Lexical Frequency in Heritage Speakers of Spanish

Abstract

This study examines the impact of lexical frequency on grammatical agreement in heritage speakers of Spanish and a Spanish monolingual control group. Research has provided evidence of frequency effects when accessing nouns and this effect was proven to be more prominent in bilingual speakers. This investigation expands on the antecedent psycholinguistic research on lexical access through agreement operations carried out on monolingual speakers of Spanish by examining this effect in two populations of heritage speakers of Spanish that differ in relation to their dominance in Spanish. Experiment 1 was a Elicit Production Task and Experiment 2 was a Picture Description Task. Retrieval of grammatical gender features is needed in both tasks; therefore, lexical frequency plays a role in accessing this information. Reaction times analysis showed frequency effects in both bilingual populations and, as predicted by the Frequency-Lag Hypothesis, larger frequency effects in the less Spanish-dominant group. Results contribute to the understanding of processing mechanisms in adult bilingualism, particularly in heritage speakers of Spanish in the United States.