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On the Acquisition of the Syntax of Romance
Edited by Anna Gavarró
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 62] 2018
► pp. 187–214

Subject position in Spanish as a heritage language in the Netherlands: External and internal interface factors

 | University of Amsterdam
 | University of Amsterdam
This study investigates Spanish heritage speakers in the Netherlands concerning their knowledge of three factors influencing subject position in Spanish: verb type, focus and definiteness. The results of a scalar acceptability judgment task show that heritage speakers have monolingual-like knowledge of the effects of verb type and focus, but not of the effect of definiteness of the subject. We interpret the vulnerability of the definiteness factor as partial support for the second version of the Interface Hypothesis, which predicts the syntax-discourse/pragmatics interface to be particularly vulnerable compared to the syntax-semantics interface. The heritage speakers moreover overgeneralize postverbal subjects, a finding that we tentatively attribute to cross-linguistic influence from Dutch.
Keywords: heritage speakers, Spanish, subject position, word order, Interface Hypothesis, unaccusativity, focus, definiteness, Dutch, cross-linguistic influence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Interface Hypothesis
  • 3.Subject position in Spanish
  • 4.Previous research on word order patterns in monolingual and heritage Spanish
  • 5.Research questions and hypotheses
  • 6.Method
    • Participants
    • Task and procedure
    • Items
  • 7.Results
    • Monolingual controls
    • Heritage speakers
    • Individual differences
    • Item effects
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.62.09osc
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