Regularity effects on Spanish heritage speakers' subjunctive production and comprehension

Literature on heritage Spanish speakers’ oral production of Spanish has claimed that heritage speakers’ use of particular linguistic properties, such as the Spanish subjunctive, is highly variable and that some heritage speakers have “lost” the Spanish subjunctive or have “never fully acquired” the Spanish subjunctive. Despite this, recent work has found that heritage speakers systematically use the subjunctive in expected contexts (para que “so that”) while avoiding the subjunctive mood in unexpected contexts (porque ‘because’).

The present project investigated how morphological regularity, or the degree to which a verb inflection can be derived from its infinitive (i.e., correr-corra ‘to run-run ‘being regular; salir-salga ‘to go out-go out’ being irregular) affects Spanish heritage speakers’ oral production of the subjunctive mood. To accomplish this, we asked the following questions:

1. Do heritage speakers demonstrate variability in their subjunctive use/understanding in obligatory contexts (i.e., quiero que ‘I want that’)?
2. If participants do demonstrate such variability, is it modulated by Spanish proficiency and/or morphological variability?

This project found that with irregular verbs in the Spanish subjunctive, participants systematically produced the subjunctive in expected contexts and preferred sentences containing the subjunctive in expected contexts, while not producing and not preferring the subjunctive in unexpected contexts. However, with regular verbs, participants behaved less categorically; although one-fourth of participants produced the subjunctive in expected contexts categorically with regular verbs, the remaining three-fourths either variabily used the subjunctive in such contexts with regular verbs or categorically avoided the subjunctive with regular verbs. Although participants who categorically used the subjunctive with regular verbs had higher proficiency than those who categorically avoided the subjunctive, participants who categorically avoided the subjunctive with regular verbs were more likely to have taken Spanish classes than those who variably used the subjunctive with regular verbs.

These findings contradict previous claims that Spanish heritage speakers have “lost” the Spanish subjunctive by demonstrating that their representations of the subjunctive is largely systematic and governed by factors such as morphological variability.

-Project concluded- Co-authored manuscript published in Language Learning

I participated in this project as an undergraduate research assitant under the guidance and support of Dr. David Giancaspro and Dr. Silvia Perez Cortes.