Knowledge of Wh-movement in Spanish L2Learners and Heritage Speakers

The study of language contact from a linguistic perspective is concerned with the process and outcome of any situation in which two or more languages come into contact, with particular emphasis on conditions that constrain the changes that grammatical systems undergo. Potential linguistic changes are described both at the levels of individual speakers and across generations of speakers at the societal level. After all, language change at the societal level is driven by language change at the individual level. One of the linguistic and psycholinguistic processes that characterizes several outcomes of bilingualism is transfer or cross linguistic influence. Transfer is very common in both developing and fossilized endstate second language grammars (Lardiere 2007, Franceschina 2005, Schwartz & Sprouse 1996). Transfer effects have also been observed in the patterns of attrition and incomplete acquisition of a first language in a language contact situation, including the case of ethnic­minority bilingual speakers who are dominant in the majority language. In these particular cases, the majority language (the L2) becomes the psycholinguistically and functionally stronger language and may encroach on the structure of the heritage language (the L1). The purpose of this study is to compare the linguistic system of two types of adult bilinguals—L2 learners, or late bilinguals, and heritage speakers, or early bilinguals—who have incomplete knowledge of Spanish, either because they are in the process of learning the language (L2 acquisition) or because their first language failed to be developed completely or underwent attrition in childhood (many cases of heritage language acquisition). It has been amply documented in generative second language research that L1 transfer is stronger at the earliest stages of L2 development, when knowledge of the second language is weakest (Schwartz & Sprouse 1996). We ask whether dominant language (L2) transfer has the same effects on the L1 of heritage speakers, and we examine this question by focusing on the effects of English, the stronger language as L1 and L2, on Spanish, the weaker language as L1 or L2. The two types of bilinguals studied, however, differ on age of onset of bilingualism. Since robust transfer effects are very common in incipient L2 acquisition by late learners, we further ask whether similar transfer effects will be observed in individuals who acquired the weaker language early in childhood (early learners) and have lived, since then, in a language contact situation. Age is an important factor in second language acquisition explicit in many theories of L2 competence which ascribe to a representational deficit view of second language acquisition (Bley­ Vroman 1990, Clahsen & Muysken 1989, Hawkins & Chan 1997, Hawkins & Hattori 2006, Meisel 1997, Schachter 1990). According to this position, the L1 has a deterministic role in L2 acquisition and ultimate attainment. L2 learners cannot reset parameters or acquire features not selected by their L1 in early childhood, due to some sort of maturational effect. If we assume this position and extend it to the outcome of early bilingual development, then a possibility is that dominant language transfer effects might be weaker in early bilinguals (with onset of bilingualism in childhood) than in late bilinguals or L2 learners (with onset of bilingualism past puberty), especially in grammatical domains that are acquired before the age of 4. Recent research comparing these two types of bilinguals suggests that early bilinguals have linguistic advantages over late bilinguals in some domains and tasks (phonology and pronunciation) but not in morphosyntax (Au et al. 2002, Knightly et al. 2003), although other recent studies question these conclusions about morphosyntax (Montrul 2005, Montrul et al. 2006). In