Maintained and acquired heritage Spanish in the Netherlands: The case of dative constructions

Abstract

The present study examines five types of dative constructions in heritage Spanish in the Netherlands. Elicited production data from first generation bilinguals and heritage speakers were analyzed and compared to those of monolingual controls. The results indicate that the first generation is not different from the monolingual baseline in their use of datives. The heritage group showed a remarkable subdivision: those with a history of relatively high exposure to Spanish in childhood, move away significantly from the use of dative experiencers and datives of interest, while they are native-like regarding the other constructions. Those who grew up with only one Spanish speaking parent and/or did not productively use Spanish in childhood, however, appear to avoid or restructure all dative constructions. Moreover, the observed innovations correlate with speech rate. It is hypothesized that, whereas influence of Dutch may be one of the factors at play, particularly in the case of dative experiencers and datives of interest, a principal underlying factor to all observed innovations is a Spanish-internal optimization mechanism of omitting dative verbal clitics, which serves to free up processing resources in the less-automatized systems of those who had low childhood exposure to Spanish.