In support of representational economy: Agreement in heritage Spanish

Abstract

This paper investigates the morphosyntax of number and gender agreement in English-dominant heritage speakers of Spanish. Our study builds on the experimental paradigm of agreement attraction developed by Fuchs et al. (2015) and elicits responses to agreement failures to diagnose the potentially-independent contributions of number and gender features. By comparing the structuring of these agreement categories in native and heritage Spanish, we document a case of grammatical divergence: heritage speakers restructure their agreement categories, favoring fewer feature values and less structure. The principled nature of this restructuring demonstrates that the loss of agreement in heritage languages is not superficial or accidental, but rather follows from predictable structural changes.

Case Marking Variation in Heritage Slavic Languages in Toronto: Not So Different

“…Alternatively, one could hypothesize that heritage speakers acquire some parts of the morphological system but, given the limited input and high processing load associated with acquiring multiple languages, they rearrange the system into grammatical representations. These resulting grammatical representations adhere to the patterns found in natural languages but differ qualitatively from that of homeland monolinguals (Cuza, 2013;Cuza & Pérez-Tattam, 2016;Hopp & Putnam, 2015;Putnam & Sanchez, 2013;Scontras, Fuchs, & Polinsky, 2015;Scontras, Polinsky, & Fuchs, 2018). We expect that in a dynamic and complex system such as HL, no single process accounts for the entirety of the observed morphological case system.…”

Differential Access: Asymmetries in Accessing Features and Building Representations in Heritage Language Grammars

“…Under this view, (aspects of) the individual sources grammars are not erased-at least not easily-but rather become more difficult to access for production and parsing purposes due to lack of activation and constant competition with (an)other grammar(s) over the course of time. The divergent nature of these representations when compared with baseline standards (á la Scontras et al 2015Scontras et al , 2018 are the result of the competitive assembly process of relevant elements of grammar as they interact with other cognitive processing demands (e.g., working memory, weaker links, inhibitory control, etc.). Adopting a generative approach to acquisition, maintenance, and the underlying structure of linguistic representations, axiomatic linguistic representations are encapsulated as formal features.…”

“…The features, connections, and representations live on longer than is sometimes assumed, leaving in many cases a permanent, indelible trace. Grammatical information is in constant conflict, and over the course of time, richer representations become more difficult to access in less-frequently activated grammars, leading to outputs that may appear to be simplified structures (Scontras et al 2015(Scontras et al , 2018Polinsky and Scontras 2019). Polinsky (2018) highlights three primary outcomes of divergence in heritage grammars; namely, (i) attrition, (ii) transfer, and (iii) divergence.…”

“…This view of language assumes that connections between the multiple levels of grammar are generally "lossy" (Chater et al 2015;Christiansen and Chater 2016) and that there is always a certain degree of white noise and incomplete transmission in monolingual and bi/multilingual grammars. This assumption explains why variability exists in the former (Dąbrowska 2012), and even more noticeably in the latter, often heavily affected by changes in frequency of activation (Scontras et al 2015(Scontras et al , 2018.…”

“…Therefore, grammatical knowledge in scenarios commonly defined as "attrition" is not considered lost but rather more difficult to access due to the pressures of speech in real-time (see, e.g., (Christiansen and Chater 2016) Now-or-Never processing bottleneck). Differential access can progressively lead to restructuring processes, where some degree of "divergence" from previously established configurations at the representational level is possible (Scontras et al 2015(Scontras et al , 2018. Restructuring, however, does not take place automatically, nor is it completely predictable.…”