Linguistic theory and the analysis of minority languages: native, immigrant and heritage Spanish

摘要

In this paper we aim to contribute to the emerging field of heritageudstudies by investigating whether Spanish heritage speakers inudCanada, namely the second or subsequent generation of Spanishudspeakers who grew up as English-Spanish bilinguals, differ fromudnative Spanish speakers (those who have always lived in a Spanishspeakingudcountry) and from immigrant Spanish speakers (those whoudimmigrated to Canada as adults) with respect to their grammaticaludcompetence and to their processing strategies. Taking as a point ofuddeparture recent proposals from linguistic theory, we provide auddescription of Spanish restrictive relative clauses with so-calledudresumptive pronouns (Es una mujer que nunca LA vimos llorar) inudorder to determine whether and how our three groups of speakersuddiffer in terms of the grammatical intuitions and processing resourcesudthey display when confronted with this type of constructions. Weuddiscuss to what extent language attrition, influence from English (inudthe case of both immigrant and heritage speakers), or incompleteudacquisition (in the case of heritage speakers) may be behind theudcharacteristics of the immigrant and the heritage speakers’ linguisticudbehaviour. We argue that sophisticated experimental tasks provide audbetter tool than global proficiency tests to compare these threeudgroups of speakers. The ultimate aim of this study is to provide audframework for analyzing the status of the minority languages spokenudby immigrant communities.