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Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish

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A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 July 2023) | Viewed by 19604

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Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Alejandro Cuza

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Guest Editor

School of Languages and Cultures, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Interests: heritage language acquisition; child bilingual development; crosslinguistic influence; linguistic dominance; grammatical restructuring; protracted development; bilingual alignments; lexical activation; language attitudes and prestige

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to announce the launch of this Special Issue on Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish. The goal of the present issue is to showcase recent, cutting-edge work on the acquisition of heritage Spanish in contact with a majority language. We aim to bring together studies using state-of-the-art methodologies investigating heritage language development across various linguistics domains, including syntax, morphology, phonetics, semantics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics. The issue aims to supplement existing research on formal (Cuza & Perez-Tattam, 2013; Montrul 2008, 2016; Polinsky & Scontras, 2009; Putnam & Sánchez, 2013; Sánchez, 2019; Shin, Cuza & Sánchez, 2022) and sociolinguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition (Ducar, 2012; Hakuta & Andrea, 1992; Lynch & Avineri, 2021; Pérez-Leroux, Cuza & Thomas, 2011; Pieras-Guasp, 2002; Valdés, 2011). Cross-sectional studies examining school-age bilingual children (child heritage speakers) are especially welcomed. Topics can include but not restricted to:

Crosslinguistic influence, language exposure and usage, lexical development
Protracted development, child L1 attrition, grammatical restructuring, bilingual alignments
Linguistic attitudes, motivations, and degree of familism
Language prestige, ethnolinguistic vitality, community characteristics

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor ([email protected]) or to the Languages editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Tentative completion schedule:

Abstract submission deadline: March 10^th, 2023
Notification of abstract acceptance: April 10^th, 2023
Full manuscript deadline: July 1^st, 2023

References

Cuza, A. & Pérez-Tattam, R. (2016). Grammatical gender selection and phrasal word order in child heritage Spanish: A feature reassembly approach. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19, 50-68.

Ducar, C. M. (2012). SHL learners’ attitudes and motivations: In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States (pp. 161–178). Georgetown. Georgetown University Press.

Hakuta, K., & D’Andrea, D. (1992). Some Properties of Bilingual Maintenance and Loss in Mexican Background High-School Students. Applied Linguistics 3, 72-99.

Leeman, J. (2015). Heritage language education and identity in the United States. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 100–119. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190514000245.

Lynch, A. & Avineri, N (2021). Sociolinguistic Approaches to Heritage Languages. In S. Montrul & M Polinsky (eds), The Cambridge Approaches to Heritage Languages (pp. 423-448). Cambridge. CUP.

Montrul, S. (2016). The Acquisition of Heritage Languages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism. Re-examining the Age Factor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Pérez-Leroux, A.T., Cuza, A. & Thomas, D. (2011). From parental attitudes to input condition Spanish-English bilingual development in Toronto. In Kim Potowski & Jason Rothman (eds.), Bilingual Youth: Spanish in English-speaking Societies (pp. 49-176). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Pieras-Guasp, Felipe. (2002). Direct vs. indirect attitude measurement and the planning of Catalan in Mallorca. Language Problems & Language Planning 26. 51-68.

Polinsky, M., & Scontras, G. (2020). Understanding heritage languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 23, 4–20.

Putnam. M., & Sánchez L (2013) What’s so incomplete about incomplete acquisition? A prolegomenon to modeling heritage language grammars. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 3, 478–508.

Sánchez, L. (2019). Bilingual alignments. Languages 4(82).

Silva-Corvalán, C. (2014). Bilingual Language Acquisition: Spanish and English in the first six years. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

Shin, N., Cuza, A., & Sánchez, L. (2022). Structured variation, language experience, and crosslinguistic influence shape child heritage speakers’ Spanish direct objects. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728922000694.

Valdés, G. (2011). The challenge of maintaining Spanish-English bilingualism in American school. In Kim Potowski & Jason Rothman (eds) Bilingual Youth: Spanish in English-speaking societies (pp.113-146).

Prof. Dr. Alejandro Cuza
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (12 papers)

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Research

30 pages, 2427 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Role of Language Experience in the Acquisition of Spanish Gender Agreement: A Study with Nonce Nouns

by Silvina Montrul, Sara Ann Mason and Andrew Armstrong

Languages 2024, 9(2), 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9020045 - 26 Jan 2024

Viewed by 1405

Abstract

Why is learning the gender of nouns so difficult for some bilinguals? We test the hypothesis that different language learning backgrounds or life experience with Spanish determine how learners follow different morphosyntactic cues for gender assignment in Spanish by testing learners with early and late language experience in an experiment with invented nouns. A total of 44 monolingually raised native speakers, 44 heritage speakers, and 44 L2 learners of Spanish were trained to learn 24 nonce words in Spanish presented in four input conditions that manipulated the number and type of cues to gender marking (determiner, word marker, adjective). After the learning sessions, the participants completed a word naming task, an elicited production task, and a debriefing questionnaire. The L2 learners were different than native speakers and heritage speakers in learning nonce nouns. They used morphosyntactic cues differently, relying on adjectives as their most-used strategy to assign gender, unlike native speakers and heritage speakers who used all cues. Our findings confirm processing differences between L2 learners and heritage speakers and suggest language learning background determines how learners discover reliable morphosyntactic cues to the gender of nouns in the input. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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24 pages, 551 KiB

Open AccessArticle

On the Acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Child Heritage Spanish: Bilingual Education, Exposure, and Age Effects (In Memory of Phoebe Search)

by Patrick D. Thane

Languages 2024, 9(1), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9010026 - 12 Jan 2024

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1181

Abstract

Studies on school-aged children have been infrequent in research on Spanish as a heritage language. The present study explored how dual-language immersion education, patterns of heritage language use, proficiency, and age shape child Spanish heritage speakers’ production and selection of differential object marking (DOM). A total of 57 English–Spanish bilingual children and 18 Spanish-dominant adults completed sentence completion and morphology selection tasks. Results revealed that the group of heritage speaker children that produced and selected the differential object marker most frequently was the seventh and eighth grade children (ages 12–14, the oldest in the study) who had completed a dual-language immersion program. Different factors accounted for variability in each task: bilingual education and proficiency affected the production of DOM, while age affected selection. Heritage speakers selected DOM more frequently than they produced this structure. These findings have implications for theories of heritage language acquisition that emphasizes that language experience and exposure account for differences between heritage speakers and argue for the dissociation of production from underlying syntactic knowledge. The data also argue that heritage speakers may possess a bilingual alignment for DOM, whereby underlying receptive knowledge is modulated by cumulative exposure, while production depends more on bilingual education and proficiency in Spanish. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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20 pages, 2836 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Distribution of Manner and Frequency Adverbs in Child Heritage Speakers of Spanish

by Edier Gómez Alzate, Alejandro Cuza, José Camacho and Dafne Zanelli

Languages 2024, 9(1), 1; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9010001 - 19 Dec 2023

Viewed by 1742

Abstract

We investigate the acquisition of adverb placement in Spanish among school-age child heritage speakers of Spanish born and raised in the US by Mexican parents. We examine frequency and manner adverbs with negative and positive polarity and the potential role of cross-linguistic influence, dominance, and experience in the path and rate of development. Fourteen child heritage speakers of Spanish born and raised in the US and twenty-five Spanish monolingual children from Mexico completed an elicited production task. Results showed that the heritage children produced significantly fewer verb-raising structures compared to the monolingual children, leading to a higher proportion of pre-verbal adverb use and adverb-final use. The heritage children treated manner and frequency adverbs with negative and positive polarity significantly differently. We also found a strong correlation between dominance and experience in the probability of producing specific adverbial positions. In other words, common adverbial positions in English were more likely to be produced with higher dominance and experience in English; likewise, Spanish adverbial positions were more likely to be used with higher dominance and experience in Spanish. We argue for differential outcomes in child heritage grammar due to differences in the path and rate of language development as well as the role of dominance and experience in child heritage language acquisition. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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17 pages, 2888 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Current Approaches to Heritage Spanish and the Identity Construction of Spanish Heritage Speakers: Lessons Learnt from Five European Countries

by María Cecilia Ainciburu, Kris Buyse, Marta Gallego-García and Eva González Melón

Languages 2023, 8(4), 281; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8040281 - 28 Nov 2023

Viewed by 1427

Abstract

An individual’s social identity, often overlooked in Europe in the field of Spanish as a second or foreign language (S2L/SFL), has always been the focus of attention in the teaching of heritage Spanish in the USA, especially in programmes designed from critical pedagogy and based on a reconstructive narrative of Latino immigration. There, heritage speakers (HS) strengthen their identity as linguistic experts and contribute to positive social change that counteracts the scholastic subordination of Spanish to English in primary schools. In this research based on verified questionnaires, we investigate in the European context (Italy, Poland, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium) how primary–middle school HSs attending extracurricular S2L/SFL classes self-perceive their identity in comparison to S2L/SFL students. The results show that the incidence of the factor “country of origin” is central to identity recognition and highlight the feelings linked to different classroom conditions and dynamics for heritage and S2L/SFL students. To conclude, these results are contrasted with those obtained in the United States. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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20 pages, 1927 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Child Heritage Speakers’ Overregularization of Spanish Past Participles

by Elisabeth Baker Martínez and Naomi Shin

Languages 2023, 8(4), 272; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8040272 - 19 Nov 2023

Viewed by 1986

Abstract

The current study investigated overregularization of Spanish irregular past participles (e.g., dicho ‘said’, regularized as decido) among 20 child heritage speakers of Spanish in New Mexico, ages 5;1–11;9. Overregularization occurs when a child produces an irregular form analogously to its regular counterpart (e.g., eated instead of ate). Typically, children first produce the irregular form and then, after they have learned a morphological pattern, they overapply it to the irregular form. Ultimately, children retreat from overregularization and once again produce the target irregular form. While there has been a wealth of studies on monolingual children’s overregularizations, very few have investigated this phenomenon in child heritage speakers, who may develop their grammars diversely due to their exposure to the heritage language. This study analyzed the impact of age, Spanish language experience, Spanish morphosyntax proficiency, and lexical frequency on overregularization among the 13/20 children who produced past participles (n = 233) in response to an elicited production task. Participles were overregularized at high rates (74%), resulting in forms like ponido (‘put’, cf: puesto). Results from a regression analysis indicate that overregularization was more likely among the younger children, the children with lower morphosyntax scores, and with lower-frequency participles. Further, an interaction between morphosyntax score and lexical frequency indicated that children with higher scores overregularized with lower frequency participles, but not higher frequency ones, whereas children with low scores overregularized with both low- and high-frequency forms. In summary, child heritage speakers overregularize Spanish past participles at high rates, and the retreat from overregularization is tied to overall grammatical development and lexical frequency, suggesting that the acquisition of irregular participles is dependent on experiencing multiple instances of the irregular verb form. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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17 pages, 2522 KiB

Open AccessArticle

¿(Está/Es) Difícil?: Variable Use of Ser and Estar by Heritage Learners of Spanish

by Jamelyn Wheeler, Matthew Pollock and Manuel Díaz-Campos

Languages 2023, 8(4), 271; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8040271 - 18 Nov 2023

Viewed by 1585

Abstract

The current study examines variation in copula selection in Spanish by looking at the written productions of three groups of language learners in the United States, including heritage learners, those with English as an L1, and international students with English as an L2. Research on copula variation in Spanish has pinpointed several key linguistic and social factors that influence selection; this study aims to apply these findings to heritage learners in order to determine how their acquisition differs from that of non-native language learners. This analysis used the COWS-L2H corpus of Spanish from the University of California, Davis. Examining over 8000 tokens of [adjective + copula] constructions in variable contexts where both ser and estar were used, the study tracks how linguistic and extralinguistic factors condition copula selection within the three learner groups and how these results compare to previous findings. Seven factors were predictive of copula selection: resultant state, frame of reference, adjective class, experience with study abroad, essay prompt, student age, and course level. Heritage learner copula use was found to be governed by a different set of predictors than that of learners, hinting at the variable motivations and backgrounds that influence use and reflect the identity goals of these speakers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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20 pages, 824 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Acquisition of Copula Alternation Ser/Estar and Adjective in L1 Russian, Spanish Heritage Speakers

by Iban Mañas Navarrete, Pedro Guijarro Fuentes and Iria Bello Viruega

Languages 2023, 8(4), 269; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8040269 - 15 Nov 2023

Viewed by 1227

Abstract

Spanish copula choice ser/estar and the semantic and pragmatic distinctions that derive from their alternation in predicate adjective constructions have been discussed in several studies focused on the features of Spanish as a heritage language, usually focusing on the lack of equivalence between English and Spanish. The aim of this study is to determine the competence of a group of heritage speakers of Spanish that were born and raised in Russia in adjective copula selection for ser and estar and to what extent it differs from that of L2 speakers. A group of second-generation heritage Spanish-Russian speakers (n = 29) and a group of L1 Russian learners of Spanish as foreign language (n = 23) performed a translation recognition task in Spanish based on extracts from contemporary Spanish literary works. From a crosslinguistic perspective, a partial correspondence can be established between long forms of the Russian adjective with ser, and short forms of the Russian adjective with estar. Taking this cross-language relationship into account, we considered congruent and non-congruent cross-language scenarios. The results confirm that the heritage speakers outperformed the L2 Spanish speakers. This suggests a possible benefit of earlier exposure and use of Spanish. The facilitative effect of L1 can be traced in the ser-preferred scenarios but it fades away in the estar-preferred contexts for both groups. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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22 pages, 2878 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Preliminary Exploration of Declarative Intonation in the Chilean Diaspora of Sweden

by Brianna Butera, Rajiv Rao and Maryann Parada

Languages 2023, 8(4), 228; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8040228 - 23 Sep 2023

Viewed by 1123

Abstract

Motivated by a growing body of research on heritage Spanish prosody, the current study uses the Sp_ToBi framework for the transcription of Spanish intonation to report trends in phonological targets of broad focus declaratives produced by heritage speakers of Chilean Spanish living in Stockholm, Sweden. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews from six participants belonging to the same social network including two Spanish-dominant first-generation immigrants and four Swedish-dominant second-generation speakers who were born and raised in Sweden and are heritage speakers of Spanish. The G1 participants are the primary source of Spanish input for the G2 speakers. Data were analyzed by identifying word- and phrase-level phonological targets and associating them with the appropriate pitch accent and boundary tones. Results show that the heritage Spanish declarative intonation patterns of the G2 speakers closely resemble those of the G1 speakers. These patterns are scrutinized in terms of the potential influence of Swedish and/or other varieties of Spanish. This analysis exhibits evidence of the importance of source input variety and cross-generational transmission of phonological targets in a heritage language as well as the potential contributions of multiple intonational systems in forming the phonological inventory of heritage speakers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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22 pages, 2646 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Imperatives in Heritage Spanish: Lexical Access and Lexical Frequency Effects

by Julio César López Otero

Languages 2023, 8(3), 218; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030218 - 15 Sep 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 997

Abstract

Along with declaratives and interrogatives, imperatives are one of the three major clause types of human language. In Spanish, imperative verb forms present poor morphology, yet complex syntax. The present study examines the acquisition of (morpho)syntactic properties of imperatives in Spanish among English-speaking heritage speakers of Spanish. With the use of production and acceptability judgment tasks, this study investigates the acquisition of verb morphology and clitic placement in canonical and negative imperatives. The results indicate that the acquisition of Spanish imperatives among heritage speakers is shaped by the heritage speakers’ productive vocabulary knowledge, lexical frequency and syntactic complexity. Indeed, most of the variability in their knowledge was found in their production of negative imperatives: heritage speakers show a rather stable receptive grammatical knowledge while their production shows signs of variability modulated by the heritage speakers’ productive vocabulary knowledge and by the lexical frequency of the verb featured in the test items. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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19 pages, 3355 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Infinitive vs. Gerund Use and Interpretation in Heritage Spanish

by Laura Solano-Escobar and Alejandro Cuza

Languages 2023, 8(3), 214; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030214 - 14 Sep 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2413

Abstract

The present study examines the production and interpretation of infinitives among 26 Spanish heritage speakers born and raised in the US and 25 Spanish-dominant speakers from Mexico and Colombia. We tested participants’ knowledge of infinitives as subjects of the clause and as objects of a preposition via an elicited production task and a contextualized preference task. The results of both tasks showed less infinitive use by the HSs and overextension of the gerund in contexts where it is not required. The results showed that the gerund overextension was modulated by the syntactic context. There was significantly more use of the gerund as the subject of the clause in both production and interpretation and less use as the object of a preposition. Furthermore, the results showed a significant role for proficiency and language experience in the extent of grammatical reconfiguration. The higher the level of Spanish proficiency and the more exposure and use of Spanish, the more likely the participants were to produce and choose infinitives. Results are discussed along the lines of the activation approach. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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19 pages, 2592 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

An Airflow Analysis of Spanish and English Anticipatory Vowel Nasalization among Heritage Bilinguals

by Ander Beristain

Languages 2023, 8(3), 205; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030205 - 31 Aug 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1185

Abstract

Gestural timing overlap between a vowel and subsequent nasal consonant results in the vowel being articulatorily nasalized. Research has shown that such degree of coarticulation varies cross-linguistically (e.g., English exhibits a greater gestural timing overlap than Spanish). This phenomenon has mainly been investigated in monolingual samples, and with only a small number of studies focusing on second and heritage language gestural timing patterns of nasality; the role of bilingualism in this respect is thus an open question, which is the focus of the current study. Sixteen second-generation US-born heritage bilinguals participated in this experiment. Their degree of bilingualism was assessed via the Bilingual Language Profile. They completed two separate read-aloud tasks: one in Spanish (heritage language) and one in English (second language). Simultaneous oral and nasal airflow were collected via pressure transducers from words that included phonetically oral and nasalized vowels. Results indicate that heritage bilinguals increment the degree of vocalic nasalization from Spanish to English. Nevertheless, their degree of bilingualism did not yield statistical significance in phonetic performance. The current study is the first one implementing aerodynamic methods with a heritage bilingual population and presents data for the possibility to possess two segment-to-segment timing strategies in heritage grammars. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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37 pages, 47148 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Aspectual se and Telicity in Heritage Spanish Bilinguals: The Effects of Lexical Access, Dominance, Age of Acquisition, and Patterns of Language Use

by Gabriel Martínez Vera, Julio César López Otero, Marina Y. Sokolova, Adam Cleveland, Megan Tzeitel Marshall and Liliana Sánchez

Languages 2023, 8(3), 201; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030201 - 29 Aug 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1612

Abstract

While differences in the production and acceptability of aspectual inflectional morphology between Spanish–English heritage and monolingually raised speakers of Spanish have been argued to support incomplete acquisition approaches to heritage language acquisition, other approaches have argued that differences in access (e.g., lexical access) to representations for receptive and productive purposes are at the core of some of the unique characteristics of heritage language data. We investigate these issues by focusing on the effects of lexical access, dominance, age of acquisition and patterns of language use in heritage Spanish–English bilinguals. We study aspectual se in Spanish, which yields telic interpretations, in expressions such as María se comió la manzana ‘María ate the apple (completely)’ and Maria ate the apple (where completion may not be reached). Our results indicate that se generates telic interpretations for the heritage and monolingually raised group with no group effect. Heritage speakers showed no English effects in terms of lexical access, age of acquisition, patterns of language use or dominance. This suggests that the heritage group did not differ from their monolingually raised counterparts and showed no evidence of incomplete acquisition of telicity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Approaches to the Acquisition of Heritage Spanish)

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