A prototype of a receptive lexical test for a polysynthetic heritage language: The case of Inuttitut in Labrador
This paper describes the process of designing, administering, and assessing a language-sensitive and culture-specific lexical test of Labrador Inuttitut (a dialect of Inuktitut, an Eskimo-Aleut language). This process presented numerous challenges, from choosing citation forms in a polysynthetic lan...
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crsagepubl:10.1177/0265532214560799 2024-09-30T14:22:06+00:00 A prototype of a receptive lexical test for a polysynthetic heritage language: The case of Inuttitut in Labrador Sherkina-Lieber, Marina Helms-Park, Rena 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0265532214560799 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0265532214560799 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0265532214560799 en eng SAGE Publications http://journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license Language Testing volume 32, issue 4, page 419-442 ISSN 0265-5322 1477-0946 journal-article 2014 crsagepubl https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532214560799 2024-09-17T04:40:41Z This paper describes the process of designing, administering, and assessing a language-sensitive and culture-specific lexical test of Labrador Inuttitut (a dialect of Inuktitut, an Eskimo-Aleut language). This process presented numerous challenges, from choosing citation forms in a polysynthetic language to dealing with a lack of word frequency data. Twenty heritage receptive bilinguals (RBs) with very limited production skills in Inuttitut (their first language) and a comparison group of eight fluent bilinguals (FBs) participated in our study. Since the RBs lacked production skills in Inuttitut, the lexical test required participants to translate a carefully compiled list of Inuttitut nouns and verbs into English. The results revealed that RBs had good comprehension of basic vocabulary (85% accuracy), but differed significantly from FBs, mostly because the RBs had a number of partially accurate translations. The three lowest scoring RBs had the highest number of such translations as well as inaccurate translations based on phonological associations, as is common in emergent lexicons. This lexical test correlates with grammatical proficiency measures, pointing to its potential value as a quick placement and diagnostic test in revitalization programs for Inuttitut as well as other languages in a language loss situation. Article in Journal/Newspaper aleut eskimo* Eskimo–Aleut inuktitut SAGE Publications Language Testing 32 4 419 442 |
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English |
description |
This paper describes the process of designing, administering, and assessing a language-sensitive and culture-specific lexical test of Labrador Inuttitut (a dialect of Inuktitut, an Eskimo-Aleut language). This process presented numerous challenges, from choosing citation forms in a polysynthetic language to dealing with a lack of word frequency data. Twenty heritage receptive bilinguals (RBs) with very limited production skills in Inuttitut (their first language) and a comparison group of eight fluent bilinguals (FBs) participated in our study. Since the RBs lacked production skills in Inuttitut, the lexical test required participants to translate a carefully compiled list of Inuttitut nouns and verbs into English. The results revealed that RBs had good comprehension of basic vocabulary (85% accuracy), but differed significantly from FBs, mostly because the RBs had a number of partially accurate translations. The three lowest scoring RBs had the highest number of such translations as well as inaccurate translations based on phonological associations, as is common in emergent lexicons. This lexical test correlates with grammatical proficiency measures, pointing to its potential value as a quick placement and diagnostic test in revitalization programs for Inuttitut as well as other languages in a language loss situation. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Sherkina-Lieber, Marina Helms-Park, Rena |
spellingShingle |
Sherkina-Lieber, Marina Helms-Park, Rena A prototype of a receptive lexical test for a polysynthetic heritage language: The case of Inuttitut in Labrador |
author_facet |
Sherkina-Lieber, Marina Helms-Park, Rena |
author_sort |
Sherkina-Lieber, Marina |
title |
A prototype of a receptive lexical test for a polysynthetic heritage language: The case of Inuttitut in Labrador |
title_short |
A prototype of a receptive lexical test for a polysynthetic heritage language: The case of Inuttitut in Labrador |
title_full |
A prototype of a receptive lexical test for a polysynthetic heritage language: The case of Inuttitut in Labrador |
title_fullStr |
A prototype of a receptive lexical test for a polysynthetic heritage language: The case of Inuttitut in Labrador |
title_full_unstemmed |
A prototype of a receptive lexical test for a polysynthetic heritage language: The case of Inuttitut in Labrador |
title_sort |
prototype of a receptive lexical test for a polysynthetic heritage language: the case of inuttitut in labrador |
publisher |
SAGE Publications |
publishDate |
2014 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0265532214560799 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0265532214560799 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0265532214560799 |
genre |
aleut eskimo* Eskimo–Aleut inuktitut |
genre_facet |
aleut eskimo* Eskimo–Aleut inuktitut |
op_source |
Language Testing volume 32, issue 4, page 419-442 ISSN 0265-5322 1477-0946 |
op_rights |
http://journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532214560799 |
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Language Testing |
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32 |
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4 |
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419 |
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442 |
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1811633068652363776 |