Abstract
Aims and objectives:
Despite the growth in research on heritage grammars, very few studies focused on heritage speakers’ knowledge of the syntax of wh-questions. This paper examines heritage Egyptian speakers’ knowledge of wh-questions in their L1 with particular focus on their knowledge of (1) the four main strategies of wh-question formation (three movement strategies and one in situ strategy) and (2) the unmarkedness of the in situ strategy compared to the movement strategy.
Design:
This study implements a cross-sectional design comparing an experimental group (30 heritage Egyptian speakers) and a control group (22 native Egyptian speakers) with respect to the issues under investigation.
Data and analysis:
Besides a proficiency measure and a background questionnaire, the participants completed three tasks: an elicited oral production task, an acceptability judgment task, and a preference task. The data from the oral production task were transcribed verbatim and coded in an Excel sheet. The data from the other two tasks were coded in two separate Excel sheets. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to describe and analyze the data from the three tasks.
Findings:
Heritage speakers had robust knowledge of the core aspects of wh-questions, including word order, strategies of wh-question formation, and resumption. They also realize the difference between marked and unmarked forms and often opt for the unmarked in situ strategy. However, they diverge from the controls in errors and patterns that mostly reflect transfer effects from their dominant L2 (English).
Originality:
This study is the first to explore wh-questions in heritage Arabic. Although very few studies focused on wh-questions in other languages, most of the issues examined here are unique because Egyptian Arabic deploys multiple strategies in constructing wh-questions.
Implications:
The findings corroborate the hypothesis that the core aspects of syntax are less susceptible to language loss. The results also demonstrate that heritage grammar is unique as it diverges from the grammar of L1 speakers in significant respects.
Introduction
One of the main topics that has driven research on heritage languages over the past 30 years or so is the extent to which heritage speakers maintain or lose different linguistic forms, the factors influencing their language maintenance/loss patterns, and the theoretical bases of these patterns as well as their implications for understanding heritage language acquisition and language acquisition in general. Existing research suggests that the trajectory as well as the outcome of heritage language acquisition may be influenced by different factors, such as L1 input, onset of L2 acquisition, and L2 transfer (e.g., Albirini, 2014; Albirini, 2018; Benmamoun et al., 2013; Montrul, 2008; Montrul & Polinsky, 2021; Polinsky, 2018). Ultimately, heritage speakers often fail to acquire certain linguistic forms and may lose forms that they have already acquired, especially ones that were not stable at the time of shifting to their dominant L2 (Montrul, 2008; Polinsky, 2011).
Several studies suggest that some aspects of heritage speakers’ L1 system are more likely to be maintained than others (Albirini et al., 2011; Anderson, 2001; Argyri & Sorace, 2007; Bolonyai, 2007; Montrul, 2002, 2004; Montrul et al., 2008; Montrul & Potowski, 2007; Polinsky, 2008; Rothman, 2007). For example, heritage speakers are reported to have relatively robust knowledge of tense, word order, and areas that generally fall under what is called the syntax proper within the Principles and Parameters framework (Benmamoun et al., 2013). By contrast, various gaps seem to appear in other areas and components, particularly the lexicon, inflectional and derivational morphology, syntax, and interfaces between all these components (e.g., Hulk & Müller, 2000; Montrul, 2008; Sorace, 2000; Tsimpli & Sorace, 2006).
Despite the notable growth in research trying to identify areas that are more susceptible to language attrition/loss and those that are less so, only a few studies have focused on the retention or loss of the syntax of wh-questions 1 (Cuza, 2016; Montrul et al., 2008; Strik & Pérez-Leroux, 2011). Wh-question formation is an essential and prominent feature of natural language. The formation of wh-questions involves syntactic mechanisms that are central to human language, such as dependencies at a distance (analyzed in some theoretical accounts through movement or base-generated dependencies between positions). Researching this area can therefore provide important insights into one important aspect of heritage languages. As will be explained below, the Arabic language is suited for engaging important issues in this area because it involves various forms and relationships, including wh-movement, wh-in situ, long-distance dependencies, resumption, and other restrictions on word order (Aoun et al., 2010).
This study has two main goals. The first is to investigate heritage Arabic speakers’ overall knowledge of wh-questions in the Egyptian dialect of Arabic. Wh-questions are typically acquired early in Arabic-speaking children’s language development (Al-Buainain, 2003; Omar, 1973; Smadi, 1979). One would expect wh-questions and the main mechanisms underlying their formation to be relatively less susceptible to loss if core syntax is resilient to attrition among speakers whose L1 development was not significantly interrupted early in their childhood, that is, their L2 exposure occurred only after they had already acquired these forms. The findings may therefore shed light on the idea of the stability of certain aspects of the syntax (see Benmamoun et al., 2013; Montrul, 2016; Polinsky, 2018).
The second goal for this study is to examine whether heritage speakers recognize the distinction between marked and unmarked forms in their heritage language. Markedness theory has been used to explain the differential acquisition of different forms in heritage languages (see McCarthy, 2008). Although it was developed by the Prague School phonology, markedness theory was adopted by other schools and linguistic frameworks and was extended to other linguistic areas, including syntax, morphology, and phonology. For current purposes, we will assume the simple view of markedness whereby a form is marked if it is not generated by core rules and principles of the language. In the context of wh-questions, for example, a language may have movement as the dominant option, but may also deploy the in situ strategy. In that case, movement is the default and unmarked pattern while the in situ is the marked pattern. Usually, marked forms are seen as a deviation from the core and are thus an exception to be learned. 2
Previous studies report that heritage speakers rely heavily on unmarked and default forms, particularly in morphology (Albirini, 2015, 2018; Benmamoun et al., 2014; McCarthy, 2008). Egyptian Arabic wh-questions deploy the movement strategy and the in situ strategy, but the former is considered marked whereas the latter is considered unmarked (Gad, 2011; Soltan, 2011; Wahba, 1984). The question that this study pursues is whether heritage speakers are able to identify and deploy unmarked and dominant forms in their L1. This engages the issues of whether unmarked forms are more stable in heritage languages (Albirini, 2018) and whether this is related to specific properties in their L1 or L2 (e.g., movement).
Research in language acquisition has long debated the role of transfer and input in language development and ultimate attainment (e.g., Alonso, 2016; Benmamoun et al., 2013; Chomsky, 1965; Montrul, 2008; Polinsky, 2018; Rothman et al., 2019). Because heritage acquisition is a case of atypical language acquisition due to limitations in L1 input and the influence of L2, this paper can help shed light on the role of L1 input and L2 transfer in heritage language grammars. Arabic allows wh-structures involving in situ and movement strategies in both matrix and embedded clauses. English, however, deploys movement as its unmarked option, with wh-in situ allowed in limited contexts that are pragmatically defined or where movement is no longer available (as in multiple questions with the object in situ). This study seeks to examine whether heritage speakers opt for the unmarked in situ option, which is also more frequent in their input, or deploy the less frequent option (i.e., movement) due to the influence of their L2.
The study will focus on the Egyptian dialect of Arabic because it is highly represented among Arab Americans. According to the Arab American Institute (2015), Arab Americans of Egyptian descent constitute 12% of the overall Arab American population.
Wh-questions in Egyptian Arabic
The topic of wh-questions is complex and multi-pronged as it relates to word order, dependencies, relationships, and triggers, and therefore this section will focus only on patterns and issues that are relevant to this paper. In Arabic, wh-questions can target both arguments and adjuncts. In argument wh-questions, the wh-word typically relates to an element in the subject or complement positions, as in the English examples in (1a, 1b). Adjunct wh-questions target adjuncts such as time, place, and manner, as in (2). Argument wh-questions are structurally less flexible than adjunct wh-questions in the sense that the wh-word can only remain in situ or be moved to the periphery of the clause, whereas the position of adjunct wh-words is more flexible (Aoun et al., 2010).
(1) a. What did Samy eat? b. Who ate the sandwich? (2) When are you coming to school?
According to Aoun et al. (2010), Arabic dialects, including the Egyptian dialect, deploy four main strategies to form wh-questions, three of which involve movement/placement of the wh-word to the left edge of the clause (or establish dependencies with the argument position) and the fourth involves no movement (in situ) or placement of the wh-word in the front of the clause. When the wh-word is in the Complementizer Phrase (CP) position, the argument position is either left empty (gap strategy) or filled with a resumptive pronoun (resumptive strategy). These four strategies are displayed in (3).
(3) a. mīn zārit who visited.3.s.f in-the-hospital “Who did she visit in the hospital?” b. mīn zārit- who visited.3.s.f- “Who did she visit in the hospital?” c. mīn who “Who is it that she visited in the hospital?” d. zārit mīn bi-l-mistašfa (In situ strategy) visited.3.s.f who in-the-hospital “Who did she visit in the hospital?”
The first three examples (3a, 3b, and 3c) involve the movement or placement of the wh-word mīn “who” in the left periphery of the clause. In (3a), the wh-element mīn is moved to the left edge of the clause and its site in the sentence (i.e., interpreted as after the verb zārit “visited” given its function as object of this verb) remains vacant, which is why this is called the gap strategy. By contrast, although the wh-word is placed to the left edge of the clause in (3b), its sentence-internal position is occupied by the presumptive pronoun –o “him,” which relates the wh-word to its interpreted position in the sentence. That is why this is called the resumptive strategy. In (3c), the wh-element in the front of the clause is still related to the resumptive pronoun marking its position, but is preceded by the relative clause complementizer lli “that” (Class II resumptive strategy). In all three examples with wh-word in the periphery of the clause (the CP domain), there is a long-distance dependency between the wh-word mīn and the position in the sentence where it is related, regardless of whether this position is occupied by a gap (gap strategy) or a resumptive pronoun (resumptive strategy). In (3d), the wh-word retains its position inside the clause without being moved to the left edge of the sentence (in situ strategy).
The Egyptian variety of Arabic uses all four strategies (Aoun et al., 2010). However, the movement strategy is considered to be marked in the Egyptian variety, whereas the in situ is the dominant and unmarked strategy (Aoun et al., 2010; Gad, 2011; Wahba, 1984). Another distinctive property of the Egyptian variety is that, while all wh-words can be deployed with the gap strategy regardless of the type of sentence in which they occur, mīn “who” can also be used with the resumptive strategy.
3
Consider the contrast between (5a) and (5b): (5) a. mīn ḍarabit/ ḍarbit-o Muna? who hit.3s.f/ hit.3s.f-him Muna “Who did Muna hit?” b. eih ḍarabit/ ḍarbit-o* Muna? what hit.3s.f/ hit.3s.f-it Muna “What did Muna hit?”
The first sentence is grammatical because the wh-element is mīn “who,” which can be used with both the gap strategy and resumptive strategy. By contrast, the simple sentence in (5b) becomes grammatical only when the gap strategy is used, but ungrammatical when the resumptive strategy is used. This is because the wh-element šu/eih “what” is deployed (Aoun et al., 2010). This specific attribute of mīn “who” explains why all the tasks used in this paper use this wh-word in particular.
In summary, knowledge of the relevant aspects of wh-questions that are covered in this study includes knowing (1) the extraction site of the wh-word (e.g., argument vs adjunct), (2) the distinction between movement and in situ options, (3) the availability or lack of the resumptive strategy, (4) word order constraints, (5) marked and unmarked forms, and (6) the restrictions that the use of certain wh-words entail. Our goal in this study was to examine heritage speakers’ knowledge of these key aspects of wh-question formation.
Previous studies on the acquisition of wh-questions
Research on question formation engages a number of questions. One important and much-discussed question concerns the order in which different forms of questions are acquired. Studies have examined the claim that there are some universal sequences for acquiring interrogatives, although researchers disagree on the exact delineation of this sequence. According to some accounts (e.g., Bellugi, 1965; Brown, 1973; Brown et al., 1969; Klima & Bellugi, 1966), children go through four main stages in their acquisition of interrogatives. In the first stage, children produce rote-learned wh-questions (e.g., what this?) and declarative sentences, sometimes with changes in intonation (e.g., mom go?). In the second stage, children produce a variety of wh-questions that are often missing auxiliaries or auxiliary–subject inversion. Also, the distinction between subject and object/adjunct questions is not clear at this stage (e.g., who doing that? or what doing?). In the third stage, auxiliaries transpire in children’s wh-questions, but they are not inverted (e.g., what he is saying?). The fourth and final stage is marked by adult-like forms of interrogation.
Studies on Arabic L1 acquisition suggest that there are roughly three main stages in the acquisition of questions (Al-Buainain, 2003; Omar, 1973; Smadi, 1979). However, studies on different Arabic dialects report dissimilar findings with respect to the development of different interrogation forms and with respect to the age in which these forms emerge. For example, in her study of Egyptian Arabic, Omar (1973) reports that Stage I is marked by the emergence of declarative sentences rendered in a rising tone, as in (6). Declarative sentences were produced by a child aged 2.8 years but not by younger children. In Stage II, children began using wh-words, starting with eih “what,” mīn “who,” and fein “where,” as in (7). These questions appeared at the age of 2.8 years and continued developing till the age of 3.6 years. The third stage is marked by adult-like formation of wh-questions. This includes the proper use of prepositions with wh-words. By the age of 5, children have a good grasp of different interrogative structures, although they sometimes misplaced the wh-questions in a way that does not violate the grammaticality of the sentence.
(6) tiddini di? (Will you) give.2S-me this? (Omar 1973, p. 133) (7) eih da? What this? (Omar 1973, p. 134)
The three stages delineated by Omar (1973) are quite different from those reported in other Arabic dialects (Al-Buainain, 2003; Smadi, 1979). For example, in her study on the development of question formation in a Jordanian child, Smadi indicates that in the first stage children use declarative sentences with a rising intonation as well as a variety of wh-questions initiated by šu “what” and wein “where” and their variants. These forms appeared mostly before age 2. Smadi suggests that the development of these questions early reflects the child’s cognitive curiosity to explore her immediate environment where different objects exist. This period also witnessed the development of tag questions, as in (8). Stage II, roughly starting at 2.2 years, is characterized by the emergence of mīn “who” and the use of prepositions. The other wh-words did not appear by the time Smadi’s longitudinal study was complete, that is, when the child was 3 years old.
(8) hād ili mū? Those for me, aren’t they? (Smadi, 1979, p. 98)
Similarly, Al-Buainain (2003) reports that there is a noticeable overlap between the different developmental stages of question formation in Qatari Arabic. For example, Qatari children start using declarative yes/no questions by age 2 and continue developing them till much later. Similarly, wh-questions start emerging at the age of 1.9 years mainly as single word utterances (e.g., wein? “where”) before they turn into full wh-questions by the age of 2.4 years. Negative interrogation does not appear till the age of 5, that is, when the other forms have become fully developed.
Putting their differences aside, the consensus among all previous studies on the development of question constructions in Arabic varieties is that monolingual Arabic-speaking children acquire wh-questions by the age of 5 years or younger. Another point of agreement in the existing literature is that Arabic-speaking children take longer time to acquire more complex wh-forms, such as negative interrogatives. One critical topic that has not been discussed extensively in these studies is the position of wh-words in interrogative sentences and the underlying syntactic operations that are involved in different wh-constructions. This distinction is important because the in situ strategy is assumed to be the unmarked strategy in Egyptian Arabic, whereas the movement strategy is preferred in several other dialects of Arabic (Aoun et al., 2010; Wahba, 1984). The examples provided in Omar’s study suggest that both the in situ and movement options develop almost simultaneously in wh-questions produced by Egyptian children, whereas wh-word fronting seems to be the norm in the Jordanian and Qatari dialects. However, this topic merits further in-depth investigation that focuses particularly on the in situ versus movement strategies, which is part of the focus of the present paper.
With respect to heritage speakers, a number of studies have examined specific aspects of wh-questions in heritage populations (Cuza, 2013, 2016; Montrul et al., 2008; Bentea & Marinis, 2021). For example, Montrul et al. (2008) examined early and late Spanish–English bilinguals’ judgment of Spanish wh-questions involving both grammatical (object extraction, embedded object extraction, embedded subject extraction) and ungrammatical (lacking inversion, adjunct islands, and lacking complementizer) wh-questions. One of the main goals of Montrul et al.’s study was to see if there were any transfer effects from English (L2) to Spanish (1). The main finding from this study is that both early and late bilinguals have solid knowledge of various aspects of wh-questions with minimal transfer effects from English.
Cuza (2016) examined subject–verb inversion in Spanish wh-questions found in the oral output of heritage Spanish-speaking children in the United States (average age = 8.4 years) and monolingual Spanish-speaking children in Mexico. Results from an elicited production task demonstrated that heritage Spanish-speaking children were significantly less inclined to do subject–verb inversion compared to their monolingual counterparts. Lack of inversion was more visible in embedded clauses and in younger children. Cuza argues that the inaccuracies found in the heritage Spanish-speaking children may be attributed to transfer effects from English as well syntactic complexity (e.g., embedded clauses).
Bentea and Marinis (2021) compared Romanian–English bilingual children (N = 18; average age = 8.0 years) living in the United Kingdom to Romanian monolinguals (N = 32; average age = 8.3 years) with respect to the online comprehension and production of multiple interrogatives in Romanian (e.g., who who covers “who covers whom”). Multiple interrogatives in Romanian require fronting all wh-phrases, unlike English where only one wh-phrase is fronted. A self-paced listening task and an elicited production task were used to collect the target wh-questions. The findings show that the heritage and monolingual children were comparable with respect to online comprehension patterns, whereas the heritage speakers produced less complex multiple questions and avoided the fronting of two wh-phrases in the production task. The authors interpret this discrepancy between comprehension and production by arguing that heritage children acquire the syntactic representation of multiple wh-questions, but fail to activate this knowledge in production.
This study seeks to contribute to the existing literature by (1) focusing on a relatively understudied population, namely heritage Egyptian Arabic speakers, and (2) exploring critical issues in wh-questions in heritage Arabic, such as wh-question formation strategies, markedness, and resumptives. To our knowledge, no previous studies have examined these issues in Egyptian Arabic, and therefore this study seeks to fill in this gap.
The study
The present study investigates the following two research questions:
How comparable are heritage speakers to native speakers with respect to their knowledge of wh-questions, including their knowledge of the four wh-question strategies?
How do heritage speakers perform on the wh-in situ versus the other wh-strategy (movement and resumptive strategies) options?
Methodology
Participants
The study involved 52 participants, including 30 Egyptian heritage speakers and 22 Egyptian native speakers. The participants were recruited from three universities in the United States. 4 All the heritage speakers identified Arabic as their first and weaker language, and English as the second and stronger language. All indicated that they were exposed to English on daily basis only at or after 4 years of age. 5 This criterion was to make sure that they had had enough exposure to wh-questions in their L1 before they were exposed to their L2.
All the heritage speakers were undergraduate students at the time of the study (average age = 20.9 years). Twenty-six of the heritage speakers were born and raised in the United States to Arabic-speaking parents, and four were born in Egypt before they moved to the United States at the ages of 1, 3 (two participants), and 4 years. Seventeen of the heritage speakers were females and 13 were males.
The heritage group was compared to a control group of 22 native Egyptian speakers who were born and raised in Egypt (average age = 27.7 years). All the control participants finished their undergraduate degrees in Egypt before they moved to the United States after the age of 18 years. At the time of the study, all the control group participants were graduate students at the same three universities. All the native speakers arrived in the United States less than 4 years before the data collection took place.
Tasks
The participants completed four tasks: a picture naming task, an elicited production task, an acceptability judgment task, and a preference task. The picture naming task served as a measure of the participants’ word knowledge, which has been widely used in both L2 and heritage language research as a reliable measure of proficiency (Albirini & Benmamoun, 2014; Benmamoun et al., 2014; Bobb, 2008; Festman, 2012; Kharkhurin, 2012; Montrul et al., 2013; among others). Pictures of 30 nouns were used in this task (see Figure 1). The nouns were selected from Buckwalter and Parkinson’s (2011) frequency list dictionary. All the selected nouns are shared in Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic. 6 Ten nouns were selected from the 1–2,500 frequency range, 10 from the 2,501–5,000 range, and 10 from the 5,001–7,500 range. The pictures were randomized before being presented to the participants.
Sample picture in the picture naming task.
In the elicited production task, the participants were verbally presented with a hypothetical situation prompting them to conduct an interview with an Arabic-speaking person and ask 10 questions to the interviewee. The participants were given the following instructions: You have an interview assignment for a class that you are taking. The course syllabus indicates that the purpose of this assignment is to examine the cultural and educational experiences of immigrants and visitors to the United States. You are asked by your instructor to interview a person from an Arab country. Your task is to gather as much information as possible about this person and his/her cultural and educational experience. However, you are limited to ten questions. I will be the person you need to gather the information from. You can, for example, ask me about my name, age, place of birth, arrival date, residence, specialty, hobbies, friends, diet, free time, etc.
The purpose of this task was to gain insights into heritage speakers’ overall knowledge of wh-questions in addition to general patterns about important issues such as word order, resumption, and use of marked and unmarked forms (i.e., movement/fronting vs in situ). When participants produced a yes/no question, the experimenter asked them to ask an additional question so that the total number of wh-questions is 10.
The acceptability judgment task consisted of 50 items, 25 of which were experimental items and the remaining 25 were fillers. The 25 experimental items targeted the participants’ knowledge of five structures, each represented by 5 items. For consistency purposes, all the target structures had the wh-word mīn “who” used with the four main strategies in Egyptian wh-questions— namely the three strategies with the wh-word in the periphery of the clause (gap, resumptive, Resumptive II) and the in situ strategy (see above as well as Examples (9) to (12)). The fifth structure involved the Resumptive II strategy but with the resumptive ungrammatically missing (as in Example (13)). The last structure was included in this task to determine whether heritage speakers accept wh-questions lacking resumption in obligatory contexts. Table 1 provides a description of the five wh-question forms targeted in this task.
Target Wh-questions in the acceptability judgment task.
While 20 of the experimental items were grammatical and 5 were ungrammatical, the opposite was true for the fillers, that is, 20 items were ungrammatical and 5 were grammatical. This was to balance the number of grammatical and ungrammatical items in the task (25 grammatical and 25 ungrammatical). The purpose of this task was to investigate the participants’ knowledge of the main forms of wh-questions in their L1, particularly with respect to word order and resumption.
The preference task sought to examine the participants’ knowledge of the constructions where the wh-phrase is in front of the clause or where it is in situ and whether the unmarked in situ is preferred to the marked movement form in both matrix and embedded clauses. For this task, the participants were presented orally with 20 wh-questions clustered into 10 pairs. After hearing each of the 10 pairs of sentences orally, they were asked to select the sentence that is more acceptable to them. The following instructions were provided to the participants: You will hear 20 Arabic sentences, grouped in pairs. For each pair, state which sentence is more acceptable than the other. Acceptable here refers to sentences that are more grammatical, natural or appropriate by native speakers of the language. You will hear each pair once, but you can ask for repetition if you want to hear the sentences again.
The 10 pairs focused on two structures displayed in (14) and (15):
The examples in (14a) and (14b) are simple object wh-questions; the wh-word replaces a noun phrase that functions as the object of the verb in the matrix clause. However, whereas in (14a) the wh-word is moved from its original site to the left edge of the sentence, it is left after the verb, that is, in situ in (14b). The movement option expressed in (14a) is marked, whereas the in situ option is unmarked. In (15a) and (15b), the wh-word fein “where” is part of an embedded clause. However, while in (15a), the wh-word is moved the left edge of the embedded clause, it remains in situ in (15b). Again, the movement option in (15a) is marked, whereas the in situ in (15b) is unmarked. It is therefore interesting to see (1) whether heritage speakers distinguish between marked and unmarked wh-questions in the movement and in situ scenarios, respectively, and (2) whether sentence type (matrix vs embedded questions) plays a role in their preferences. The sentences were randomized before being presented to the participants.
In addition to these four tasks, the participants completed a questionnaire focusing on their linguistic and demographic background. The tasks were completed in the following order: questionnaire, picture naming task, oral production task, acceptability task, and preference task. All tasks were completed in a single session. The participants were audio recorded with a digital recorder as they completed the last four tasks.
Findings
In what follows, we present the findings from the four tasks.
Picture naming task: proficiency measure
The picture naming task was used to measure the participants’ proficiency as reflected in their knowledge of 30 words of varying frequency. Table 2 provides a summary of the percentage of correct, incorrect, and missing responses in the data from the picture naming task.
Percentage of correct, incorrect, and missing items in the picture naming task.
As Table 2 demonstrates, the heritage groups’ proficiency level, as reflected in their performance on the word knowledge task, is clearly different from that of the controls. While the accuracy score of the heritage group was at 77.67%, the controls performed almost at ceiling (99.85%). A t-test showed that the difference between the proficiency levels of the two groups was significant; t(50) = −8.307, p < .0001.
Oral production task
As noted above, for this task, each participant produced 10 wh-questions, which means that the total number of wh-questions produced by the heritage speakers was 300, compared to 220 questions by the controls. Tables 3 and 4 summarize the data obtained from the elicited oral production task.
Number of wh-questions and their distribution into complement versus adjunct questions.
Types of wh-words and questions in the production task.
This wh-word has variants such as Ani, Anha, Ayy, and so on which have the same function and use but are far less common.
Fein changes its form when it is attached to the preposition min “from” so as these two merge into minein “from where?”
Asking about condition or manner can be expressed through izzay “how” or ʕāmel eih “doing what?”
As Table 3 shows, the majority of the wh-questions produced by the heritage speakers and the controls were complement questions (73.00% and 65.91%, respectively). Adjunct questions were less frequent in the participants’ production (27.00% and 34.09%). Similarly, Table 4 shows that most of the questions generated by both groups were eih “what”-questions (45%). The second most common type of questions involved kam “how many/much” for heritage speakers (16.67%) and fein “where” for the controls (23.6%). Questions involving min “who,” anhi “which,” emta “when,” izzay “how,” and leih “why” were less common for both groups.
Tables 5 illustrates the distribution of the participants’ wh-questions in terms of movement/base generation in CP and in situ strategies. The unmarked in situ strategy was predominant in the production of both heritage and native speakers (74.33% and 85.00%, respectively). Comparatively, however, the heritage speakers deployed the marked movement strategy more frequently than their control counterparts did (25.67% compared to 15.00%).
Distribution of wh-questions in terms of in situ and movement/resumptive.
With respect to accuracy (Table 6), the heritage speakers were overall less accurate than the controls in wh-question formation (92.00% compared to 100.00%). The controls’ accuracy rates were at ceiling in both the in situ and movement options. Though less accurate than the controls, the heritage speakers have relatively comparable accuracy percentages in the in situ and movement options (93.27% and 88.31%), which suggests that their errors possibly were not related to whether the wh-element is in situ or is in front of the clause. An independent-samples t-test was conducted to examine whether the heritage speakers were significantly less accurate than the controls in wh-question use. The results of the t-test revealed a significant difference between the two groups; t(50) = −4.221, p < .0001.
Accuracy percentage on production task and the in situ and movement/resumptive options.
We also examined the type and percentage of errors made by the heritage speakers. We classified these errors into five main categories: (1) wh-word selection, (2) missing resumptive, (3) missing relativizer, (4) word choice after kam “how many/much,” and (5) other. These errors are illustrated in Examples (16) through (20): (16) eih* ʕagbāk l-manṭiʔa What please.you.2.m.p the-neighborhood? “What the area pleases you?” (17) eih l-ʔaklaat lli bitḥibb* what foods that like.2.s.m.? “What foods do you like?” (18) l-ʔakla l-waḥīda* ʔinta bitḥibba-ha eih? the-food single you like.2.s.m-it what? “What is the single food you like?” (19) ʕindak kam ʕiyāl*? at.you.2.s.m how many children? “How many children do you have?” (20) eih l-mūsiqa ʔinta baḥibb tismaʕ what the-music you.2.s.m like.1.s listen.2.s.m “What music do you like to hear?”
Wh-word selection errors refer to questions that can become meaningful simply by replacing the wh-word selected by the speaker with a different wh-word. In (16), for example, eih “what” is incorrectly used in this question, which explains the vagueness of the question. The question will be correct simply by replacing eih with the more appropriate wh-word leih “why?” Missing resumptive errors are displayed in (17), where a resumptive pronoun is missing in the extraction site of the moved wh-word after the verb bitḥibb “like.” Similarly, in missing relative errors, the only element that is required to make the wh-question grammatical is a relativizer, as in (18) where the addition of lli “that” after the noun phrase l-ʔakla l-waḥīda “the single food” would have made this sentence grammatical. The fourth type of errors concerns the use of a plural noun after the wh-word kam “how many,” which always comes with a singular noun in Arabic. The incorrect use of the plural noun ʕiyāl “children” in (19) illustrates this error. Finally, Other refers to errors that do not fit under any specific error type, including those with multiple issues. In (20), for example, the sentence is missing a relativizer after l-mūsiqa “the music” and a resumptive pronoun after the verb tismaʕ “listen.”
As Table 7 demonstrates, word-choice-after-kam errors were the most common errors (41.67%) followed by wh-word selection (25.00%). The remaining types of errors, including missing resumptive (8.33%), missing relativizer (8.33%), and other errors (16.67%), were less prevalent.
Type and percentage of errors made by heritage speakers.
Acceptability judgment task
As noted above, this task asked the participants to judge the acceptability of 25 items that represented the four main types of questions found in Egyptian Arabic (gap, resumptive, Resumptive II, and in situ) in addition to a question pattern involving the ungrammatical removal of the obligatory resumptive clitic in Resumptive II questions. Table 8 summarizes the participants’ accuracy percentages on the acceptability judgment task.
Accuracy percentages and SD on the acceptability judgment task.
As Table 8 demonstrates, the heritage speakers were overall less accurate than the controls on the acceptability judgment task (73.33% compared to 95.82%). We also examined the participants’ accuracy rates on the five question types under investigation. As Table 9 shows, the heritage speakers were less accurate than the controls on each of these five questions types. Their accuracy rates were highest on the unmarked in situ question type (94.00%), followed by the resumptive (83.33%), Resumptive II (78.67%), and gap (61.33%). They were least accurate in judging the acceptability of the ungrammatical Resumptive II question (49.33%), that is, a high percentage of the heritage speakers accepted this ungrammatical question type.
Accuracy rates on the five question types in the AGT.
A multinomial logistic regression (Tables 10 and 11) was carried out to examine the extent to which the accuracy of the participants’ acceptability judgments can be predicted by (1) question type and (2) their groups (heritage vs controls). Accuracy was the dependent variable in the model, whereas group and question type were factors. The chi-square statistic indicates that the model is a good fit for the data, χ2(25) = 142.18; p < .001. The likelihood ratio tests showed that both the question type, χ2(20) = 74.352; p < .001, and group, χ2(5) = 81.118; p < .001, significantly predicted the participants’ acceptability judgments.
Model fitting information for the acceptability judgment task.
Likelihood ratio tests for the acceptability judgment task.
The superscripted “a” is part of the statistical output.
Preference task
For this task, the participants were asked to select between in situ/unmarked and movement/marked wh-questions presented in 10 pairs (see Examples (14) and (15)). The 10 pairs of wh-questions represented two patterns: (1) matrix wh-questions with unmarked versus marked options, (2) embedded wh-questions with unmarked and marked options. The goal of this task was to see whether heritage speakers are (dis)similar to the controls with respect to choosing unmarked question forms in their L1 and whether their preferences are consistent regardless of the context in which the wh-questions occur, which is here represented by matrix versus embedded clauses. Tables 12 summarizes the rates of the participants’ preferences for the unmarked/in situ question forms.
Accuracy percentages and SD on the AJT.
As Table 12 shows, overall the heritage speakers showed clear preference for the unmarked, in situ question forms (63.67%). However, comparatively, they were less inclined to select the unmarked option than the controls on the preference task (63.67% compared to 96.36%). We also examined the participants’ preference rates on marked/movement/resumptive versus unmarked/in situ wh-questions in the two types of clauses under investigation (matrix vs embedded). Table 13 provides the rates of the participants’ preferences for unmarked in situ questions in both matrix and embedded clauses. As this table shows, the heritage group opted more often for the unmarked option in the matrix (58.67%) and embedded (68.67%) types of clauses. However, they were still less inclined to choose the unmarked question forms in both clause types than the controls, who opted for the unmarked option at 97.27% rate in the matrix clause and 95.45% in the embedded clause.
Preference percentages for the unmarked and default form on matrix and embedded clauses.
A multinomial logistic regression (Tables 14 and 15) was carried out to examine the extent to which the participants’ preferences for the unmarked strategy can be predicted by (1) sentence type and (2) their groups (heritage vs controls). Preference was the dependent variable in the model, whereas group and sentence type were factors. The chi-square statistic indicates that the model is a good fit for the data, χ2(8) = 80.351; p < .001. The likelihood ratio tests showed that only group, χ2(4) = 81.118; p < .001, significantly predicted the participants’ acceptability judgments, whereas sentence type did not, χ2(4) = 6.347; p = .175.
Model fitting information for the preference task.
Likelihood ratio tests for the acceptability judgment task.
The superscripted “a” is part of the statistical output.
Discussion and conclusion
This study focused on Egyptian heritage speakers’ knowledge of wh-questions in their L1, Egyptian Arabic. The goal was to examine their knowledge of the four main strategies of wh-questions and the key aspects of wh-question formation in the L1. A second goal of this study was to see whether certain aspects of wh-questions were more maintained than others. Finally, the study aimed to examine heritage speakers’ knowledge of marked and unmarked wh-forms and whether their selection of (un)marked forms is driven by contextual factors (matrix vs embedded) or other considerations, such as input limitations (e.g., frequency of the unmarked and default in situ questions compared to the marked movement wh-questions) or transfer (e.g., the prevalence of movement strategy in their L2). Three tasks were used to address these primary purposes of this study: an elicited oral production task, an acceptability judgment task, and a preference task.
The findings show that heritage speakers have robust knowledge of wh-questions in their L1. They have no significant problems with word order, which is one of the primary aspects of wh-questions in Egyptian Arabic as it involves both movement and in situ strategies. This is evident from their use of both of these wh-question forms in the elicited oral production task. This result goes along with Montrul et al.’s (2008) findings concerning the resilience of wh-questions to language loss or attrition. Studies on the acquisition of wh-questions by monolingual Arabic-speaking children report that wh-questions emerge early in their language development and are typically acquired by around the age of 5 years (Al-Buainain, 2003; Omar, 1973; Smadi, 1979). If we consider the early acquisition of wh-questions by monolingual Arabic-speaking children, the results from this study suggest that the Egyptian heritage speakers were possibly able to acquire the core aspects of wh-questions early in their childhood and were also able to retain them over the years.
Egyptian Arabic has four main strategies for wh-question formation, including three long-distance dependency strategies (movement with gap, resumptive, Resumptive II) and an in situ strategy (Aoun et al., 2010). These four strategies differ in their structure and, to some extent, complexity (see Aoun et al., 2010 for more details). It is remarkable that, among all these four strategies, only the gap strategy is most dominant in their dominant L2 (English). Nonetheless, the heritage speakers seem to have fairly robust knowledge of all four strategies of wh-question formation, which is reflected in their performance on both the oral production task and the acceptability judgment task. This again shows that wh-questions are an aspect of their L1 grammar that they have acquired and maintained notwithstanding the limited opportunities they may have had for L1 input and use (Albirini, 2018).
Another important finding in this paper is that the heritage speakers seem to have a good command of the resumptive strategy, which, as explained earlier, exists in Arabic but is not a dominant option in English. While both the resumptive and gap strategies involve the movement of the wh-word to the edge of the sentence, the resumption strategy requires an extra step (a pronoun) over leaving a gap in the derivation (Collins, 1997; Hornstein, 2001). The fact that the heritage speakers were able to recognize and use the resumptive strategy may underline the relative resilience of this key aspect of wh-questions to attrition. The heritage speakers were slightly less accurate than the controls in deploying the resumptive pronouns in obligatory contexts, as displayed in the errors that they produced in the oral production task and in the acceptability judgment task (Tables 7 and 9). This is consistent with findings from previous studies on heritage Arabic, where heritage speakers show clear familiarity with resumption, but are not always able to implement it correctly in context (Albirini & Benmamoun, 2014). This pattern could be due to the lack of L1 use (Albirini & Benmamoun, 2014). However, it could also point to the possible role of transfer from L2, which lacks the resumptive strategy.
The heritage speakers seem to internalize the difference between marked/movement and unmarked/in situ question constructions. This is evident in their performance on the oral production task, where they predominantly produced the in situ option. It is also apparent in their performance on the preference task, where they again showed clear preference for the in situ strategy. In Egyptian Arabic, the in situ form is more common/frequent than the movement strategy (Gad, 2011; Wahba, 1984). From a theoretical perspective, it is less costly as it does not involve any movement of the wh-word. It is also simpler because it does not include dependencies between a displaced constituent and its original position. The fact that the heritage speakers seem to have acquired the notion that the in situ option is the dominant and unmarked option in their language could be explained by the frequency of the in situ option in the input they received from their parents and immediate social environment. However, the rate of the in situ strategy was relatively lower in the heritage speakers than in the controls. When they have the choice between the in situ and movement options, native speakers go strongly for the in situ. The heritage speakers still realize the dominance of the in situ option, but still see the wh-movement as a strongly viable option. This again could underline the role of transfer from their L2 (English) in their choice, as English allows the in situ strategy only in limited contexts.
One of the remarkable patterns in the data is that both the native and heritage groups have the lowest acceptance rate for the gap strategy (61.33% and 89.09%, respectively). The fact that even native Egyptian speakers have a relatively low acceptance rate for the gap strategy may underline a widely documented phenomenon in a number of Arabic dialects, which is structural language change (Akkuş, 2020; Lucas & Manfredi, 2020; Versteegh, 2001). Along with lexical change, structural change has been attested in a range of syntactic areas, including aspects of wh-questions (see Lucas & Manfredi, 2020). The relatively low acceptability rate of the gap strategy by native Egyptian speakers could be seen as a sign of change in the direction of the in situ strategy becoming the chiefly acceptable strategy in Egyptian Arabic. As for heritage Egyptian speakers, if we accept that the heritage speakers acquired both the in situ and gap forms from an early age (Omar, 1973), this means that heritage speakers may be gradually losing an optional preference.
When we compare the results from the acceptability judgment task and the preference task, one pattern becomes clear: heritage Egyptian speakers have high acceptability rate for in situ questions when in situ is presented as a forced choice (94.00%). However, when they were provided with both the in situ and movement options in the preference task, heritage Egyptian speakers become comparatively less inclined to choose the in situ option (63.67%). This highlights the importance of the methods used in data collection in identifying the patterns of L1 acquisition in heritage speakers. We suggest that researchers use multiple and preferably diverse data collection techniques to collect data from heritage speakers to get a more accurate picture of their acquisition patterns.
Overall, the study shows that the heritage speakers converge with the controls in key aspects of wh-questions, including knowledge of word order, different wh-question forms, in situ and movement and resumption strategies, and markedness. Some of these aspects, such as word order, are part of the syntax proper, which is reported to be resilient to language loss (Bar-Shalom & Zaretsky, 2008; Montrul, 2004; Silva-Corvalán, 1994, 2003; Sorace, 2000; Tsimpli & Sorace, 2006). However, the heritage speakers diverge from the controls in aspects that demonstrate transfer effects from their dominant L2, English. For example, their errors in the production task show a tendency to drop the resumptive pronouns in obligatory contexts as well as to select the marked gap strategy more often than the controls, which is the primary wh-question strategy in their L2.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
