The Late(r) Bird Gets the Verb? Effects of Age of Acquisition of English on Adult Heritage Speakers’ Knowledge of Subjunctive Mood in Spanish

Abstract

Many previous studies have found that adult heritage speakers exhibit significant variability in their production and comprehension of mood morphology in Spanish. Nonetheless, it remains unclear what specific factors predict heritage speakers’ likelihood of exhibiting such variability. The present study contributes to this question by testing the effect of both (a) age-of-acquisition of English and (b) Spanish proficiency on heritage speakers’ productive and receptive knowledge of mood morphology. Seventeen “early” heritage speakers (age of acquisition of English: 0 to 3.5 years), 20 “late” heritage speakers (age of acquisition of English: 4 to 6 years), and 18 later childhood immigrants (age of arrival in the US: 8 to 12 years) completed a Contextualized Elicited Production Task and a Mood Preference Task. Results of the two experiments suggest that the later childhood immigrants, despite “overusing” subjunctive in +Presupposition adjectival relative clauses, are significantly more likely than “early” and “late” heritage speakers to produce and prefer subjunctive mood in expected subjunctive contexts (with para que and in -Presupposition adjectival relative clauses). Within the heritage speaker groups, however, Spanish proficiency was a stronger predictor of subjunctive knowledge than age of acquisition of English, a finding with implications for both heritage language research and pedagogy.

(Ir)regular Mood Swings: Lexical Variability in Heritage Speakers’ Oral Production of Subjunctive Mood

“…Second, all HSs were “second generation” (Portes & Rumbaut, 2014), meaning that at least one of their parents immigrated to the United States from a Spanish‐speaking country at age 13 or later. The decision to use this age cut‐off, rather than 17 years (e.g., Otheguy & Zentella, 2012), was based on previous studies showing that Spanish‐speakers who immigrate at age 13 produce the subjunctive categorically in obligatory subjunctive conditions, even after learning English and spending multiple years in the United States (Giancaspro, 2019a, 2019b, 2020; Perez‐Cortes, 2016). In our sample, all but five HSs (12%) had two first‐generation parents.…”

“…Because previous studies (Giancaspro, 2019a, 2019b; Montrul, 2009; Montrul & Perpiñán, 2011; Perez‐Cortes, 2016, 2021) have found proficiency to be a significant predictor of HS variability, we expect HSs with lower HL proficiency to exhibit more variability than higher proficiency HSs. Furthermore, in line with the investigations summarized above (Giancaspro, 2020; Perez‐Cortes, 2022; Poplack et al., 2013; inter alia), we also hypothesize that HSs will be more likely to perform variably with regular verbs—which are less autonomous (Bybee & Brewer, 1980) and less salient (Polinsky, 2018)—than with irregular verbs, which are more autonomous and more salient.…”

“…The decision to use this age cut-off, rather than 17 years (e.g., Otheguy & Zentella, 2012), was based on previous studies showing that Spanish-speakers who immigrate at age 13 produce the subjunctive categorically in obligatory subjunctive conditions, even after learning English and spending multiple years in the United States (Giancaspro, 2019a(Giancaspro, , 2019b(Giancaspro, , 2020Perez-Cortes, 2016). In our sample, all but five HSs (12%) had two first-generation parents.…”

“…The umbrella term "Spanish-dominant speakers" (for recent uses, see, e.g.,Giancaspro, 2017Giancaspro, , 2019aGiancaspro, , 2019bGiancaspro, , 2020Perez-Cortes, 2016) encompasses both monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual first-generation immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries. As we will see in the Method section, the present study compares HSs to the latter of these two subgroups.…”

Generational differences in the placement of clitic se in New York City Spanish

“…The US variety of Spanish has been the subject of a myriad of linguistic studies over the past several decades, ranging from lexical and phonological (e.g., Brice et al, 2009; Goldstein, 2005; Kohnert et al 1999; Montrul, 2006; Rao, 2019; Zentella, 1990), to grammatical and sociolinguistic (e.g., Viner, 2016, 2017, 2018a, 2018b, 2020; Erker & Otheguy, 2016; Giancaspro, 2019a, 2019b; Otheguy & Zentella, 2012). Amongst the latter, we find a highly variable syntactic feature: Spanish clitics (SC).…”