Brechje Van Osch
Biographic Data
| ID | 3531308 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brechje Van Osch |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brechje |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Osch |
| SIGNATURE | VAN OSCH B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7366-9926 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Reflections on the “Heritage” Label in Bilingualism Research
Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: We critically examine the use of the term “heritage” within bilingualism research. The primary aim is to evaluate the validity and usefulness of this term, addressing the conceptual and practical issues it currently presents. Design/Methodology/Approach: We employ a critical review methodology, synthesizing arguments from various perspectives on the label “heritage”. We explore the vagueness of the …
Monolingual comparative normativity in bilingualism research is out of “ control ”
Herein, we contextualize, problematize, and offer some insights for moving beyond the problem of monolingual comparative normativity in (psycho) linguistic research on bilingualism. We argue that, in the vast majority of cases, juxtaposing (functional) monolinguals to bilinguals fails to offer what the comparison is supposedly intended to do: meet the standards of empirical control in line with the scientific method. Instead, the default nature o…
Adding the microdimension to the study of language change in contact. Three case studies
Syntactic change in contact is generally explained as a result of cognitive, structural/typological, or sociolinguistic factors. However, the relative weight of these factors in shaping the outputs of contact is yet to be assessed. In this paper, we propose a microcontact approach to the study of change in contact, focusing on microsyntactic points of variation across multiple language pairs that are structurally very close. We show that this app…
Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual grammars
This study reports on grammatical gender assignment in elicited production data from heritage speakers of Turkish, Papiamento, and Spanish in the Netherlands. We investigate the role of cross-linguistic influence from the heritage language onto the societal language by comparing three heritage languages that differ in terms of the properties of the nominal domain, including gender. Determiner-adjective-noun constructions were elicited by means of…
Subject Clitics in Microcontact
In this paper we present data from first generation immigrants (G1) and second and third generation heritage speakers of Friulian, a Rhaeto-Romance language spoken in North-Eastern Italy and also found in Argentina and Brazil. The target phenomenon is subject clitics ( SCL s). We show that SCL s in heritage Friulian are in a process of being reanalyzed from being agreement markers to pronouns. While SCL s are obligatory in Friulian as spoken in I…
Gender in Unilingual and Mixed Speech of Spanish Heritage Speakers in The Netherlands
This study examines heritage speakers of Spanish in The Netherlands regarding their production of gender in both their languages (Spanish and Dutch) as well as their gender assignment strategies in code-switched constructions. A director-matcher task was used to elicit unilingual and mixed speech from 21 participants (aged 8 to 52, mean = 17). The nominal domain consisting of a determiner, noun, and adjective was targeted in three modes: (i) Unil…
Vulnerability and Cross-linguistic Influence in Heritage Spanish
This paper compares Dutch-dominant and English-dominant heritage speakers of Spanish regarding their sensitivity to the various factors that play a role in subject position. An acceptability judgment task and an elicited production task demonstrated that both groups were sensitive to the effect of verb type on word order, but not to the effect of focus. To account for the specific vulnerability of focus, several possible accounts are proposed. An…
The Development of Subject Position in Dutch-Dominant Heritage Speakers of Spanish
This exploratory study investigates the knowledge of word order in intransitive sentences by heritage speakers of Spanish of different age groups: 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds and adults. In doing so, we aim to fill a gap in the heritage language literature, which, to date, has mainly focused on adult heritage speakers and preschool bilingual children. The results from a judgment task reveal that child- and adolescent heritage speakers do not entire…
Spanish heritage speakers in the Netherlands
Purpose: This study investigates heritage speakers of Spanish in the Netherlands regarding their knowledge of Spanish mood. Previous research has demonstrated that heritage speakers of Spanish in the US have problems with mood, especially subjunctive mood and particularly in contexts where choice of mood is variable and depends on semantic and pragmatic factors. Moreover, heritage speakers are often reported to experience fewer problems with oral…
Implicit and Explicit Knowledge of a Multiple Interface Phenomenon
This paper compares heritage speakers and second language (L2) speakers of Spanish with Dutch as their dominant language, in order to explore the role of age of onset and manner of acquisition in the nature of the knowledge (implicit vs. explicit) of the subjunctive. Differently from previous studies, all items were presented orally and in written form, so that language mode of presentation could be excluded as a confounding factor. Moreover, the…
Gender agreement in interface contexts in the oral production of heritage speakers of Spanish in the Netherlands
In this paper we present an analysis of Spanish heritage speakers’ oral production of gender agreement outside the DP as an innovative source of support for the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace & Filiaci 2006). We demonstrate that, besides commonly known factors such as the gender, animacy and morphology of the antecedent, the interface domain in which gender agreement takes place also seems to play a role in how accurately heritage speakers apply ge…
Implicit and Explicit Knowledge of a Multiple Interface Phenomenon
This paper compares heritage speakers and second language (L2) speakers of Spanish with Dutch as their dominant language, in order to explore the role of age of onset and manner of acquisition in the nature of the knowledge (implicit vs. explicit) of the subjunctive. Differently from previous studies, all items were presented orally and in written form, so that language mode of presentation could be excluded as a confounding factor. Moreover, the…
Gender in Unilingual and Mixed Speech of Spanish Heritage Speakers in The Netherlands
This study examines heritage speakers of Spanish in The Netherlands regarding their production of gender in both their languages (Spanish and Dutch) as well as their gender assignment strategies in code-switched constructions. A director-matcher task was used to elicit unilingual and mixed speech from 21 participants (aged 8 to 52, mean = 17). The nominal domain consisting of a determiner, noun, and adjective was targeted in three modes: (i) Unil…
Gender agreement in interface contexts in the oral production of heritage speakers of Spanish in the Netherlands
In this paper we present an analysis of Spanish heritage speakers’ oral production of gender agreement outside the DP as an innovative source of support for the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace & Filiaci 2006). We demonstrate that, besides commonly known factors such as the gender, animacy and morphology of the antecedent, the interface domain in which gender agreement takes place also seems to play a role in how accurately heritage speakers apply ge…
Spanish heritage speakers in the Netherlands
Purpose: This study investigates heritage speakers of Spanish in the Netherlands regarding their knowledge of Spanish mood. Previous research has demonstrated that heritage speakers of Spanish in the US have problems with mood, especially subjunctive mood and particularly in contexts where choice of mood is variable and depends on semantic and pragmatic factors. Moreover, heritage speakers are often reported to experience fewer problems with oral…
Implicit and Explicit Knowledge of a Multiple Interface Phenomenon
This paper compares heritage speakers and second language (L2) speakers of Spanish with Dutch as their dominant language, in order to explore the role of age of onset and manner of acquisition in the nature of the knowledge (implicit vs. explicit) of the subjunctive. Differently from previous studies, all items were presented orally and in written form, so that language mode of presentation could be excluded as a confounding factor. Moreover, the…
Vulnerability and Cross-linguistic Influence in Heritage Spanish
This paper compares Dutch-dominant and English-dominant heritage speakers of Spanish regarding their sensitivity to the various factors that play a role in subject position. An acceptability judgment task and an elicited production task demonstrated that both groups were sensitive to the effect of verb type on word order, but not to the effect of focus. To account for the specific vulnerability of focus, several possible accounts are proposed. An…
The Development of Subject Position in Dutch-Dominant Heritage Speakers of Spanish
This exploratory study investigates the knowledge of word order in intransitive sentences by heritage speakers of Spanish of different age groups: 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds and adults. In doing so, we aim to fill a gap in the heritage language literature, which, to date, has mainly focused on adult heritage speakers and preschool bilingual children. The results from a judgment task reveal that child- and adolescent heritage speakers do not entire…
Gender in Unilingual and Mixed Speech of Spanish Heritage Speakers in The Netherlands
This study examines heritage speakers of Spanish in The Netherlands regarding their production of gender in both their languages (Spanish and Dutch) as well as their gender assignment strategies in code-switched constructions. A director-matcher task was used to elicit unilingual and mixed speech from 21 participants (aged 8 to 52, mean = 17). The nominal domain consisting of a determiner, noun, and adjective was targeted in three modes: (i) Unil…
Subject Clitics in Microcontact
In this paper we present data from first generation immigrants (G1) and second and third generation heritage speakers of Friulian, a Rhaeto-Romance language spoken in North-Eastern Italy and also found in Argentina and Brazil. The target phenomenon is subject clitics ( SCL s). We show that SCL s in heritage Friulian are in a process of being reanalyzed from being agreement markers to pronouns. While SCL s are obligatory in Friulian as spoken in I…
Adding the microdimension to the study of language change in contact. Three case studies
Syntactic change in contact is generally explained as a result of cognitive, structural/typological, or sociolinguistic factors. However, the relative weight of these factors in shaping the outputs of contact is yet to be assessed. In this paper, we propose a microcontact approach to the study of change in contact, focusing on microsyntactic points of variation across multiple language pairs that are structurally very close. We show that this app…
Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual grammars
This study reports on grammatical gender assignment in elicited production data from heritage speakers of Turkish, Papiamento, and Spanish in the Netherlands. We investigate the role of cross-linguistic influence from the heritage language onto the societal language by comparing three heritage languages that differ in terms of the properties of the nominal domain, including gender. Determiner-adjective-noun constructions were elicited by means of…
Monolingual comparative normativity in bilingualism research is out of “ control ”
Herein, we contextualize, problematize, and offer some insights for moving beyond the problem of monolingual comparative normativity in (psycho) linguistic research on bilingualism. We argue that, in the vast majority of cases, juxtaposing (functional) monolinguals to bilinguals fails to offer what the comparison is supposedly intended to do: meet the standards of empirical control in line with the scientific method. Instead, the default nature o…
Reflections on the “Heritage” Label in Bilingualism Research
Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: We critically examine the use of the term “heritage” within bilingualism research. The primary aim is to evaluate the validity and usefulness of this term, addressing the conceptual and practical issues it currently presents. Design/Methodology/Approach: We employ a critical review methodology, synthesizing arguments from various perspectives on the label “heritage”. We explore the vagueness of the …
Linguistics (10 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Heritage language (7 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (7 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (6 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (5 works) · Cognitive psychology (4 works) · History (4 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (4 works)