We use a newly available measure of linguistic distance developed by the German Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to explain heterogeneity in language skills of immigrants. This measure is based on an automatical algorithm comparing pronunciation and vocabulary of language...

This study examines the returns to foreign and local language skills of immigrants in the Spanish labor market. Different sources of endogeneity are addressed by deriving a set of novel instruments for language proficiency through a measure of linguistic dissimilarity. Using cross-sectional data...

This study quantifies the disadvantage in the formation of literacy skills of immigrants that arises from the linguistic distance between mother tongue and host country language. Combining unique cross-country data on literacy scores with information on the linguistic distance between languages,...

This paper uses data from the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS) to study the returns to language skills of child and adult migrants in the US labor market. We employ an instrumental variable strategy, which exploits differences in language acquisition profiles between immigrants from English-...

The problem of incomplete language acquisition and heritage languages is approached from several perspectives: who are heritage speakers, how are they different from native speakers and L2 learners, is heritage language a particular system? This paper aims at answering these and other questions...

This study investigates whether foreign origin teachers causally affect their students language skills in secondary school. Exploring within-student variation in assignment to teachers, I find that teachers who are immigrants or descendants of immigrants significantly increase the reading...

This paper analyzes the interaction between migrant networks and linguistic distance in the location choice of migrants to the EU at the regional level. We test the hypothesis that networks and the ability to communicate in the host country language, proxied by linguistic distance, are...

This paper aims to show that due to the increase in mass English-Russian bilingualism the notion of lexical variation generated by Englishization should not be restricted to the traditionally studied opposition of English loanwords vs. their host language equivalents, but should be broadened to...

This paper describes the sociolinguistic situation of Mehweb, a lect of the Dargwa branch of East Caucasian, in the Republic of Daghestan. In the course of several field trips to the village of Mehweb, sociolinguistic interviews were conducted in four neighbouring Avar- and Lak-speaking...

In this paper, a description of sentential negation makers in Russian Sign Language (RSL) is provided. Two types of these markers exist. The first one is a negative sign – a manual negator. The second type is markers that are expressed by facial expressions, and head movements – non-manual...