Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.1401

EDITOR: Francesco Bryan Romano
TITLE: Studies in Italian as a Heritage Language
SERIES TITLE: LANGUAGE CONTACT AND BILINGUALISM
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Oliver Whitmore

SUMMARY

Studies in Italian as Heritage Language (SIHL), edited by Francesco Bryan Romano, is the new volume in the Language Contact and Bilingualism Series (edited by Yaron Matras). The primary goal of SIHL is to present the language of Italian heritage speakers as just as important for heritage linguistics and language acquisition studies as heritage Spanish is. SIHL also aims to exhibit Italian language bilingual contexts outside of North America. The volume, thus, seeks to diversify and complement two fields which have generated much thought in the United States: heritage language acquisition (of Spanish) and Italian-American cultural studies.
The volume is divided into two parts: 1. Experimental studies (Chapters 2-7) and 2. Observational Studies (Chapters 8-10), in addition to an initial chapter by Silvina Montrul on the state of the field (Chapter 1).

In Chapter 1, ‘Heritage language development: Dominant language transfer and the sociopolitical context’, Silvina Montrul discusses language features that have been at the center of heritage linguistics, such as the acquisition of morphosyntactic gender, case, word order, and the expression of null and overt subject pronouns. Montrul takes a special interest in questioning the acquisitional differences between heritage language (HL) speakers and second language (L2) speakers and the role of majority language transfer. She concludes by noting the difficulty in understanding disparate levels of proficiency across different heritage speaker communities due to the convergence of sociocultural factors and linguistic factors.

The first of the Experimental studies in the volume (Chapter 2) is ‘Ultimate attainment in long-immersed heritage Italian immigrants: Syntactic and semantic knowledge of direct object clitics and partitive ne’ by Pedro Guijarro Funetes, Iria Bello Viruega, Estela García Alcaraz, and Sergio Viveros Guzmán. They study the attrition effects that long-time exposure to Spanish has on speakers of heritage Italian with respect to interpretable (semantic) and uninterpretable (syntactic) features as expressed in object pronoun stimuli. Since the results show that heritage speakers did not perform differently compared to monolingual Spanish and Italian speakers, the study suggests that “language attrition is neither feature-specific nor language-specific” for languages within a single language family (p. 61).

Giuditta Smith, Roberta Spelorzi, Antonella Sorace, and Maria Garraffa have contributed ‘Grammatical competence in adult heritage speakers of Italian and adult immigrants: A comparative study’ as Chapter 3. They use methods from psycholinguistics and clinical linguistics to compare the proficiency levels of heritage speakers of Italian and English with the levels of immigrants dominant in Italian and with knowledge of English as an L2. Like other studies in the field, their results suggest that heritage speakers use the same linguistic system as immigrants despite the tendency of heritage speakers to use simpler structures.

The volume editor, Francesco (Bryan) Romano has contributed Chapter 4, ‘Ultimate attainment of gender in heritage and L2 Italian’. He tests two hypotheses from the field of second language acquisition with heritage speakers, namely, the failed function feature hypothesis and the missing surface inflection hypothesis. Romano interprets the findings as incompatible with the failed function feature hypothesis, suggesting that differences between heritage speakers and L2 speakers are associated with task pressure and memory recall, and not onset age of acquisition or shared language categories. This contribution redirects the field of heritage language studies towards computational theories, such as the missing surface inflection hypothesis.

Chapter 5, by Maria Teresa Bonfatti-Sabbioni, is entitled ‘Auxiliary selection in heritage speakers of Italian’. The author engages with the heritage language as an independent interlanguage, created by the “receivers of the heritage input” (i.e. the children), using material from the “input providers” (i.e. the parents) (p. 134). She uses the family locus as the site of her study on auxiliary selection. She finds that children generally perform in line with the input providers, with exceptions predicted by the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (Sorace, 2000). Bonfatti-Sabbioni’s research suggests that ambiguous semantic categories can be subject to reorganization within certain limits by the receiver of heritage input.

Jacopo Torregrossa, Irene Caloi, and Andrea Listanti have contributed Chapter 6, ‘The acquisition of syntactic structures in heritage Italian: Assessing the role of language exposure at critical periods’. The researchers investigate a classic topic in child language acquisition, namely, the correlation of speaker age, amount of exposure, and attainment of simple and complex syntactic structures. Their study among Italian-German bilingual children reaffirms knowledge in the field that core syntactic structures, such as complement clauses, are acquired early, while complex structures which involve movement or embedding and movement, are acquired late (at around 6 years of age). This is credited to the role of general cognitive development as part of the language acquisition process: “the structures that heritage children find more difficult are exactly the ones that emerge late in monolingual language acquisition” (p. 186).

Chapter 7 finishes Part 1 of SIHL as the last of the experimental studies and is called ‘The expression of (deontic and epistemic) modality in Italian as heritage language in Germany’. In this chapter, Katrin Schmitz and Tim Diaubalick use semi-structured interviews to elicit structures of modality from adult Heritage Italian-German speakers and monolingual Italian speakers. Even though the two languages vastly differ in how they express modality though lexical items, grammatical mood, and tense, they conclude that there is no clear evidence of convergence of the German and Italian systems among heritage speakers. Their project opens the field up for further studies to understand why there is no convergence despite all expectations.

Part 2 of SIHL comprises a small, diverse set of observational studies that primarily rely on socially informed and qualitative methods of analysis. Chapter 8 is called ‘Italian Heritage language in third generations on social networks: Morphosyntactic code-switching features’. In this paper, Caterina Ferrini explores the language use of third-generation Italian immigrants to the US. Ferrini characterizes their written language as an English matrix system with embedded lexical items and collocations of Sicilian and Standard Italian origin. Ferrini’s study implies that third-generation speakers can manipulate residues of the HL morphology despite preference for the majority language.

In Chapter 9, Elisa De Cristofaro and Linda Badan discuss ‘Discourse markers in heritage Italian spoken in Flanders’. In this study, the researchers aim to discover the lexical, syntactic, and functional differences in discourse markers between Italian L1 speakers and HL and L2 speakers of Italian living in Flanders (Belgium). The data reveal that all three groups use discourse markers in the same syntactic structure, but that L2 speakers prefer discourse markers associated with written material and HL speakers tend to use markers associated with oral discourse, reflecting the environment in which the language was acquired. Combined with evidence of interference from Dutch and French, the researchers advance a line of questioning for discourse markers that resonates with Matras (2009) on a shared linguistic repertoire for languages in contact.

The final chapter (Chapter 10), by Margherita Di Salvo & Eugenio Goria, focuses on ‘Auxiliary selection in Italo-Romance heritage languages: Argentina and the UK’. The authors employ an intense sociolinguistic lens in their analysis of auxiliaries, accounting for the language(s) of the homeland, the linguistic and socioeconomic context of the destination countries, the language status of the speakers (simultaneous/sequential bilinguals), and the relative speaker generation. The researchers discover that different mechanisms of language change have occurred in the two communities—one related to majority language transfer and the other to mechanisms of internal language change. This study reminds researchers that the linguistic processes which affect the speech of heritage communities include more than language acquisition alone.

EVALUATION

The various studies in SIHL are suited to the Language Contact & Bilingualism series. SIHL takes on the challenge of expanding the study of heritage language acquisition into Italian heritage communities. Featuring both new and experienced scholars, the volume provides a space for the diffusion of completed projects and projects in progress. The volume accomplishes the goals set out in its introduction: making it known that Italian heritage communities exist outside of North America and providing insight on topics in language acquisition.

Part 1 (Experimental Studies) of SIHL demonstrates that Italian heritage communities are valid sites for understanding processes of general heritage language acquisition (see also Montrul, 2016). The contributions in this section reinforce and verify the status quo of the field of heritage language acquisition. Sometimes heritage speakers perform like L1 speakers (Chapters 3, 6, 7); sometimes they perform like L2 speakers (Chapter 4); and sometimes their performance occupies an in-between space (Chapter 5). Part 1 provides a solid background for researchers to explore key concepts and upcoming questions in heritage language acquisition studies.

The questions raised in Part 1 echo the sentiments in Montrul’s introductory chapter: Why do heritage speakers in a community perform differently from a community of a similar background somewhere elsewhere in the world? Part 2 (Observational Studies) launches innovative projects with speaker-centered approaches that aim at this question through the lens of several Italo-Romance varieties (including Standard Italian). The three papers in Part 2 come together by providing slices of different generations throughout time from immigrant language communities. These chapters bring excitement for further research in this line of thought, emphasizing how an individual’s acquisition affects, maintains, challenges, and diffuses at the community level over time.

SIHL frequently discusses the effects of language contact at the interface level of linguistic subfields. Apart from Chapter 10, there is minimal discussion of the main socio-cultural interface of the volume— what it actually means to be of ‘Italian’ heritage. This largely ignores the bulk of research on Italian immigrant situations in North America and the Italo-Romance language(s) that they use (e.g. Carnevale, 2010; Prifti, 2017). Most of the individual studies in SIHL omit a full descriptive profile of the ‘Italian’ language transmitted from the immigrant generation to the heritage speakers. Even though the use of Italo-Romance varieties in Italy has shifted towards regionally-flavored varieties of Standard Italian (De Renzo, 2008; Maiden, 1995; Maiden & Parry, 2006), some studies in SIHL (Chapters 2, 7) resort to post-hoc concessions to possible influence from other Italo-Romance languages or Regional Italian to explain unexpected outcomes in their studies.

Some studies (Chapters 8, 10) in the volume wisely consider Italo-Romance influences from the outset. Indeed, Romano, in his introduction, defends the inclusion of these Italo-Romance studies in the volume as part of the history of the Italian peninsula. In doing so, he recognizes the difficulty for the researcher to define ‘Italian’. Researchers in the heritage context might also carefully consider the speaker-participant’s self-identification in their discussion. Research in the United States has shown that speakers often classify other Italo-Romance varieties as ‘(Standard) Italian’, but that some speakers classify Standard Italian as ‘dialect’ (Serra, 2017). Clarifying the nature of ‘Italian’ in each chapter would ensure the impact of the conclusions.

A related weakness in the volume is the inconsistent description of heritage speakers. Many authors use positive or neutral terminology in their discussion; however, a few studies continue to frame heritage language acquisition with a deficit mindset, e.g. “missing skills” (Chapter 8) and “correctness” (Chapter 3). Since terminology makes an impact in the discussion of minority and minoritized language communities (Bley-Vroman, 1983; Perley, 2012), the volume could enforce a speaker-first approach without sacrificing a diversity of content.

Overall, SIHL is a valuable tool for beginning and experienced scholars of generative and cognitive approaches to language acquisition. Scholars whose interests lie primarily in the social and anthropological understanding of heritage languages or in Italian culture will need to wait readily at the forefront if ever there should be a subsequent volume to the present one.

REFERENCES

Bley‐Vroman, R. (1983). The comparative fallacy in interlanguage studies: The case of systematicity. Language learning, 33(1), 1-17.

Carnevale, N. 2009. A new language, a new world: Italian Immigrants in the United States 1890-1945. University of Illinois Press.

De Renzo, F. (2008). Per un'analisi della situazione sociolinguistica dell'Italia contemporanea. Italiano, dialetti e altre lingue. Italica, 85(1), 44-62.

Maiden, M. (1995). A linguistic history of Italian. Routledge.

Maiden, M., & Parry, M. (Eds.). (2006). The dialects of Italy. Routledge.

Matras, Y. (2009). Language Contact. Cambridge University Press.

Montrul, S. (2016). The Acquisition of Heritage Languages. Cambridge University Press.

Perley, B. (2012). Zombie linguistics: Experts, endangered languages and the curse of undead voices. Anthropological forum, 22(2), 133-149.

Prifti, E. (2017). Americanismi d’Italia, italianisme d’America: Cenni sulle tracce lessicali della Grande Emigrazione. Testi e linguaggi, 11, 183-196.

Serra, R. (2017). Intrecci linguistici. Lingue e dialetti italiani tra i giovani italoamericani nella grande area di New York. Forum Italicum, 51(3), 727-760.

Sorace, A. (2000). Gradients in auxiliary selection with intransitive verbs. Language, 76(4), 859-890.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Oliver Whitmore is a PhD candidate in the Romance Languages & Literatures program at the University of California, Berkeley, where he specializes in language revitalization & French and Occitan linguistics. His dissertation seeks to implement a framework to study dialectology among communities engaged in revitalization of post-vernacular languages. He has recently taught courses in Romance Linguistics, French Phonology & Dialectology, and Language Revitalization. He also directs a reading group on Zoom, open to anyone who is interested in Occitan language & culture.