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ON COMPLEXITY AND DIVERGENCE IN HERITAGE LANGUAGE GRAMMARS

THE CASE OF DOUBLE MOOD SELECTION IN REPORTED SPEECH CONTEXTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2021

Silvia Perez-Cortes Open the ORCID record for Silvia Perez-Cortes [Opens in a new window]
Silvia Perez-Cortes*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, Camden, USA
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Silvia Perez-Cortes, PhD, Rutgers University, Camden, Department of World Languages and Cultures, 405–407 Cooper St. Office #302, Camden, NJ08102. E-mail: Sp1019@camden.rutgers.edu
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Abstract

For more than a decade, research on heritage speakers’ (HSs’) mood selection has documented a high degree of variability in their interpretation and use of mood morphology in variable contexts. Most of the previous literature, however, has focused on late-acquired alternations, and often limited analyses to one form (i.e., subjunctive), making it difficult to draw conclusions about HSs’ knowledge of mood distinctions. This study intends to fill this gap by examining Spanish HSs’ (n = 76) and Spanish-dominant controls’ (n = 25) interpretation and use of an early acquired mood alternation, where the presence of indicative or subjunctive conveys the report of an assertion or a command. Results from two experimental tasks reveal that, even though HSs’ performance tends to differ from that of controls’—especially at lower levels of proficiency—the nature and extent of their divergences suggests the need to embrace a more nuanced analysis of HSs’ linguistic outcomes when examining modal contrasts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , July 2022 , pp. 818 - 842
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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