The use of default forms in codeswitching

Abstract

This paper examines the effects that codeswitching (CS) has on mood selection in restrictive relative clauses in the Spanish of heritage speakers (HSs). Spanish HS participants completed an online acceptability judgment task in which they rated monolingual (i.e., unilingual) and codeswitched sentences containing verbs in indicative and subjunctive mood in restrictive relative clauses manipulated for specificity of the antecedent. The results indicated an association of the subjunctive with non-specificity in monolingual sentences that was lost in the codeswitched sentences, although this effect was modulated by proficiency. These results are discussed in terms of the use of default forms in CS.