The present study examines the development of grammatical gender assignment, agreement, and noun-adjective word order in child heritage Spanish among thirty-two Spanish–English bilingual children born and raised in the United States. A picture-naming task revealed significant overextension of the masculine form and high levels of ungrammatical word order strings. There were no significant differences by age regarding gender concord or noun-adjective word order. We argue that the differences found can be accounted for in terms of a re-assembly of gender features leading to both morphological and syntactic variability. This approach allows for subsequent morphosyntactic shifts during early childhood depending on patterns of language use, and conceptualizes heritage language variation along the lines of current linguistic theorizing regarding the role of innate linguistic principles and language experience in language development.

This study examines the acquisition of the featural constraints on clitic and null distribution in Spanish among simultaneous and sequential Chinese-Spanish bilinguals from Peru. A truth value judgment task targeted the referential meaning of null objects in a negation context. Objects were elicited via two clitic elicitation tasks that targeted anaphoric contexts and left-dislocated topics. An acceptability task tested sensitivity to left-dislocated object drop. Although simultaneous bilinguals were mostly undistinguishable from monolinguals, the late learners differed from both of these groups across tasks. Age of arrival led to different outcomes, with late learners showing more deficits than the child learners. Late learners avoided using clitics and relied on lexical and null objects. Residual transfer effects were observed among the child learners in the form of insensitivity to the features that serve as the basis for null argument identification and clitic deficits in production. It is also argued that transfer persists despite early and intense exposure to the second language in a natural environment because of the existence of an unmarked argument identification option in the first language.

The present study examines and compares the extent to which advanced L2 learners of Spanish and Spanish heritage speakers acquire the syntactic and semantic properties that regulate the grammatical representation of double complementizer questions in Spanish, a CP-related structure not present in English. Results from an aural sentence completion task, an acceptability judgment task, and a preference task indicate significant differences between the two experimental groups and the monolingual controls. However, the heritage speakers outperformed the L2 learners in their target use and interpretation, which suggests a linguistic benefit for earlier exposure and use of Spanish during childhood. We propose that the differences observed among the L2 learners and the heritage speakers can be accounted for in terms of cross-linguistic influence from the dominant language as well as language experience and age of onset of bilingualism as an interrelated dimension in L2 and heritage language development.

We compare the extent to which Spanish heritage speakers and long-term immigrants in the United States differ in their intonation of broad focus declaratives, and propose that the between-group variability is motivated by the specific language learning/literacy conditions of each group. Results from a phonetically balanced reading task and an elicited narrative revealed significant differences between the two groups in their realization of pitch accents in read speech but not in the narratives. These results suggest that less-controlled tasks are more representative of the bilingual status of adult bilinguals, and that metalinguistic tasks, such as reading aloud, should be implemented with caution, crucially among Spanish heritage speakers who are in a semi-diglossic situation in the United States.

This study investigates child heritage speakers’ Spanish direct objects. A task designed to elicit direct objects was completed in Spanish and English by 40 child heritage speakers of Spanish in the U.S., and in Spanish by 24 monolingual children in Mexico. Both participant groups varied their direct object forms, following the same ranking: clitics>lexical NPs>omission>doubling. Animate referents promoted clitics; inanimate referents promoted lexical NPs. Among the heritage speakers, more Spanish experience and Spanish lexical proficiency predicted more clitic use (less omission and lexical NP use). We also argue that the child heritage speakers’ production of strong pronouns, more lexical NPs, and masculine clitic lo with inanimate feminine referents suggest English influence. The study underscores the importance of examining structured variation, which revealed both similarities and differences between heritage and monolingual speakers.

Research shows correlations between proficiency and language attitudes. Other studies associate performance in young bilinguals more strongly with adult language input and practice at home than with individual attitudes in youth. No studies, however, have examined how attitudes and family practice are implicated in the linguistic development of bilingual children. This study examines (1) the interplay between attitudinal and objective factors in setting the input conditions relevant for child bilingual acquisition; (2) how parental attitudes and community context shape home language practices and input conditions; and (3) how input conditions determine bilingual proficiency and degree of morphosyntactic transfer in young bilinguals. Twenty three bilingual children participated in the study. Children completed an elicited narrative and a word order task to assess the extent of transfer. They were asked to repeat sentences with clitics in reconstruction environments. If object pronoun linearization was vulnerable to transfer, children with stronger English dominance were expected to favor postverbal positioning. Results show strong correlation between family’s attitudes to Spanish and bilingualism, but only moderate association between these and language practice. The most important difference in terms of dominance between the children related to onset of bilingualism. Results from the repetition task show a tendency by bilinguals to reposition preverbal pronouns as postverbal, a pattern not attested among monolinguals, and a lesser degree of the preverbal pattern. The simultaneous bilinguals favor the predicted transfer pattern more strongly, and also show high rates of pronoun omissions. These results suggest that input conditions are the primary factor in language maintenance in young bilinguals.