The Development of Subject Position in Dutch-Dominant Heritage Speakers of Spanish: From Age 9 to Adulthood

Abstract

This exploratory study investigates the knowledge of word order in intransitive sentences by heritage speakers of Spanish of different age groups: 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds and adults. In doing so, we aim to fill a gap in the heritage language literature, which, to date, has mainly focused on adult heritage speakers and preschool bilingual children. The results from a judgment task reveal that child- and adolescent heritage speakers do not entirely resemble monolingual age-matched children in the acquisition of subjects in Spanish, nor do they assimilate adult heritage speakers. The data suggest that several different processes can occur simultaneously in the acquisition of word order in heritage speakers: monolingual-like acquisition, delayed acquisition, and attrition. An analysis of the influence of extraneous variables suggests that most of these effects are likely to be the consequence of quantitatively reduced input in the heritage language and increased input in the majority language.

The production of preverbal and postverbal subjects by Italian heritage children: Timing of acquisition matters

“…If this is the case, we would expect HL children to be able to ultimately acquire even syntax-discourse interface structures that are acquired very late. This finding is compatible with evidence reported in previous studies that adult HSs perform like monolingual speakers even with syntax-discourse interface phenomena (see Kupisch & Rothman, 2018, for a discussion of this idea, as well as the aforementioned study by Van Osch et al, 2019).…”

“…To our knowledge, no previous study has been conducted on HL Italian children in this domain. School-aged HSs speaking a language combination similar to the one considered in the present study have been tested by Van Osch et al (2019). The authors analyse the production of VS in Spanish by three groups of HSs with Dutch as SL differing in age (9 years old, 13 years old and adult, respectively), as compared with Spanish monolingual controls.…”

“…As mentioned above, HSs usually receive formal instruction in the SL and not in the HL. This may affect the stabilization of complex structures, such as the ones involving the syntax–discourse interface, which tends to be related to literacy exposure (Bongartz & Torregrossa, 2020; Bowles & Torres, 2021; Caloi & Torregrossa, 2021; Rinke et al, 2019; Van Osch et al, 2019). However, only a few studies consider school-aged HSs.…”