A prolegomenon to the construct of the native speaker: Heritage speaker Bilinguals are Natives Too!

Abstract

This Forum challenges the generally accepted position in the linguistic sciences-conscious or not-that monolingualism and nativeness are essentially synonymous in an exclusive way. We discuss two consequences of our position that naturalistic bilinguals and multilinguals exposed to a language in early childhood are also native speakers: (i) that bi-/multilinguals have multiple native languages; and (ii) nativeness can be applicable to a state of linguistic knowledge that is characterized by significant differences to the monolingual baseline. © 2014 Oxford University Press.