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Lexicalist vs. exoskeletal approaches to language mixing
(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2018-06-05)
This article presents empirical evidence that disfavors using highly lexicalist minimalist models, such as the one presented in Chomsky (1995), when analyzing language mixing. The data analyzed consist of English – Spanish mixed noun phrases discussed in Moro (2014) as well as English – Norwegian mixed noun phrases and verbs taken from the Corpus of American Norwegian Speech. Whereas the lexicalist ...
Editorial: The Grammar of Multilingualism
(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2016-09-21)
The role of underspecification in grammar
(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2017-01-17)
In order to understand the human ability for language, we cannot simply focus on the
idealized monolingual speaker or signer (Chomsky, 1965). Rather, as much work in second
language acquisition has recognized, it is also necessary to study instances where a person
masters two or more languages at different levels of proficiency. Today’s globalized world
with increased migration will further ...
Variation and change in Norwegian wh-questions: The role of the complementizer som
(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2017-06-18)
In this paper, we consider variation in Verb Second (V2) word order in wh-questions across Norwegian dialects by investigating data from the Nordic Syntax Database (NSD), which consists of acceptability judgments collected at more than 100 locations in Norway. We trace the geographical distribution of the two main variables: phrasal vs. monosyllabic wh-elements (the latter argued to be heads) and ...
Units of Language Mixing: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective
(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2018-09-27)
Language mixing is a ubiquitous phenomenon characterizing bilingual speakers. A frequent context where two languages are mixed is the word-internal level, demonstrating how tightly integrated the two grammars are in the mind of a speaker and how they adapt to each other. This raises the question of what the minimal unit of language mixing is, and whether or not this unit differs depending on what ...
The Tale of Two Lexicons: Decomposing Complexity across a Distributed Lexicon
(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2021-11-10)
The notion of complexity is evasive and often left to intuition, yet it is often invoked when studying heritage language grammars. In this article, we propose a first pass at decomposing the notion of complexity into smaller components in a formal grammatical model. In particular, we argue that a distributed model of the lexicon (i.e., one that assumes that principles that generate both words and ...
Grammatical Gender in American Norwegian Heritage Language: Stability or Attrition?
(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2016-03-16)
This paper investigates possible attrition/change in the gender system of Norwegian
heritage language spoken in America. Based on data from 50 speakers in the Corpus of
American Norwegian Speech (CANS), we show that the three-gender system is to some
extent retained, although considerable overgeneralization of the masculine (the most
frequent gender) is attested. This affects both feminine and ...
Predicting outcomes in heritage grammars
(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2019-07-08)
Investigating variation in island effects: A case study of Norwegian extraction
(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2017-11-27)
We present a series of large-scale formal acceptability judgment studies that explored Norwegian island phenomena in order to follow up on previous observations that speakers of Mainland Scandinavian languages like Norwegian accept violations of certain island constraints that are unacceptable in most languages cross-linguistically. We tested the acceptability of wh-extraction from five island types: ...
Variable V2 in Norwegian Heritage Language: An effect of crosslinguistic influence?
(Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2021-05-28)
This paper discusses possible attrition of verb second (V2) word order in Norwegian heritage language by investigating a corpus of spontaneous speech produced by 50 2nd–4th generation heritage speakers in North America. The study confirms previous findings that V2 word order is generally stable in heritage situations, but nevertheless finds approximately 10% V2 violations. The cases of non-V2 word ...