Copulas ser and estar production in child and adult heritage speakers of Spanish

Abstract

The present study examines the production of the Spanish copula verbs ser and estar among child and adult heritage speakers of Spanish born and raised in the United States. We investigate copula use in estar-favored and ser-favored adjectival predicates and in event locatives in which ser is required. We predicted overextension of estar with adjectives and with event locatives, following previous work. We also expected a relationship between language experience and target performance. Results showed ungrammatical use of copula estar in ser-favored adjectival contexts among the child heritage speakers. The adult heritage speakers, however, appear to overcome these divergences. Regarding event locatives, both experimental groups overextended estar significantly compared to child and monolingual baseline groups. We argue for protracted development in child and adult heritage Spanish stemming from input conditions, maturational development, and low patterns of language activation and use.