Early language experience facilitates the processing of gender agreement in Spanish heritage speakers

Abstract

International audienc

A Comparison of the Grammatical Production of Child Heritage Speakers of Spanish across Language and Grade: Kindergarten and Grade 1

“…Similar to previous research HSs with early onset of bilingualism produced more responses in the home language, L1 Spanish, regardless of structure [16,[58][59][60]. Progressives were significantly more accurate in L1 Spanish, which did not support the hypothesis that young HSs would be more productive with the English progressive form due to semantic differences in progressive use in the two languages.…”

The relevance of first language attrition to theories of bilingual development

“…), is often characterised by non-linearities, spurts and reversals in development etc., and its outcome is impossible to predict (e.g., De Houwer, 2009;Kupisch & Rothman, 2016;Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012;Scontras, Fuchs & Polinksy, 2015). Of particular relevance here is the observation that, despite the fact that such early bilinguals or Heritage Speakers (HSs) are exposed to their home language from birth, as adolescents or adults many of them 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 share more characteristics with adult L2 learners than with monolinguals (e.g., Montrul, Davidson, de la Fuente & Foote, 2014). They often fail to establish target-like representations of grammatical categories, even if they had been exposed solely or largely to the home language up to and beyond the age at which these categories are typically mastered in monolingual L1 acquisition (e.g., Cuza & PerezTattam, 2016; Karayayla, forthc.…”

“…They often fail to establish target-like representations of grammatical categories, even if they had been exposed solely or largely to the home language up to and beyond the age at which these categories are typically mastered in monolingual L1 acquisition (e.g., Cuza & PerezTattam, 2016; Karayayla, forthc. ; Montrul et al, 2014;Polinsky, 2008), suggesting the necessity for either an extended period of entrenchment or some kind of maturational stabilization effect after the rule has been acquired in order to decrease vulnerability to erosion (Schmid, 2012). By comparison, attrition effects observed among post-puberty bilinguals in the L1 are typically limited, and such attriters tend to be much more similar to monolinguals than to L2ers (see above, see also Schmid, 2014).…”

Implicit and Explicit Knowledge of a Multiple Interface Phenomenon: Differential Task Effects in Heritage Speakers and L2 Speakers of Spanish in The Netherlands

“…(Bowles 2011) for instance, used the same test battery as (Ellis 2005(Ellis , 2009b) for a whole range of (morpho-)syntactic structures in Spanish, among which is the subjunctive (but results are not reported for the separate structures), and found that heritage speakers performed better on the implicit tasks and L2 speakers on explicit tasks. Montrul et al (2008bMontrul et al ( , 2014 report a similar pattern for gender assignment and agreement in Spanish.…”