Receptive Volitional Subjunctive Abilities in Heritage and Traditional Foreign Language Learners of Spanish

Abstract

The Spanish subjunctive has been known to pose difficulties for learners of Spanish whose native language is English (e.g., Collentine, 1997, 2003; Terrell, Baycroft, & Perrone, 1987). Investigating the same feature in heritage learners of Spanish can provide more information about the linguistic development of this growing population. This pilot study compared heritage and foreign language (FL) learners' ability to recognize native‐like and nonnative‐like mood choice in volitional constructions. Students enrolled in heritage and traditional FL Spanish courses at 3 universities in the Northeast completed a grammaticality judgment (GJ) task and an editing task, which contained examples of indicative, infinitive, and subjunctive use in volitional constructions. Heritage learners scored significantly higher on average than their FL peers on the editing, GJ, and combined (editing and GJ) tasks. These results suggest that home and community exposure play an important role in subjunctive acquisition and that instruction should be tailored to heritage learners' abilities.

Degrees of subjunctive vitality among monolingual speakers of Peninsular and Argentinian Spanish

“…Debilitation in the use of the present subjunctive is observed in Rosario among middle-aged speakers, and reduction among younger speakers, for whom the present subjunctive in complement clauses comprised only 1 in 5 possible tokens (M=1). These findings are in line with previous research pointing to a gradual loss of the subjunctive (Martínez Mira 2010;Mikulski 2010;Montrul 2009;Silva-Corvalán 1991, 1994, 2001. Further research could explore whether there is vitality or debilitation of subjunctive use in other constructions, and incorporate additional extralinguistic variables, such as socioeconomic status or education, in the analysis.…”

“…interpreted -in most cases-as a sign of simplification (Lynch 2000;Martínez Mira 2010;Mikulski 2010;Montrul 2009;Silva-Corvalán 1991, 1994, 2001. Similarly, some varieties outside of the U.S. also have shown debilitation in the use of past forms and prevalence of the indicative in contexts in which the subjunctive would have been expected (López Morales 1989;Molina 2008;Serrano 1995).…”

“…Variation has been reported to be readily evident in linguistic features such as mood and modality among monolingual speakers (Fernández Ulloa & Portillo Mayorga 2000;Lastra & Butragueño 2012) and heritage speakers (Lynch 2000;Mikulski 2010;Montrul 2009;Silva-Corvalán 1994a, 1994b, 2001.…”

“…Concerning the broad category of Spanish in the U.S., specifically those varieties spoken by heritage speakers, previous research has identified a gradual trend of mood simplification, which is explained by the predominance of indicative forms in contexts in which subjunctive forms would be expected (Lynch 2000;Martínez Mira 2010;Mikulski 2010;Montrul 2009;Silva-Corvalán 1991, 1994, 2001). The process of simplification has been described by Silva Corvalán (1994) as the occurrence of a given form in contexts in which another form is expected.…”

Aproximaciones a la enseñanza del español como lengua de herencia

“…ej., el reconocimiento léxico (Fairclough, 2011)). Además estos estudiantes suelen poseer una fonología más cercana a la de un hablante nativo que los EESL (Au, Knightly, Jun, y Oh, 2002;Oh y Au, 2005), diferente ritmo en el desarrollo gramatical en el salón de clase, diferentes contextos en los que tienden a cometer errores (oral versus escrito) y diferentes tipos de conocimiento al que recurren cuando se les asigna una tarea (intuitivo/implícito versus conocimiento metalingüístico) (Beaudrie, 2009;Bowles, 2011;Correa, 2011;Fairclough, 2005;Hislope, 2005;Mikulski, 2010;Montrul, 2011;Montrul y Bowles, 2010;Montrul, Foote, y Perpiñán, 2008;Potowski, Jegerski, y Morgan-Short, 2009). …”