Syntactic Reflexes of Emerging Optionality in Spanish as a Heritage Language: The Case of Dative-experiencer Verbs

Abstract

This study contributes to current trends of heritage speaker bilingualism research by examining the syntax of so-called Spanish dative-experiencer predicates ( gustar -like verbs). Building on previous findings (e.g., Silva-Corvalán 1994; Toribio and Nye 2006), it is hypothesized that Spanish heritage speakers can project an optional agentive syntax (a use deemed ungrammatical by monolingual speakers) while still having access to the obligatory dative-experiencer syntax. It is argued that the availability of this emergent optionality, coupled with influence from English, the dominant language, conspire to promote the non target-like forms documented in previous research (e.g., Toribio and Nye 2006; de Prada Pérez and Pascual y Cabo 2011). The ensuing predictions are tested with a grammaticality judgment task that examines the informants’ knowledge and use of gustar -like verbs in passive constructions precisely because passivization of stative predicates should be precluded from a grammar that does not allow for an agentive alternation.

Bilingual children and adult heritage speakers: The range of comparison

“…The development I will discuss here pertains to Spanish psych-verbs such as gustar ‘like’, which Pascual y Cabo investigates in his dissertation (2013). Psych-verbs are rarely uniform within a given language (e.g.…”

“…Assuming that the atypical argument structure of psych-verbs such as gustar contributes to their encumbered acquisition, Pascual y Cabo (2013) examines English-dominant heritage speakers of Spanish, who often lack formal schooling in their home language. Based on a comprehension study of class III psych-verbs in Heritage Spanish, Pascual y Cabo hypothesizes that heritage speakers may reanalyze the psych-verb gustar as optionally agentive, rather than strictly stative.…”

“…Following Lightfoot (1991, 1999, 2012), Pascual y Cabo argues that ‘superficial performance innovations provided in the input from the immigrant generation contribute to the changes in H[eritage] S[peakers’] grammars’ (Pascual y Cabo, 2013, p. 131). In other words, he attributes the heritage speakers’ poor performance to flawed input from the original source: L1 monolingual immigrants.…”

“…Empirical gaps of this sort serve as a reminder that we need more data on the input bilingual speakers receive in both their languages, at different stages of linguistic development. In addition, corpora of child-directed speech and child speech in bilingual contexts can also serve as a resource that would allow us to track incipient changes in the baseline, such as those observed for baseline Spanish by Pascual y Cabo (2013) or by Montrul and Sanchez-Walker (2013).…”

On the utility of combining production data and perceptual data to investigate regional linguistic variation: The case of Spanish experiential gustar ‘to like, to please’ on Twitter and in an online survey

“…For example, Silva-Corvalán (1994) documents the language of second and third generation Mexican migrant speakers of Spanish in Los Angeles and shows that these speakers produce gustar in a way that mirrors the syntactic behavior of English to like . With perceptual data, Pascual Cabo (2013) shows that heritage speakers of Cuban Spanish in Miami more readily accept features that approximate the syntactic behavior of to like. Finally, along the Brazilian-Uruguayan border, Klee and Lynch (2009) present further examples of gustar that diverge from the canonical, causal gustar .…”