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.
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Cited by (6)
Cited by six other publications
Giancaspro, David & Josh Higdon
2024. First things third? The extension of canonically third-person singular inflections to first-person singular subjects in adult heritage Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 17:2 ► pp. 251 ff.
2022. (Ir)regular Mood Swings: Lexical Variability in Heritage Speakers’ Oral Production of Subjunctive Mood. Language Learning 72:2 ► pp. 456 ff.
Perez-Cortes, Silvia
2022. ON COMPLEXITY AND DIVERGENCE IN HERITAGE LANGUAGE GRAMMARS. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 44:3 ► pp. 818 ff.
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