Ad Backus
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 1453738 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Ad Backus |
| PRENOMES | Ad |
| SOBRENOME | Backus |
| ASSINATURA | BACKUS A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Tilburg University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8596-8915 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 40 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 44 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 40 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1999 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Individual variation in contact effects – stability, convergence, and divergence
In this study, we investigate the contact effects of stability, convergence, and divergence regarding the use of the same linguistic construction in the same contact situation. To do that, we collected experimental production and judgment data by native German speakers living in the Netherlands regarding their usage of the complementizer um ‘to’ in German and compared those data to those of a control group of German speakers not in contact with D…
Translanguaging and codeswitching
Investigating language transfer from a usage-based perspective
Aims and objectives: The aim of this study is to investigate language contact from a usage-based perspective. In particular, we test the explanatory power of a schematicity continuum, one of the central assumptions within usage-based approaches, in regard to these contact effects. In doing so, we aim to better understand how schematicity influences language transfer as well as learn more about the cognitive mechanism of schematicity itself. Desig…
Awkward Pronouns in Language Contact
This paper investigates how speakers of Limburgian dialects deal with a pronoun which is similar in form yet markedly different in meaning in the dominating contact language Dutch. The neuter pronoun het exists in both Dutch and Limburgian, but can refer to women only in the latter. By contrast, feminine pronouns which are similar in form can be used in both languages ( zij in Dutch and ziej in Limburgian). In a production study containing visual…
Sociopragmatic pronouns in Limburgian
How much of everyday language use takes place on autopilot, how much are speakers aware of, and how do their attitudes relate to this? In particular, how do these factors together account for variation between speakers? Limburgian, a regional language within the Netherlands, is under pressure from Dutch in an intensive language contact situation. The use of a non-feminine subject pronoun for women is a Limburgian feature which is not shared with …
Limited input
Aims and Objectives: The aim of this introductory chapter to Effects of Limited Input, a Special Issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism, is to give a brief overview of how the topic of limited linguistic input is situated within the study of bilingualism and language contact. The seven chapters—which present samples of the varied circumstances in which bilinguals acquire, use, maintain, and sometimes suppress areas of their languages—…
On sisters and zussen
This paper targets the division of labor between borrowed English forms and heritage alternatives in Belgian-Dutch youth language. Through lexical semantic analysis of a youth-language corpus containing over 450,000 private instant messages, the choice for English or Dutch person-reference nouns (e.g. Eng. girlfriend , loser , sister ; Du. vriendin , sukkel , zus ) is studied at three levels of semasiological granularity. First, at the level of t…
Minds
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The Netherlands Urban Field Station
we wel genoeg om die talige rijkdom op waarde te schatten
The Netherlands Urban Field Station
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Is ‘he’ still here
Various non-standard language varieties in the Netherlands traditionally allow for the use of masculine personal subject pronouns (i.e. regionally distinct variants of hij ‘he’) in reference to women. While this practice is well-documented within Dutch dialectology, especially during the twentieth century, it is unclear to what extent this feature still exists nowadays. Moreover, the use of masculine subject forms for female reference has not pre…
It’ Is Not for Everyone
This paper explores the different ways in which speakers of Limburgian think and feel about sociopragmatic pronouns in their dialect, in which women can traditionally be referred to with both ziej ‘she’ and het ‘she’ (lit. ‘it’). Previous research revealed variation between speakers regarding the use of het, which appears to be associated with differences in interpretation and evaluation. This study investigates this further by analyzing how indi…
Comparing forward and reverse transfer from Dutch to German
Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This study compares transfer from Dutch to German by native Dutch speakers who learned German as a second language (forward transfer: L1 to L2) and by native German speakers who are living in the Netherlands (reverse transfer: L2 to L1). The aim of this comparison is to see whether both groups experience the same kind of transfer (i.e., transferring the Dutch preference for prepositional phrases in …
Similarity in Language Transfer – Investigating Transfer of Light Verb Constructions From Dutch to German
Bilingual speakers of typologically closely related languages tend to frequently experience language transfer, which suggests that similarity between languages is likely to play an important role in the transfer process. In this paper, we explore how three different types of similarity affect transfer of light verb constructions ( lvc s), such as take a walk or set an alarm , from Dutch to German by native German speakers living in the Netherland…
Individual corpus data predict variation in judgments
This study puts the usage-based assumption that our linguistic knowledge is based on usage to the test. To do so, we explore individual variation in speakers’ language use as established based on corpus data – both in terms of frequency of use (as a proxy for entrenchment) and productivity of use (as a proxy for schematization) – and link this variation to the same participants’ responses in an experimental judgment task. The empirical focus is o…
A Usage-Based Approach to Pattern Finding
Usage-based approaches have become increasingly important in research on language acquisition and recently also in bilingual first language acquisition. Lexically specific patterns, such as What's this? and frame-and-slot patterns, such as [I want X] play an important role in language acquisition scenarios. The ubiquity of such conventionalized chunks and frame-and-slot patterns supports the idea that children construct their early utterances out…
Entrenchment and productivity
This paper investigates the role of input in the code-mixing (CM) of a German-English bilingual child between the age of 2;3 until 3;11. Supporting a usage-based approach to linguistic theory, multiword units are shown to play an important role in language acquisition scenarios, both in the input children receive as well as in their own early language production. The current study combines findings from Child-directed-speech (CDS) and children’s …
Usage-Based Contact Linguistics
The influence of usage frequency, and particularly of linguistic similarity on human linguistic behavior and linguistic change in situations of language contact are well documented in contact linguistics literature. However, a theoretical framework capable of unifying the various explanations, which are usually couched in either structuralist, sociolinguistic, or psycholinguistic parlance, is still lacking. In this introductory article we argue t…
Entrenchment effects in code-mixing
Following a usage-based approach to language acquisition, lexically specific patterns are considered to be important building blocks for language productivity and feature heavily both in child-directed speech and in the early speech of children (Arnon, Inbal & Morten H. Christiansen. 2017. The role of multiword building blocks in explaining L1-L2 differences. Topics in Cognitive Science 9(3). 621–636; Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a lang…
Turkish-Dutch bilinguals maintain language-specific reference tracking strategies in elicited narratives
Aim: This paper examines whether second-generation Turkish heritage speakers in the Netherlands follow language-specific patterns of reference tracking in Turkish and Dutch, focusing on discourse status and pragmatic contexts as factors that may modulate the choice of referring expressions (REs), that is, the noun phrase (NP), overt pronoun and null pronoun. Methodology: Two short silent videos were used to elicit narratives from 20 heritage spea…
Variation is information
In a usage-based framework, variation is part and parcel of our linguistic experiences, and therefore also of our mental representations of language. In this article, we bring attention to variation as a source of information. Instead of discarding variation as mere noise, we examine what it can reveal about the representation and use of linguistic knowledge. By means of metalinguistic judgment data, we demonstrate how to quantify and interpret f…
Heritage languages
Heritage languages, such as the Turkish varieties spoken in Berlin or the Spanish used in Los Angeles, are non-dominant languages, often with little prestige. Their speakers also speak the dominant language of the country they live in. Often heritage languages undergo changes due to their special status. They have received a lot of scholarly attention and provide a link between academic concerns and educational issues. This book takes a language …
Differences in pragmatic skills between bilingual Turkish immigrant children in the Netherlands and monolingual peers
In bilingualism studies, comparing the competence of mono- and bilingual speakers is common, but it comes with certain limitations. In immigration contexts, many studies concentrate on the skills of immigrant pupils in the mainstream language. In order to account for educational underachievement of minority children, gaps in their language development are often documented by comparing mainstream pupils with immigrant children. Competence in the f…
Anxiety, language use and linguistic competence in an immigrant context
By exploring two novel concepts, heritage language anxiety (HLA) and majority language anxiety (MLA), this study draws attention to the hitherto neglected topic of language anxiety in immigrant and minority contexts. Based on semi-structured interviews with three generations of Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands (n = 30), we investigate why members of an immigrant community experience language anxiety and how it affects them. Findings suggest …
General- and Language-Specific Factors Influence Reference Tracking in Speech and Gesture in Discourse
n Contains fulltext :\n 207921.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
The native speaker
Units in code switching
Studies of insertional code switching frequently include examples in which combinations of several words from the embedded language occur together in matrix-language clauses. In this paper, a range of such constructions are analyzed as multimorphemic lexical units. Such units are a central, yet neglected, element of grammar, which blur the distinction between syntax and lexicon. The paper identifies several types of unit in bilingual code-switchi…
General- and Language-Specific Factors Influence Reference Tracking in Speech and Gesture in Discourse
n Contains fulltext :\n 207921.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Slot-and-Frame Schemas in the Language of a Polish- and English-Speaking Child
How does the bilingual child assemble her first multiword constructions? Can switch placement in bilingual combinations be explained by language usage? This study traces the emergence of frozen and semi-productive patterns throughout the diary collection period (0;10.10-2;2.00) to document the acquisition of constructions. Subsequently the focus falls on most frequently produced monolingual and bilingual combinations captured through 30 video rec…
Normativity and change
The present article deals with what we feel to be an unexplored path in present day sociolinguistics and a viable way toward making sociolinguistics more cognitive and cognitive linguistics more social. Naturally, sociolinguistics has a strong interest in issues of variation and change, variation being typically conditioned by social factors, such as age, gender, ethnicity as well as the discursive regimes of language use present in a community o…
Salient stages in contact-induced grammatical change
Similarity in Language Transfer – Investigating Transfer of Light Verb Constructions From Dutch to German
Bilingual speakers of typologically closely related languages tend to frequently experience language transfer, which suggests that similarity between languages is likely to play an important role in the transfer process. In this paper, we explore how three different types of similarity affect transfer of light verb constructions ( lvc s), such as take a walk or set an alarm , from Dutch to German by native German speakers living in the Netherland…
A Usage-Based Approach to Pattern Finding
Usage-based approaches have become increasingly important in research on language acquisition and recently also in bilingual first language acquisition. Lexically specific patterns, such as What's this? and frame-and-slot patterns, such as [I want X] play an important role in language acquisition scenarios. The ubiquity of such conventionalized chunks and frame-and-slot patterns supports the idea that children construct their early utterances out…
It’ Is Not for Everyone
This paper explores the different ways in which speakers of Limburgian think and feel about sociopragmatic pronouns in their dialect, in which women can traditionally be referred to with both ziej ‘she’ and het ‘she’ (lit. ‘it’). Previous research revealed variation between speakers regarding the use of het, which appears to be associated with differences in interpretation and evaluation. This study investigates this further by analyzing how indi…
Individual corpus data predict variation in judgments
This study puts the usage-based assumption that our linguistic knowledge is based on usage to the test. To do so, we explore individual variation in speakers’ language use as established based on corpus data – both in terms of frequency of use (as a proxy for entrenchment) and productivity of use (as a proxy for schematization) – and link this variation to the same participants’ responses in an experimental judgment task. The empirical focus is o…
Entrenchment effects in code-mixing
Following a usage-based approach to language acquisition, lexically specific patterns are considered to be important building blocks for language productivity and feature heavily both in child-directed speech and in the early speech of children (Arnon, Inbal & Morten H. Christiansen. 2017. The role of multiword building blocks in explaining L1-L2 differences. Topics in Cognitive Science 9(3). 621–636; Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a lang…
Linguistic Effects of Immigration
Since the 1960s, Western Europe has been host to a large Turkish immigrant community. While many such communities shift to the majority language in the space of a few generations, language maintenance is remarkably successful in this community. This is partially because of continuing immigration, but it is also typical of a transnational identity that characterizes many bilingual communities in modern Europe. The linguistic effects of this on‐goi…
Code-switching in conversation
The native speaker
Code-switching in conversation
Adolescents Involved in the Construction of Equality in Urban Multicultural Settings
This study makes use of Brown and Levinson's (1978; 1987) theory of politeness. More specifically, it focuses on how the model they lay down as guiding language users is actually exploited in various ways by these users. Therefore, four different operationalisations of the basic hypothesis of politeness theory are proposed, ranging from the possibility that linguistic choices are totally determined by social norms to one allowing considerable fre…
Units in code switching
Studies of insertional code switching frequently include examples in which combinations of several words from the embedded language occur together in matrix-language clauses. In this paper, a range of such constructions are analyzed as multimorphemic lexical units. Such units are a central, yet neglected, element of grammar, which blur the distinction between syntax and lexicon. The paper identifies several types of unit in bilingual code-switchi…
Codeswitching and language change
This article introduces the topic of and the contributions to this Special Issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism. It explores the degree to which the hypothesis that codeswitching is a cause of contact-induced language change makes sense. After reviewing a number of methodological conditions that need to be met before the question can even be tackled, I provide an overview of theories proposed to account for structural change in cont…
Postverbal elements in immigrant Turkish
Contact between languages usually leads to linguistic changes. Both social and structural factors are claimed to influence this process. This study analyzes word order in Turkish as spoken in the Netherlands (NL-Turkish). Turkish is an OV language but also allows other word order patterns (including VO) in certain pragmatic contexts. Dutch, on the other hand, is VO in main clauses. Due to contact, Turkish may be expected to increase its use of VO…
Linguistic Effects of Immigration
Since the 1960s, Western Europe has been host to a large Turkish immigrant community. While many such communities shift to the majority language in the space of a few generations, language maintenance is remarkably successful in this community. This is partially because of continuing immigration, but it is also typical of a transnational identity that characterizes many bilingual communities in modern Europe. The linguistic effects of this on‐goi…
Salient stages in contact-induced grammatical change
Peter Siemund. Linguistic universals and language variation, 2011, 400 pages. Berlin
Superdiverse Repertoires and the Individual
The term ‘repertoire’ belongs to the core vocabulary of sociolinguistics.1 John Gumperz, in the introduction to the epochal Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication (Gumperz & Hymes 1972/1986) lists ‘linguistic repertoires’ as one of the ‘basic sociolinguistic concepts’ (Gumperz 1972/1986: 20–21) and defines it as ‘the totality of linguistic resources (i.e. including both invariant forms and variables) available to members…
Normativity and change
The present article deals with what we feel to be an unexplored path in present day sociolinguistics and a viable way toward making sociolinguistics more cognitive and cognitive linguistics more social. Naturally, sociolinguistics has a strong interest in issues of variation and change, variation being typically conditioned by social factors, such as age, gender, ethnicity as well as the discursive regimes of language use present in a community o…
Constructively combining languages
Language development in bilingual children is often related to differing levels of proficiency. Objective measurements of bilingual development include for example mean length of utterance (MLU). MLU is almost always calculated for each language context (including both monolingual and code-mixed utterances). In the current study, we analyzed the MLUs of three German-English bilingual children, aged 2;3–3;11 separately for the monolingual and code…
Quantifying cross-linguistic influence with a computational model
Cross-linguistic influence (CLI) is one of the key phenomena in bilingual and second language learning. We propose a method for quantifying CLI in the use of linguistic constructions with the help of a computational model, which acquires constructions in two languages from bilingual input. We focus on the acquisition of case-marking cues in Russian and German and simulate two experiments that employ a picture-choice task tapping into the mechanis…
Bias in dyslexia screening in a Dutch multicultural population
We set out to address the adequacy of dyslexia screening in Dutch and non-western immigrant children, using the Dutch Dyslexia Screening Test (DST-NL) and outcomes of the Dutch dyslexia protocol, both of which are susceptible to cultural bias. Using the protocol as standard, we conducted an ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristics) analysis in Dutch and immigrant third, fifth, and seventh graders, combining a cross-sectional and longitudinal desig…
Heritage languages
Heritage languages, such as the Turkish varieties spoken in Berlin or the Spanish used in Los Angeles, are non-dominant languages, often with little prestige. Their speakers also speak the dominant language of the country they live in. Often heritage languages undergo changes due to their special status. They have received a lot of scholarly attention and provide a link between academic concerns and educational issues. This book takes a language …
Differences in pragmatic skills between bilingual Turkish immigrant children in the Netherlands and monolingual peers
In bilingualism studies, comparing the competence of mono- and bilingual speakers is common, but it comes with certain limitations. In immigration contexts, many studies concentrate on the skills of immigrant pupils in the mainstream language. In order to account for educational underachievement of minority children, gaps in their language development are often documented by comparing mainstream pupils with immigrant children. Competence in the f…
Anxiety, language use and linguistic competence in an immigrant context
By exploring two novel concepts, heritage language anxiety (HLA) and majority language anxiety (MLA), this study draws attention to the hitherto neglected topic of language anxiety in immigrant and minority contexts. Based on semi-structured interviews with three generations of Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands (n = 30), we investigate why members of an immigrant community experience language anxiety and how it affects them. Findings suggest …
General- and Language-Specific Factors Influence Reference Tracking in Speech and Gesture in Discourse
n Contains fulltext :\n 207921.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Slot-and-Frame Schemas in the Language of a Polish- and English-Speaking Child
How does the bilingual child assemble her first multiword constructions? Can switch placement in bilingual combinations be explained by language usage? This study traces the emergence of frozen and semi-productive patterns throughout the diary collection period (0;10.10-2;2.00) to document the acquisition of constructions. Subsequently the focus falls on most frequently produced monolingual and bilingual combinations captured through 30 video rec…
Turkish-Dutch bilinguals maintain language-specific reference tracking strategies in elicited narratives
Aim: This paper examines whether second-generation Turkish heritage speakers in the Netherlands follow language-specific patterns of reference tracking in Turkish and Dutch, focusing on discourse status and pragmatic contexts as factors that may modulate the choice of referring expressions (REs), that is, the noun phrase (NP), overt pronoun and null pronoun. Methodology: Two short silent videos were used to elicit narratives from 20 heritage spea…
Variation is information
In a usage-based framework, variation is part and parcel of our linguistic experiences, and therefore also of our mental representations of language. In this article, we bring attention to variation as a source of information. Instead of discarding variation as mere noise, we examine what it can reveal about the representation and use of linguistic knowledge. By means of metalinguistic judgment data, we demonstrate how to quantify and interpret f…
Entrenchment and productivity
This paper investigates the role of input in the code-mixing (CM) of a German-English bilingual child between the age of 2;3 until 3;11. Supporting a usage-based approach to linguistic theory, multiword units are shown to play an important role in language acquisition scenarios, both in the input children receive as well as in their own early language production. The current study combines findings from Child-directed-speech (CDS) and children’s …
Usage-Based Contact Linguistics
The influence of usage frequency, and particularly of linguistic similarity on human linguistic behavior and linguistic change in situations of language contact are well documented in contact linguistics literature. However, a theoretical framework capable of unifying the various explanations, which are usually couched in either structuralist, sociolinguistic, or psycholinguistic parlance, is still lacking. In this introductory article we argue t…
Entrenchment effects in code-mixing
Following a usage-based approach to language acquisition, lexically specific patterns are considered to be important building blocks for language productivity and feature heavily both in child-directed speech and in the early speech of children (Arnon, Inbal & Morten H. Christiansen. 2017. The role of multiword building blocks in explaining L1-L2 differences. Topics in Cognitive Science 9(3). 621–636; Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a lang…
Comparing forward and reverse transfer from Dutch to German
Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This study compares transfer from Dutch to German by native Dutch speakers who learned German as a second language (forward transfer: L1 to L2) and by native German speakers who are living in the Netherlands (reverse transfer: L2 to L1). The aim of this comparison is to see whether both groups experience the same kind of transfer (i.e., transferring the Dutch preference for prepositional phrases in …
Linguistics (39 obras) · Psychology (28 obras) · Philosophy (23 obras) · Computer Science (20 obras) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (20 obras) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (14 obras) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (12 obras) · Sociology (12 obras) · Multilingual Education and Policy (11 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (10 obras)