Over, Under and Around: Spanish Heritage Speakers’ Production (and Avoidance) of Subjunctive Mood

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Giancaspro
Keyword(s):  
Production Task ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
Subjunctive Mood ◽  
Advanced Proficiency ◽  
Spanish Heritage Speakers

The present study explores the subjunctive mood production of 29 heritage speakers (HSs) of Spanish (17 advanced proficiency and 12 intermediate proficiency) and 14 Spanish-dominant controls (SDCs). All participants completed a Contextualized Elicited Production Task (CEPT), which tested their oral production of both lexically-selected (intensional) and contextually-selected (polarity) mood morphology in Spanish. Between-group analyses of the CEPT reveal that the HSs diverge significantly from the SDCs in subjunctive production, specifically by underproducing, overproducing, and avoiding subjunctive mood morphology. Despite these differences, however, the HSs still exhibited sensitivity to mood, producing significantly more subjunctive mood in expected subjunctive contexts than in expected indicative contexts. Based on HSs’ knowledge of the subjunctive, which both resembles and also diverges from that of the SDCs, it is argued that categorizing HSs as having either acquired or not acquired mood in Spanish is descriptively and conceptually problematic.

Spanish heritage speakers in the Netherlands: Linguistic patterns in the judgment and production of mood

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 513-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brechje van Osch ◽  
Petra Sleeman
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Heritage Speaker ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
Subjunctive Mood ◽  
Mixed Effects Modeling ◽  
The Us ◽  
Heritage Speakers Of Spanish

Purpose: This study investigates heritage speakers of Spanish in the Netherlands regarding their knowledge of Spanish mood. Previous research has demonstrated that heritage speakers of Spanish in the US have problems with mood, especially subjunctive mood and particularly in contexts where choice of mood is variable and depends on semantic and pragmatic factors. Moreover, heritage speakers are often reported to experience fewer problems with oral production tasks tapping into implicit knowledge than with judgment tasks targeting metalinguistic knowledge. This study aims to investigate whether these patterns can be confirmed for heritage speakers of Spanish in the Netherlands. Methodology: In all, 17 heritage speakers from the Netherlands and 18 monolingual speakers of Spanish completed a contextualized elicited production task. Each item contained a context targeting either indicative or subjunctive mood. Below each context followed the beginning of a sentence which the participants were instructed to complete. Both obligatory and variable uses of mood were included. The results were compared to findings from a contextualized scalar acceptability judgment task described in an earlier study using the same conditions and the same participants. Data and analysis: All responses were coded as felicitous or infelicitous given the accompanying context and were analyzed using mixed effects modeling. The results demonstrate that the heritage speakers are less accurate in their choice of mood than monolingual speakers, particularly on subjunctive mood and in variable contexts. Furthermore, heritage speakers deviated more from the monolingual patterns in the production task than in the judgment task. Findings/conclusion: These results confirm several patterns attested for heritage speakers of Spanish in the US, namely the increased vulnerability of subjunctive mood and in contexts where mood is not obligatorily selected. However, in contrast to previous literature, this study reports better performance on a metalinguistic judgment task than on an oral production task. This finding is attributed to differences in societal circumstances between both heritage speaker populations. Implications of the research: This study confirms the heterogeneity of heritage speakers as a population and emphasizes the importance of taking societal circumstances into consideration.

How similar are adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers? Spanish clitics and word order

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
SILVINA MONTRUL
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Family Language ◽  
Spanish Heritage Speakers

ABSTRACTRecent studies of heritage speakers, many of whom possess incomplete knowledge of their family language, suggest that these speakers may be linguistically superior to second language (L2) learners only in phonology but not in morphosyntax. This study reexamines this claim by focusing on knowledge of clitic pronouns and word order in 24 L2 learners and 24 Spanish heritage speakers. Results of an oral production task, a written grammaticality judgment task, and a speeded comprehension task showed that, overall, heritage speakers seem to possess more nativelike knowledge of Spanish than their L2 counterparts. Implications for theories that stress the role of age and experience in L2 ultimate attainment and for the field of heritage language acquisition and teaching are discussed.

Grammatical gender in Spanish child heritage speakers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lourdes Martinez-Nieto ◽  
Maria Adelaida Restrepo
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Potential Effect ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Spanish Heritage Speakers ◽  
Grammatical Structures

Abstract This study examines grammatical gender (GG) production in young Spanish heritage-speakers (HSs) and the potential effect of the children’s language use and their parents’ input. We compared four and eight-year-old HSs to same-age monolingual children on their gender production. We measured GG production in determiners and adjectives via an elicited production task. HSs’ parents reported children’s time in each language and also completed the elicitation task. Results show that HSs’ scored significantly lower than monolinguals in both grammatical structures in which the unmarked masculine default predominates. However, older HSs had higher accuracy than younger HSs. Input from parents is not correlated with HSs’ performance and neither Spanish use nor language proficiency predicts GG performance on HSs. For theories of language acquisition, it is important to consider that although the linguistic knowledge of the HSs may differ from that of monolinguals, their grammar is protracted rather than incomplete.

The role of experience in the acquisition and production of diminutives and gender in Spanish: Evidence from L2 learners and heritage speakers

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvina Montrul ◽  
Israel de la Fuente ◽  
Justin Davidson ◽  
Rebecca Foote
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
Early Language Development ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Advanced Proficiency

This study examined whether type of early language experience provides advantages to heritage speakers over second language (L2) learners with morphology, and investigated knowledge of gender agreement and its interaction with diminutive formation. Diminutives are a hallmark of Child Directed Speech in early language development and a highly productive morphological mechanism that facilitates the acquisition of declensional noun endings in many languages (Savickienė and Dressler, 2007). In Spanish, diminutives regularize gender marking in nouns with a non-canonical ending. Twenty-four Spanish native speakers, 29 heritage speakers and 37 L2 learners with intermediate to advanced proficiency completed two picture-naming tasks and an elicited production task. Results showed that the heritage speakers were more accurate than the L2 learners with gender agreement in general, and with non-canonical ending nouns in particular. This study confirms that early language experience and the type of input received confer some advantages to heritage speakers over L2 learners with early-acquired aspects of language, especially in oral production.

scholarly journals Gender agreement in interface contexts in the oral production of heritage speakers of Spanish in the Netherlands

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 93-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brechje van Osch ◽  
Aafke Hulk ◽  
Petra Sleeman ◽  
Pablo Irizarri van Suchtelen
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
Error Pattern ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
First Generation Immigrants ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
Pronominal Reference ◽  
Heritage Speakers Of Spanish ◽  
Discourse Interface ◽  
Spanish Heritage Speakers

In this paper we present an analysis of Spanish heritage speakers’ oral production of gender agreement outside the DP as an innovative source of support for the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace & Filiaci 2006). We demonstrate that, besides commonly known factors such as the gender, animacy and morphology of the antecedent, the interface domain in which gender agreement takes place also seems to play a role in how accurately heritage speakers apply gender agreement. Pronominal reference, located at the external syntax-discourse interface, turns out to be more problematic than adjectival predication, which pertains to the internal morpho-syntax interface. Furthermore, we discuss the possibility that, besides the amount of input heritage speakers receive, the quality of this input may also play a role in their gender agreement accuracy, given that the heritage speakers’ error pattern with respect to linguistic factors is very similar to that of first generation immigrants.

scholarly journals El género gramatical en español entre los hablantes de herencia y los hablantes nativos

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M Gill
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Heritage Languages ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Study Support ◽  
Heritage Speakers Of Spanish

Los hablantes de herencia, es decir, las personas que hablan una lengua desde el nacimiento que acaba convirtiéndose en una lengua no dominante con el tiempo, constituyen un grupo tradicionalmente poco estudiado; sin embargo, últimamente está recibiendo mayor atención. Un área que ha emergido en los últimos años es la realización del género gramatical en las lenguas de herencia. Las investigaciones previas indican que existe una diferencia significativa entre los hispanohablantes nativos y los de herencia (Montrul, 2014; Valenzuela et al., 2012); por tanto, el propósito de este estudio es contribuir a la literatura de los hablantes de herencia. En el presente estudio, se dividió a 43 participantes hispanohablantes en grupos dependiendo de si eran nativos o de herencia. Cada participante llevó a cabo una Elicited Oral Production Task. Los resultados demuestran que los hablantes de herencia tienden a cometer un número de fallos de género significativamente mayor que los hablantes nativos y que usan ciertas estrategias, como la autocorrección, significativamente más que los nativos para evitar cometer dichos fallos. Los resultados del estudio respaldan las conclusiones de investigaciones previas, que indican que los hablantes de herencia no realizan el género gramatical de manera nativa. Heritage speakers, that is, speakers of a language that is spoken since birth but becomes a non-dominant language over time, are classically an understudied group. However, in the field of linguistics, the subfield of heritage speakers is rapidly expanding. Specifically, the realization of grammatical gender in heritage languages has not been studied extensively until just recently. Previous research indicates that a significant difference exists between native and heritage speakers of Spanish (Montrul, 2014; Valenzuela et al., 2012); thus, the purpose of this study is to contribute to the literature of this growing subfield. In the present study, 43 Spanish-speaking participants were divided into groups depending on whether they were native or heritage speakers. Each of the participants carried out an Elicited Oral Production Task. Results demonstrate that heritage speakers tend to make significantly more gender errors than native speakers and that heritage speakers also utilize certain strategies, like self-correction, significantly more than native speakers in order to avoid committing these errors. Results from this study support the findings in previous research, which indicate that heritage speakers are not native-like in their realization of grammatical gender.

Re-examining the role of mood selection type in Spanish heritage speakers’ subjunctive production

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Perez-Cortes
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Mood Selection ◽  
Spanish Heritage Speakers

Abstract Verbal morphology is a particularly vulnerable domain in the grammars of Spanish heritage speakers (HSs). Among the most frequently studied phenomena is mood selection, identified as a pervasive locus of variability that affects the production of subjunctive more prominently. The present article explores this area of research by examining the effects of mood selection type on HSs’ subjunctive use. In contrast with previous studies, this investigation controls for propositional modality, focusing its analyses on instances of obligatory and variable subjunctive selection within deontic predicates. Results from a production task revealed that, despite the presence of between-group differences driven by participants’ levels of proficiency, type of selection did not significantly modulate their rates of subjunctive use. These findings challenge previous claims about the extent to which this factor affects Spanish HSs’ performance, and highlight the importance of considering propositional modality when examining the acquisition of mood.

scholarly journals Aspectual contrasts in the Englishpresent tense revisited

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-93
Author(s):  
Amber Dudley ◽  
Roumyana Slabakova
Keyword(s):  
Native Speaker ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Improve Performance ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Advanced Proficiency ◽  
The One

Abstract This study investigates the acquisition of aspectual contrasts in the English present tense by French and Chinese learners of English at upper-intermediate to advanced proficiency levels. An oral production task and an interpretation task show that the expression of the aspectual present tense does not always have to constitute an insurmountable barrier to learners of English, at least for the upper-intermediate and advanced proficiency levels tested in this study. This successful acquisition is in spite of the differences in L1/L2 feature expressions and the unexpected variability in the input. Our research highlights that teachers must be aware of the one-sided variability of the native speaker usage (i.e. that the present simple form can express multiple meanings, while the present progressive is associated with one meaning only) if they want to improve performance and comprehension at lower proficiency levels.

Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morphosyntactic convergence

2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
SILVINA MONTRUL
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Loss ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Clitic Doubling ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Heritage Speakers Of Spanish ◽  
Spanish Heritage Speakers

Many simultaneous bilinguals exhibit loss or incomplete acquisition of their heritage language under conditions of exposure and use of the majority language (Silva-Corvalán, 1994, 2003; Polinsky, 1997; Toribio, 2001; Montrul, 2002). Recent work within discourse-functional (Silva-Corvalán 1994) and generative perspectives (Sorace, 2000; Montrul; 2002; Tsimpli, Sorace, Heycock, Filaci and Bouba, 2003, in press) suggests that while syntax proper is impervious to language loss or attrition, syntax-related interfaces like lexical-semantics and discourse-pragmatics are not. This study investigates argument expression in adult simultaneous bilinguals who are heritage speakers of Spanish, because in this language subjects, direct, and indirect objects are regulated by syntactic, pragmatic and semantic factors. It was hypothesized that if language loss affects interface areas of competence more than the purely syntactic domains, then Spanish heritage speakers should display robust knowledge of null subjects as well as object clitics, but variable behavior in the pragmatic distribution of null vs. overt subjects, the a preposition with animate direct objects, and cases of semantically based dative clitic-doubling. Results of an oral production task administered to 24 intermediate and advanced heritage speakers and 20 monolinguals confirmed the hypotheses. With the erosion of pragmatic and semantic features, the grammars of the intermediate proficiency Spanish heritage speakers appear to display morphosyntactic convergence with English in the expression of subject and object arguments.

Spanish gender agreement under complete and incomplete acquisition: Early and late bilinguals' linguistic behavior within the noun phrase

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
IRMA V. ALARCÓN
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Native Spanish Speakers ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Heritage Spanish Speakers ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Advanced Proficiency ◽  
Linguistic Behavior

The present study explores knowledge of Spanish grammatical gender in both comprehension and production by heritage language speakers and second language (L2) learners, with native Spanish speakers as a baseline. Most L2 research has tended to interpret morphosyntactic variability in interlanguage production, such as errors in gender agreement, as a lack of native-like representation in the learner's grammar because of maturational constraints. From this perspective, adult English-speaking learners of Spanish are incapable of acquiring gender fully, whereas heritage Spanish speakers, who have been exposed to the language from birth, can attain complete gender acquisition. However, results of two tasks, one measuring written comprehension and the other oral production, show that advanced proficiency L2 learners, as well as advanced proficiency heritage speakers, have gender in their underlying grammars, and that the errors in oral production that L2 learners occasionally produce are due to difficulties in the surface manifestations of the abstract features of gender, i.e., the “mapping problem” (Lardiere, 2007).

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