Many have expressed concerns regarding the replicability of scientific research. However, little of this ongoing discussion has focused on research examining the production of vowels and consonants or the many important choices that researchers must make in pre-analysis phases of speech production research. The literature reviewed here indicates that not all speech production studies have been replicated, and that how speech is elicited may affect the results that are obtained. Many different elicitation techniques are in current use, but none represents a gold standard. The new Characteristic Speech Production (CSP) technique presented here aims to augment replicability by obviating the need for participants to accommodate their speech to that of others or adopt a particular speaking style as they give meaningful answers to meaningful questions. Given the novelty of the CSP technique, the chapter provides a protocol that is designed to test its efficacy. If the CSP technique can be shown to yield speech samples that are more representative of individuals’ speech than a standard list-reading technique, a change in how speech is elicited for production research will be warranted.

It has been widely recognized that how languages behave, particularly under conditions of contact with other languages, depends on their context. Using the Ethnolinguistic Vitality framework, this chapter describes the demographics, linguistic attitudes and institutional supports for heritage languages, defining the concepts and illustrating them with examples from Toronto, the context in which the HLVC project is conducted. Demographic information includes population sizes, language shift rates, and history of settlement in Toronto. Status information includes both reflections on the status of heritage languages, as a whole, in Canada and labels attributed to the specific varieties. The institutional support section reports on the number of language classes available for each language. The chapter also includes discussion of language policy, particularly for education, and the demographics of the university where the research is centered, enabling other researchers to best consider what aspects of the project might need adjusting for adaptation in other contexts.

This chapter reports on trends of continuity and divergence within the heritage generations examined and between heritage and homeland varieties. It discusses the degrees of similarities between the varieties in terms of (a) rates of use of innovative forms and (b) conditioning factors in the constraint hierarchy. The three variables examined are voice onset time (VOT, n=8,909), case-marking on nouns and pronouns (CASE, n=9,661), and variable presence of subject pronouns (PRODROP, n=9,190), each in three or more languages. The similarity in rates and conditioning effects across generations for (PRODROP), examined in seven languages, particularly contrasts with findings for this variable in experimental paradigms. Similarly, findings of little simplification or overgeneralization of the case system in three languages stands in contrast to the outcomes of several previous studies. (VOT) shows a drift toward (but not arriving at) English-like values for only some of the languages examined. For each variable, models are presented and interpreted; a table then details which aspects of the analysis contribute to the interpretation of stability and of each type of variation.

The variables examined in Chapters 5 and 6 show little evidence of being used for identity work. That is, they do not show (consistent) effects of ethnic orientation measures or speaker sex. This chapter explicitly contrasts variables that reflect indexicality (correlation to social factors) in homeland varieties to non-indexical variables. We begin by considering three indexical variables in Italian: (VOT) in unstressed-syllable contexts, (APOCOPE), and (R), illustrating the extent to which indexicality is maintained in the heritage variety. We find increasing use of the more standard variant only in (VOT). Furthermore, we find that younger speakers (both in homeland and heritage) favour the non-standard variant. We then compare the variable (R), the contrast between trill (or tap) and approximant variants, in Italian and Tagalog, where it has indexical value in the homeland varieties, to Russian and Ukrainian, where it does not. Finally, we consider two additional indexical variables: Cantonese denasalization and Korean VOT. We conclude by contrasting the behavior of homeland-indexicals in heritage varieties. The presence of indexical value in homeland varieties does not consistently influence outcomes in the heritage varieties.

This chapter draws cross-linguistic comparisons among the patterns reported in Chapter 5 for three linguistic variables that occur in at least three languages in the project: (VOT), (CASE), and (PRODROP). Conditioning factors, both linguistic and social, are discussed. Collapsing across rate and constraint hierarchy for each variable, we note any indication of change in either. Half the context we examine exhibit stability. Of the eight that indicate difference, half of these can be attributed to English (including both convergence and divergence). With few differences between homeland and heritage speakers to work with, we find few generalizations about what parts of the language, or which languages, change. We do see more change in one morphosyntactic variable, (CASE), than in the phonetic variable (VOT), but less in the other morphosyntactic variable (PRODROP).

The chapter surveys repetitions and reduplications in Italian, from the segmental to the discourse level. Italian has reduplicative structures in ideophones, onomatopoeic formations, child language, and baby talk; segment repetition is used as an expressive device in commercials and product names; reduplication is used as a lexeme formation device in Verb-Verb compounds such as fuggifuggi ‘stampede, lit. run away run away’, and as a means of intensification of adjectives and adverbs; some sequences of two nouns have lexicalized with adjectival or adverbial meaning; contrastive focus reduplication is also attested in Italian. Discourse markers are often reduplicated; several cases of repetition of imperatives in discourse have constructionalized, giving rise to converbs with concessive or hypothetical meanings or used as antecedents of consecutive clauses; noun reiteration in discourse can be used to indicate frequency of occurrence of entities and events. It is argued that no clear dividing line can be drawn between pragmatic or syntactic repetition and grammatical or morphological reduplication, since grammaticalization of discourse repetition in diachrony often occurs.

Affix counterposition has two subcases: in the first (exemplified by the inflection of reflexive verbs in Lithuanian), an affix that is suffixed to the stem in some words is suffixed to a prefix in others; in the second, mirror-image case (exemplified by Noon adjective concord), an affix that is prefixed to the stem in some words is prefixed to a suffix in others. Rule aggregation models the phenomenon of affix counterposition as a deviation from the stem operand criterion involving a rule of affixation R whose operand is ordinarily a stem (when R isn’t aggregated) but is instead an affix (when R is aggregated to the rule introducing that affix). Rule aggregation brings affix counterposition into conformity with the affix directionality criterion. Nevertheless, there are real deviations from the latter criterion: some languages have true ambifixes that actually function as prefixes in some word forms but as suffixes in others. Gurma noun-class inflection exemplifies this possibility. Moreover, the morphotactics of Italian pronominal affixes involves a significant interaction between true ambifixation and rule aggregation.

The quotative system is routinely adduced as the locus of rapid cross–linguistic change. Aside from the prodigious number of empirical studies investigating English quotatives, quantitatively driven demonstrations of change in the quotative system of other languages remain the exception to the rule. Observing that change in languages other than English has often been intuited from isolated or anecdotal examples, we inaugurated a large–scale study of quotative variation in European and Canadian varieties of French, supplemented by data from Brazilian Portuguese and Italian. Drawing on more than 5,500 tokens representing the targeted varieties, detailed quantitative investigation revealed that only in urban varieties of Quebec and Acadian French does the innovative être comme variant (cf. English be like) qualify as a mid–range – and locally conditioned – change in progress. In other varieties that we examined, including the French and Portuguese spoken in the global cities of Paris and São Paulo respectively, we find little compelling evidence of anything other than relatively incipient change in the quotative system. Taken together, our quantitative results are damaging to ubiquitous claims that simultaneous parallel developments are purportedly affecting the quotative system of numerous languages and point to the primordial importance of community–based speech data in ratifying linguistic change.

The evolution of the Romance languages from Latin was significantly shaped by the numerous language contact environments, which resulted from conquest, colonization, and trade. This chapter traces the development of the largest Romance languages throughout Europe, with emphasis on the known or postulated effects of language contact. The chapter continues with an account of the spread of Spanish, Portuguese, and French to the Americas, together with the ensuing contacts with indigenous languages and languages of voluntary and involuntary immigration and the formation of Afro-Romance creole languages.

This chapter explores a representative cross-section of heritage languages, in Spanish-speaking Latin American nations and in Brazil. The presentation is organized by the circumstances that gave rise to heritage language enclaves: voluntary immigration, including recruitment efforts by Latin American governments, immigration of religious minorities. Immigration resulting from contract labor, and continent-internal migration, often resulting from economic hardship. None of the heritage languages enjoys official recognition, but some encompass entire communities while others have dwindled to small groups of speakers. Among the heritage languages examined are German and Mennonite Low German, Italian, Ukrainian, Polish, Haitian Creole, Japanese, and American, British, and Creole English as well as transplanted varieties of Spanish and Portuguese. Attitudes toward heritage languages as well as linguistic self-esteem of speakers are equally diverse, ranging from ethnic pride to scorn, and the discussion includes an overview of circumstances that both favor and endanger heritage language maintenance.

“The linguistic history of Italian is an interesting case study for reflecting upon the concept of a standard language and its nature, diffusion and impact. Whereas in other European countries the process of linguistic standardization was predominantly related to political or religious factors, in Italy, in the absence of a unified country (until 1861) and of a commonly spoken language, the standardization of Italian was founded on literature. The elitist norm that prevailed was based on archaic literary models, notably on Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, which raised long-lasting issues concerning the homogeneity/heterogeneity and rigidity/flexibility of the standard, as well as questions related to its share-ability and incisiveness. It is only from the twentieth century onwards, when the process of Italianization reached completion and Italian became the language of all Italians, that we can speak of the norm as an ‘average of individual realizations’; that is, as a norm that comes mainly from below. Certain phenomena previously considered ‘substandard’, many of which derive from a new relationship of give and take between written and spoken language, have finally been accepted, hence the configuration of a neo-standard which is at least partly different with respect to the ‘historical’ one.”