Receptive Volitional Subjunctive Abilities in Heritage and Traditional Foreign Language Learners of Spanish

Abstract

The Spanish subjunctive has been known to pose difficulties for learners of Spanish whose native language is English (e.g., Collentine, 1997, 2003 ; Terrell, Baycroft, & Perrone, 1987 ). Investigating the same feature in heritage learners of Spanish can provide more information about the linguistic development of this growing population. This pilot study compared heritage and foreign language (FL) learners' ability to recognize native-like and nonnative-like mood choice in volitional constructions. Students enrolled in heritage and traditional FL Spanish courses at 3 universities in the Northeast completed a grammaticality judgment (GJ) task and an editing task, which contained examples of indicative, infinitive, and subjunctive use in volitional constructions. Heritage learners scored significantly higher on average than their FL peers on the editing, GJ, and combined (editing and GJ) tasks. These results suggest that home and community exposure play an important role in subjunctive acquisition and that instruction should be tailored to heritage learners' abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]