English as a heritage language: The effects of input patterns and contact with Hebrew

Purpose: This study examines the extent to which language skills of adult speakers heritage (HL) English in a Hebrew-speaking society are affected by individual HL input patterns and cross-linguistic influence. Methodology: Adult HL-English who grew up families with one ( N = 22) or two 25) English-speaking parents were compared baseline group native emigrated Israel as adults 20). Data: Proficiencies morphosyntactic lexical domains measured based on formal test performance error types frequencies narratives. Detailed histories speakers’ linguistic documented. Findings: Results showed near-ceiling across three groups domain, while significant differences observed between domain. No found parents. Individual explained larger proportion variance abilities, ones. Evidence influence from Hebrew was not detected but only lexicon, form minor production errors calques. Originality: The examined here which, unlike other HLs, is heard used variety contexts outside home. In most previous studies dominant societal language. Implications: results suggest that divergences, necessarily all HLs—morphosyntactic structures acquired childhood, reinforced periodically environment, may be well-maintained because language’s ubiquity relatively sparse morphology.