Scholars have argued that restricted language input slows language acquisition, but the pathway of development may remain the same. The current study investigated the influence of amount of Spanish input on Spanish demonstrative usage among 19 U.S. child heritage speakers, ages 3;4–8;7. Demonstratives are among the first grammatical features to emerge in children’s language, but we know little about their acquisition by heritage speakers. Previous research shows that monolingual Spanish-speaking children rely heavily on este/esta ‘this’ andonly later learn to vary between demonstrative forms, using este/esta primarily for proximal referents and ese/esa ‘that’ for distal referents. As such, we hypothesized that child heritage speakers who experience restricted Spanish input would rely on este/esta for a prolonged period of time. 586 demonstratives were elicited during a puzzle completion task and were coded for referent location (proximal, distal). Contrary to our hypothesis, less Spanish spoken at home negatively correlated with proportion of este/esta-usage. Children exposed to abundant Spanish in the home patterned like adult monolingual Spanish speakers, producing este/esta for proximal referents and ese/esa for distal referents. By contrast, children who experienced restricted input in Spanish produced mostly ese/esa, regardless of spatial location of the referent. The results suggest that restricted input in Spanish yields a developmental trajectory with overgeneralization of ese/esa rather than este/esta. Importantly, we argue thatthe identification of two groups of child heritage speakers who exhibit different developmental pathways lends itself to differentiated instruction in the heritage language classroom.

This study explores Spanish-English bilingual children’s acquisition of Spanish rhotics. The children’s productions are compared to a group of Spanish-English bilingual adults who represent the Spanish spoken in the same community: Albuquerque, New Mexico. In their narrations of a wordless picture-book, both children and adults produce more non-canonical than canonical variants. Binary logistic regressions run on 817 rhotics produced by 21 children, ages 3-9-years-old, and 6 adults demonstrate that non-canonical variants, instead of canonical variants are more likely to occur as Spanish use increases and in word medial position. The results point towards the propagation of a working change in Spanish rhotics that sees both articulatory and sociolinguistic motivations. Implications for research on phonetic-phonological development are also discussed