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How does complex syntax develop in heritage language children? This study investigates child Turkish heritage speakers' comprehension and production of relative clauses (RCs) in Turkish and in English. RCs vary on their syntactic functions (subject, object) and show asymmetric patterns of acquisition and processing, which have been explained by linear distance, structural distance and input factors. Thirty-two child Turkish HS (ages 6–15) and 48 monolingual Turkish children (ages 3–15) completed a picture-sentence matching (comprehension) task and a sentence repetition (production) task in Turkish. The Turkish HS were tested on the RC comprehension and production tasks in English as well. The results indicated that the child HS showed (i) better performance in English than in Turkish with increasing age, (ii) better comprehension than production of Turkish RCs, (iii) replacement of complex RCs with simple juxtaposition in Turkish, and (iv) a subject advantage in comprehension. We take these findings to suggest that Turkish RCs do not fully develop in child HS of Turkish in the U.S., although the strength of this explanation must be corroborated by a study of child and adult HS. Overall, the findings are most compatible with the structural distance account and other factors that may affect production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated changes with Differential Object Marking (DOM)—the overt morphological marking of animate direct objects—observed in Spanish heritage speakers who are second generation immigrants in the United States. Previous studies of these speakers found that they omit the obligatory use of a with animate, specific direct objects in oral production ( Montrul, 2004; Montrul and Bowles, 2009 ). The present study assessed the potential effects of quantity and quality of input on the degree of DOM erosion by controlling for age of onset of bilingualism and by establishing whether this phenomenon would also be subject to attrition in the first generation of immigrants. A total of 64 young adult heritage speakers, 23 adult immigrants from Mexico, and 40 native speakers from Mexico matched in age and SES were tested with a written/auditory comprehension and a written production task. Main findings indicated that native speakers from Mexico performed largely at ceiling in both tasks, whereas the three immigrant groups, including the first generation immigrants, omitted obligatory a in written production and made errors in comprehension. These findings suggest that structural changes with DOM in US Spanish occur at the representational level in some individuals are due to both insufficient input in middle childhood and different parental input in adolescence and early adulthood, in addition to potential transfer from English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the results of two studies that investigate the factors contributing to non-native-like ability in child and adult heritage speakers by focusing on oral production of Differential Object Marking (DOM), the overt morphological marking of animate direct objects in Spanish. In study 1, 39 school-age bilingual children (ages 6–17) from the United States and 20 monolingual children from Mexico completed a Story Retelling Task and a Picture Description Task. In study 2, 64 young adult heritage speakers (ages 18–25), 23 adult immigrants to the United States (ages 40–60), and 40 native speakers from Mexico (ages 18–60) completed the same oral tasks. Results showed significant rates of omission of DOM in animate direct objects in all the experimental groups from the United States and ceiling performance in the groups from Mexico (both children and adults). We discuss how the combined effects of reduced input, potential attrition in the first generation of immigrants, incomplete acquisition in the second generation, and transfer from English may account for the persistent patterns of DOM omission with animate and specific direct objects in child and adult Spanish heritage speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has identified several vulnerable areas in heritage language grammars, among which morphosyntax is among the most affected. In this study, we report on the morphosyntactic competence of Hindi heritage speakers living in the U.S and show that these speakers have representational problems with ergative, accusative and dative case morphology, albeit to different degrees. Hindi is a split ergative language with a complex interaction of case and agreement. Transitive predicates in perfective aspect co-occur with subjects marked with ergative case (-ne) and object agreement. Animate specific direct objects are marked with the particle -ko, and so are the indirect objects and dative subjects. 21 Hindi native speakers and 28 Hindi heritage speakers completed a sociolinguistic questionnaire, a Hindi cloze test, an oral narrative task and a bimodal acceptability judgment task. The results showed significant differences between the fluent native speakers and the heritage speakers on all measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the role of transfer from the stronger language by focusing on the interpretation of definite articles in Spanish and English by Spanish heritage speakers (i.e., minority language-speaking bilinguals) residing in the U.S., where English is the majority language. Spanish plural NPs with definite articles can express generic reference (Los elefantes tienen colmillos de marfil), or specific reference (Los elefantes de este zoológico son marrones). English plurals with definite articles can only have specific reference (The elephants in this zoo are brown), while generic reference is expressed with bare plural NPs ( Elephants have ivory tusks). Furthermore, the Spanish definite article is preferred in inalienable possession constructions (Pedro levantó la mano "Peter raised the hand"), whereas in English the use of a definite article typically means that the body part belongs to somebody else (alienable possession). Twenty-three adult Spanish heritage speakers completed three tasks in Spanish (acceptability judgment, truth-value judgment, and picture-sentence matching tasks) and the same three tasks in English. Results show that the Spanish heritage speakers exhibited transfer from English into Spanish with the interpretation of definite articles in generic but not in inalienable possession contexts. Implications of this finding for the field of heritage language research and for theories of article semantics are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The obligatory use of the preposition a with animate, specific direct objects in Spanish ( Juan conoce a María "Juan knows Maria") is a well-known instance of Differential Object Marking (DOM; Torrego, 1998; Leonetti, 2004). Recent studies have documented the loss and/or incomplete acquisition of several grammatical features in Spanish heritage speakers (Silva-Corvaían, 1994; Montrul, 2002), including DOM (Montrul, 2004a). This study assesses the extent of incomplete knowledge of DOM in Spanish heritage speakers raised in the United States by comparing it with knowledge of DOM in fully competent native speakers. Experiment 1 examined whether omission of a affected grammatical competence, as measured by the linguistic behavior of 67 heritage speakers and 22 monolingual speakers in an oral production task and in a written acceptability judgment task. Experiment 2 followed up on the results of the acceptability judgment task with 13 monolingual speakers and 69 heritage speakers, and examined whether problems with DOM generalize to other instances of structural and inherent dative case, including ditransitive verbs and gustar-type psychological verbs. Results of the two experiments confirmed that heritage speakers' recognition and production of DOM is probabilistic, even for speakers with advanced proficiency in Spanish. This suggests that many heritage speakers' grammars may not actually instantiate inherent case. We argue that language loss under reduced input conditions in childhood is, in this case, like "going back to basics": it leads to simplification of the grammar by letting go of the non-core options, while retaining the core functional structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child and adult Spanish heritage speakers have been shown to display erosion and loss of the tense-aspect and mood system in oral production. In particular, while they retain the preterit-imperfect difference in the past, the meanings and forms are often confused. Subjunctive morphology, on the other hand, is even more affected (Silva-Corvalán, 1994, 2003). Two related studies were conducted to examine the extent of incomplete knowledge of tense-aspect and mood morphology in 65 adult Spanish heritage speakers raised in the USA and a comparison group of 23 fully competent adult native speakers. Study 1 tested the preterit-imperfect contrast with different predicates; Study 2 focused on the present indicative-subjunctive contrast in different subordinate clauses. Both studies used elicited oral and written production tasks to test morphological accuracy and a sentence conjunction judgment task to tap semantic interpretations. The overall results showed significant differences between the native speakers and the heritage speakers, confirming that heritage speakers make errors with grammatical aspect and mood morphology. Accuracy on grammatical aspect, however, is higher than accuracy on subjunctive morphology in oral and written production and interpretation. This result is compatible with the Regression Hypothesis (Jakobson, 1941), which relates order of acquisition to order of language loss, and with the Interfaces Hypothesis (Tsimpli & Sorace, 2006), which takes into account the complexity of certain linguistic interfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the linguistic knowledge of adult second language (L2) learners, who learned the L2 after puberty, with the potentially 'eroded' first language (L1) grammars of adult early bilinguals who were exposed to the target language since birth and learned the other language simultaneously, or early in childhood (before age 5). I make two main claims: (1) that the L1 grammar of bilinguals at a given stabilized state (probably endstate) resembles the incomplete (either developing or stabilized) grammars typical of intermediate and advanced stages in L2 acquisition; and (2) that despite similar patterns of performance, when language proficiency is factored in, early bilinguals are better than the L2 learners, probably due to exposure to primary linguistic input early in childhood. I offer empirical evidence from an experimental study testing knowledge of the syntax and semantics of unaccusativity in Spanish, conducted with English-speaking L2 learners and English-dominant Spanish heritage speakers living in the USA. I consider recent treatments of unaccusativity and language attrition within the generative framework (Sorace, 1999; 2000a; 2000b), that offer a unifying account of the formal parallels observed between these two populations I discuss how input, use and age may explain differences and similarities in the linguistic attainment of the two groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]