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Part of
Hispanic Linguistics: Current issues and new directions
Edited by Alfonso Morales-Front, Michael J. Ferreira, Ronald P. Leow and Cristina Sanz
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 26] 2020
► pp. 285–302

Futurity and probability in Spanish as a heritage language

| University of Florida
| Texas Tech University

Focusing on Spanish future morphology as the property under investigation, this study contributes to the literature on heritage speaker bilingualism by exploring whether adult Spanish heritage speakers are able to distinguish between its two possible interpretations: temporal and epistemic. To this end, we present production and comprehension data from adult heritage speakers as well as from dialect-matched adult immigrants living in the United States. While both groups show robust knowledge of future morphology to express temporal futurity, our findings reveal significant differences in their access to and production of the epistemic interpretation. We document a case of convergent simplification whereby the outcome observed constitutes a reduction of the possibilities associated with future tense morphology to make Spanish more similar to English.

Keywords: Spanish as a heritage language, future of probability, convergence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Future of probability
  • 3.Literature review
  • 4.Present study
  • 5.Methodology
    • 5.1Participants
    • 5.2Instruments
      • 5.2.1Experimental task 1: Truth Value Judgment Task
      • 5.2.2Experimental task 2: Elicited Production Task
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Truth Value Judgment Task
    • 6.2Elicited Production Task
  • 7.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.26.14cab
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