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2. Interpreting mood distinctions in Spanish as a heritage language

  • Silvina Montrul
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Spanish in Contact
This chapter is in the book Spanish in Contact

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the mental representation of mood in Spanish heritage speakers (2nd generation immigrants of Spanish background living in the US). A variety of studies have amply documented the loss and/or incomplete acquisition of subjunctive mood in these speakers (Merino 1983, Lipski 1993, Silva-Corvalán 1994, 2003; Lynch 1999). These studies analyzed production data and showed that subjunctive morphology is replaced by indicative in cases where the use of subjunctive or indicative is variable and subject to different semantic or pragmatic implications. The goal of this study is to gobeyond production of morphological forms and probe into theinterpretations bilinguals assign to sentences with indicative and subjunctive in obligatory and variable contexts. The study assumes the theoretical framework of generative grammar by which mood is represented as a functional category MoodP in Spanish. Subjunctive morphology carries the feature [+ MOOD], which are crucial for the interpretation of the morphology. We know that bilinguals have difficulty producing subjunctive morphology in speech. If MoodP is absent from the bilinguals' grammars, then they should have difficulty with the interpretation of mood morphology as well. Monolingual and bilingual heritage Spanish speakers completed a task testing recognition of subjunctive in obligatory contexts and a judgment task which tested interpretation of subjunctive in variable contexts. The task tested relative clauses, and adverbial clauses withcuando and withde manera que. Results showed a correlation between recognition of indicative/subjunctive morphology and semantic interpretations. Those bilinguals whose apparent loss of Spanish subjunctive mood was most pronounced in the morphological recognition task had difficulty discriminating between indicative and subjunctive sentences in the sentence conjunction judgment task, suggesting that the feature [+ MOOD] was not operational. In short, it appears that the loss of a functional category involves loss of morphophonology and semantic features.

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the mental representation of mood in Spanish heritage speakers (2nd generation immigrants of Spanish background living in the US). A variety of studies have amply documented the loss and/or incomplete acquisition of subjunctive mood in these speakers (Merino 1983, Lipski 1993, Silva-Corvalán 1994, 2003; Lynch 1999). These studies analyzed production data and showed that subjunctive morphology is replaced by indicative in cases where the use of subjunctive or indicative is variable and subject to different semantic or pragmatic implications. The goal of this study is to gobeyond production of morphological forms and probe into theinterpretations bilinguals assign to sentences with indicative and subjunctive in obligatory and variable contexts. The study assumes the theoretical framework of generative grammar by which mood is represented as a functional category MoodP in Spanish. Subjunctive morphology carries the feature [+ MOOD], which are crucial for the interpretation of the morphology. We know that bilinguals have difficulty producing subjunctive morphology in speech. If MoodP is absent from the bilinguals' grammars, then they should have difficulty with the interpretation of mood morphology as well. Monolingual and bilingual heritage Spanish speakers completed a task testing recognition of subjunctive in obligatory contexts and a judgment task which tested interpretation of subjunctive in variable contexts. The task tested relative clauses, and adverbial clauses withcuando and withde manera que. Results showed a correlation between recognition of indicative/subjunctive morphology and semantic interpretations. Those bilinguals whose apparent loss of Spanish subjunctive mood was most pronounced in the morphological recognition task had difficulty discriminating between indicative and subjunctive sentences in the sentence conjunction judgment task, suggesting that the feature [+ MOOD] was not operational. In short, it appears that the loss of a functional category involves loss of morphophonology and semantic features.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction ix
  4. Part I. Heritage Spanish in the United States
  5. 1. Subjects in early dual language development 3
  6. 2. Interpreting mood distinctions in Spanish as a heritage language 23
  7. 3. Anglicismos en el léxico disponible de los adolescentes hispanos de Chicago 41
  8. Part II. Education and policy issues
  9. 4. Teaching Spanish in the U.S. 61
  10. 5. The politics of English and Spanish aquí y allá 81
  11. 6. Language attitudes and the lexical de-Castilianization of Valencian 101
  12. 7. Are Galicians bound to diglossia? 119
  13. Part III. Pragmatics and contact
  14. 8. Addressing peers in a Spanish-English bilingual classroom 135
  15. 9. Style variation in Spanish as a heritage language 153
  16. 10. “Baby I'm Sorry, te juro, I'm Sorry” 173
  17. 11. Cross-linguistic influence of the Cuzco Quechua epistemic system on Andean Spanish 191
  18. 12. La negación en la frontera domínico-haitiana 211
  19. Part IV. Variation and contact
  20. 13. On the development of contact varieties 237
  21. 14. Linguistic and social predictors of copula use in Galician Spanish 253
  22. 15. Apuntes preliminares sobre el contacto lingüístico y dialectal en el uso pronominal del español en Nueva York 275
  23. 16. Is the past really the past in narrative discourse? 297
  24. 17. The impact of linguistic constraints on the expression of futurity in the Spanish of New York Colombians 311
  25. 18. Quantitative evidence for contact-induced accommodation 329
  26. 19. Está muy diferente a como era antes 345
  27. Part V. Bozal Spanish
  28. 20. Where and how does bozal Spanish survive? 359
  29. 21. The appearance and use of bozal language in Cuban and Brazilian neo-African literature 377
  30. Index 395
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.22.04mon

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction ix
  4. Part I. Heritage Spanish in the United States
  5. 1. Subjects in early dual language development 3
  6. 2. Interpreting mood distinctions in Spanish as a heritage language 23
  7. 3. Anglicismos en el léxico disponible de los adolescentes hispanos de Chicago 41
  8. Part II. Education and policy issues
  9. 4. Teaching Spanish in the U.S. 61
  10. 5. The politics of English and Spanish aquí y allá 81
  11. 6. Language attitudes and the lexical de-Castilianization of Valencian 101
  12. 7. Are Galicians bound to diglossia? 119
  13. Part III. Pragmatics and contact
  14. 8. Addressing peers in a Spanish-English bilingual classroom 135
  15. 9. Style variation in Spanish as a heritage language 153
  16. 10. “Baby I'm Sorry, te juro, I'm Sorry” 173
  17. 11. Cross-linguistic influence of the Cuzco Quechua epistemic system on Andean Spanish 191
  18. 12. La negación en la frontera domínico-haitiana 211
  19. Part IV. Variation and contact
  20. 13. On the development of contact varieties 237
  21. 14. Linguistic and social predictors of copula use in Galician Spanish 253
  22. 15. Apuntes preliminares sobre el contacto lingüístico y dialectal en el uso pronominal del español en Nueva York 275
  23. 16. Is the past really the past in narrative discourse? 297
  24. 17. The impact of linguistic constraints on the expression of futurity in the Spanish of New York Colombians 311
  25. 18. Quantitative evidence for contact-induced accommodation 329
  26. 19. Está muy diferente a como era antes 345
  27. Part V. Bozal Spanish
  28. 20. Where and how does bozal Spanish survive? 359
  29. 21. The appearance and use of bozal language in Cuban and Brazilian neo-African literature 377
  30. Index 395
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