Child Heritage Speakers’ Morphosyntax

This chapter reviews research on bilingual children's Spanish morphosyntax. The review focuses primarily on Latin children in the United States who are exposed to Spanish at home and are often English-dominant bilinguals. The chapter presents the term 'heritage speakers' when referring to children who are acquiring Spanish in the U. S. It also sometimes considers these heritage speakers as English-Spanish bilinguals, especially when highlighting the role that English plays in the children's acquisition of Spanish. The chapter provides broad generalizations from the literature, and interprets those generalizations within current theories of language acquisition and bilingualism. In particular, two questions are explored: Do child heritage speakers and monolingual children acquire Spanish morphosyntax at the same rate? Do child heritage speakers' morphosyntactic patterns reflect influence from English? The literature suggests that reduced exposure to Spanish results in slower acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax.