Heritage and L2 processing of person and number features: Evidence from Spanish subject-verb agreement

Abstract

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.

Subject–Verb Number Agreement in Bilingual Processing: (Lack of) Age of Acquisition and Proficiency Effects

“…In contrast, other online studies found no AoA effects. For example, advanced early bilinguals and late bilinguals of Spanish were more sensitive to adjacent than non-adjacent SV number disagreement with present tense verbs in Spanish (Foote 2011), and both groups showed delayed sensitivity effects (Rodríguez and Reglero 2015) in a non-cumulative, selfpaced reading task. However, Rodríguez and Reglero mixed person and number violations (e.g., *tú lavan 'you-2ndperson-singular wash-3rdperson-plural').…”

“…Contrarily, other studies show that intermediate and advanced late bilinguals are insensitive to SV violations. For intermediate late bilinguals, self-paced reading data showed that English-Spanish late bilinguals (Rodríguez and Reglero 2015;VanPatten et al 2012) and Chinese-English late bilinguals (Yao and Chen 2017) were insensitive to SV person-number violations (but VanPatten et al found that they were sensitive to VS violations in which verb tense information is not redundant). Additionally, ERP data revealed that intermediate French-English late bilinguals processed adjacent and nonadjacent SV number violations as semantic rather than morphosyntactic like French natives (Reichle et al 2013).…”

“…Delayed processing can be a sign of knowledge that has not been automatized yet due to insufficient L2 knowledge, and that requires more cognitive effort during online processing. With respect to advanced late bilinguals, they are sensitive to the violations in self-paced reading (Hopp 2013;Rodríguez and Reglero 2015), speedy grammaticality judgments (Hopp 2013), eye-tracking (Yao and Chen 2017), and ERPs (Rossi et al 2006).…”

“…This variability can be explained in terms of AoA and proficiency, but studies examining these factors have generated mixed findings. For AoA, studies consistently show no AoA effects in lower proficiency early and late bilinguals (Wartenburger et al 2003), but it is unclear whether AoA modulates SV agreement processing in higher proficiency early and late bilinguals (Wartenburger et al 2003) or not (Foote 2011;Rodríguez and Reglero 2015). Regarding proficiency, online studies with implicit tasks regularly show that lower proficiency late bilinguals are insensitive and near-native late bilinguals sensitive to SV agreement violations, but data on intermediate and advanced late bilinguals are inconclusive (see Armstrong et al 2018, for a review).…”

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

“…Studies that have analyzed the linguistic performance of young HSs usually compare them to the performance of monolingual peers [2,11,18]. Traditional native speakers have been used as a control group in the L1, since they have grown up monolingual with formal instruction in their native language.…”