Variation among heritage speakers: Sequential vs. simultaneous bilinguals

• Main Author: Teresa Lee
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages 2013-08-01
• Series: Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages
• Subjects: Sequential; simultaneous; bilinguals; Variation; grammatical; Korean; performance
• Online Access: http://www.ncolctl.org/files/variation-among-heritage.pdf

This study examines the differences in the grammatical knowledge of two types of heritage speakers of Korean. Early simultaneous bilinguals are exposed to both English and the heritage language from birth, whereas early sequential bilinguals are exposed to the heritage language first and then to English upon schooling. A listening comprehension task involving relative clauses was conducted with 51 beginning-level Korean heritage speakers. The results showed that the early sequential bilinguals exhibited much more accurate knowledge than the early simultaneous bilinguals, who lacked rudimentary knowledge of Korean relative clauses. Drawing on the findings of adult and child Korean L1 data on the acquisition of relative clauses, the performance of each group is discussed with respect to attrition and incomplete acquisition of the heritage language.