A Psycholinguistic Tool for the Assessment of Language Loss: The HALA Project

Date
2009-06
Authors
O'Grady, William
Schafer, Amy J.
Perla, Jawee
Lee, On-Soon
Wieting, Julia
Contributor
Advisor
Department
Instructor
Depositor
Speaker
Researcher
Consultant
Interviewer
Annotator
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Hawai'i Press
Volume
3
Number/Issue
1
Starting Page
Ending Page
Alternative Title
Abstract
A major obstacle to the early diagnosis of language loss and to the assessment of language maintenance efforts is the absence of an easy-to-use psycholinguistic measure of language strength. In this paper, we describe and discuss a body-part naming task being developed as part of the Hawai‘i Assessment of Language Access (HALA) project. This task, like the others in the HALA inventory, exploits the fact that the speed with which bilingual speakers access lexical items and structure-building operations in their two languages offers a sensitive measure of relative language strength. In a pilot study conducted with Korean-English bilinguals, we were able to establish a strong correlation between language strength and naming times even in highly fluent bilingual speakers, in support of the central assumption underlying the HALA tests. We discuss the implications of this finding for the broader study of language strength as well as for the practical problems associated with work on language loss, maintenance, and revitalization.
Description
Keywords
language loss, attrition, psycholinguistic, assessment
Citation
O'Grady, William, Amy J. Schafer, Jawee Perla, On-Soon Lee, and Julia Wieting. 2009. A Psycholinguistic Tool for the Assessment of Language Loss: The HALA Project. Language Documentation & Conservation 3(1):100-112.
Extent
13 pages
Format
Geographic Location
Time Period
Related To
Table of Contents
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License
Rights Holder
Local Contexts
Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.