psychological factors in the development of heritage Ambon Malay in the Netherlands.
More specifically, it aims to answer this question: Can social-psychological factors account for the
different frequency of Dutch-like structures among heritage speakers?
Design/Methodology/Approach: Data from 32 Ambon Malay heritage speakers and 27 Ambon
Malay homeland speakers were collected by means of video stimuli and a sociolinguistic interview.
Data and Analysis: The database provides six linguistic variables and three social-psychological
factors. The linguistic variables are as follows: the pre-verbal marker ada; the definite marker
=nya; the double object construction; the prepositional phrase and adjectival phrase in resultative
constructions; the pre-nominal order for the demonstrative itu and the numeral satu ‘one’. The
social-psychological factors are where the speaker lives, onset of Dutch bilingualism and attitude.
The effect of the social-psychological factors on the linguistic variables was assessed using a
multivariate general linear model.
Findings/Conclusions: The results show that place where the speaker lives is the best predictor.
Heritage speakers living outside a Moluccan ward have a higher rate of Dutch-like features than
speakers living inside a Moluccan ward. In some cases, sequential bilinguals are more innovative
than simultaneous bilinguals. Finally, speakers with only a mild positive attitude towards the
heritage language have a higher rate of Dutch-like features.
Originality: Unlike previous studies, this article does not test the role of social-psychological
factors against self-ratings of heritage language proficiency, but it uses real language data.
Significance/Implications: The theoretical significance of this study is to bridge the gap
between the sphere of language structure and the sphere of language use and language attitude.
An additional value lies in its findings that frequent use of the heritage language means not only a
higher rate of maintenance but also accelerated change.
Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This paper investigates the effects of Dutch on the tense-aspect system of heritage Ambon Malay, a variety spoken by Dutch-Ambon Malay bilinguals
in the Netherlands. The study asks whether the cross-linguistic contrasts between the two languages – Dutch obligatorily marks past/non-past and finiteness, whereas Ambon Malay lacks a grammaticalized expression of these distinctions – has an effect on the aspectual system of heritage Ambon Malay.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The database for the study consists of video descriptions provided by 32 bilingual speakers (the experimental groups) and by three control groups: 27 homeland speakers of Ambon Malay, 5 first generation speakers of Ambon Malay in the Netherlands (late bilinguals), and 10 monolingual speakers of Dutch.
Data and Analysis: The frequency and distribution of aspect markers is analysed statistically in the four groups.
Findings/Conclusions: The analysis of the data reveals that, under the influence of Dutch, the Ambon Malay progressive marker ada has undergone a shift in temporal status and frequency and it is now interpreted as a marker of present tense, as well as of progressive aspect. The other two aspect markers, the iamitive/perfective su and verbal reduplication (iterative) are used significantly less by heritage speakers.
Originality: This study shows that when a grammatical category is present and productive in the dominant language of a bilingual heritage speaker, but not in the heritage language, there is a great likelihood that it will undergo contact-induced grammaticalization, even in a relatively short time contact situation. The study also shows that input-related factors, such as transparency and phonological salience, contribute to the (in)stability of aspectual forms in the heritage language.
Significance/Implications: This finding has implication for the incomplete acquisition perspective on heritage languages, which sees these languages as grammatically simplified systems (see, e.g., Montrul, 2009; Polinsky, 2008), because it shows that heritage languages can also gain grammatical distinctions previously absent in the (homeland) language.
situations. This paper investigates one such domain in Ambon Malay: the variable
encoding of give-events. We study give-expressions in the Ambon Malay variety spoken by
heritage speakers in the Netherlands, and compare the responses of heritage speakers with
those of homeland speakers in Ambon, Indonesia. We report that heritage Ambon Malay
shows an innovative higher incidence of do constructions compared to the homeland variety,
and a significant decrease in the frequency of ‘two predicate’ constructions. The change
that heritage Ambon Malay is undergoing is thus not categorical, but rather involves a
change in frequency of certain constructions. We argue that this ‘restructuring by changing
frequency’ is due to a combination of factors: influence from Dutch, universal tendencies in
language acquisition, and the language history of individual speakers. Apart from a quantitative
difference, we also observe a qualitative difference between the give-constructions of
heritage and homeland speakers of Ambon Malay: both groups use different prepositions
in the prepositional object construction, a reflection of their different social histories.
When one language is spoken alongside another one, contact-induced change is expected to occur. This change inevitably leads a heritage language to diverge from its homeland counterpart and to converge toward the socially dominant language. This dissertation explores contact-induced change in heritage Ambon Malay, as spoken by Dutch-Ambon Malay bilinguals. In order to investigate divergence and convergence, the present study systematically compares heritage Ambon Malay to its homeland variety, to Dutch, and to the language of first generation speakers in the Netherlands. The comparison, both quantitative and qualitative, is based on semi-spontaneous speech data and it focuses on four grammatical areas: nominal modification, aspect marking, give-constructions and resultative constructions.
The most pervasive type of contact-induced change encountered in heritage Ambon Malay is ‘change in frequency’, namely a change in preference for one construction over another equally possible construction when the preferred construction is shared with Dutch. As a result, heritage Ambon Malay grammar is converging toward Dutch and diverging from the homeland variety. Beside Dutch influence, divergence from the homeland variety is also accounted for by the quantitatively and qualitatively different language input that heritage speakers have received in the county of migration.