Parasitic Gapping in Bilingual Grammar: Evidence from Wisconsin Heritage German

Abstract

We report on work with German-English bilinguals, heritage speakers of German, and their licensing of parasitic gaps (a type of multiple gap construction) in English-to-German translation tasks. English allows such constructions variably, while European German does not. While some recent work reports that some heritage speakers have difficulty licensing null elements generally, most of our speakers allow some gaps in German. Structurally, these gaps correspond closely to the more-accessible end of Engdahl’s accessibility hierarchy for parasitic gaps (p-gaps). We suggest that this pattern reflects structural influence from socially dominant English on heritage German.