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EN This article reports on a study, with online measures, which investigated the processing of subject-verb (SV) agreement sentences by one group of heritage Spanish speakers (HSs), two groups of L2 learners of Spanish (L1 English) and one group of traditional Spanish native speakers. Experimental SV sentences manipulated person and number features with subjects and verbs in the present tense. Between-group statistical analyses indicated differential processing between the heritage and the L2 groups. The heritage group's performance was more native-like than the L2 participants. Within-subject tests showed some similar patterns between heritage and L2 high-level processing, including delayed sensitivity to ungrammaticality after the verb region. We argue that the HSs were able to process basic grammar structures, just as traditional native speakers do. This suggests early bilingualism conferred an advantage to HSS when compared to L2 learners, in the control of basic agreement in Spanish.

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In this paper I explore the two strategies (i.e. Inversion and Obligatory Gapping) allowed in Spanish to form comparative subdeletion constructions (cf. Knowles 1984, Price 1990and Rivero 1981. I show that the two strategies are related and derive from the same source. That is, the NP containing the quantity term must undergo overt movement to check a strong focus feature in the Inversion Strategy. If the feature is not checked, the derivation can still be rescued by deleting the strong feature in PF. Once the strong feature is erased from the derivation, the resulting grammatical sentence constitutes an instance of the Obligatory Gapping Strategy.