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Dative constructions in the Spanish of heritage speakers in the Netherlands 117
nominalize using a “clitic only” strategy (“Le da un libro” ‘He gives her a book’),
which resembles very much the Dutch pronoun in a Double Object Construction
(“Hij geeft haar een boek” ‘He gives her a book’). The “low input” bilinguals
do neither. Therefore, it seems more probable to me that these speakers have
some structural problem with clitics per se; they might have acquired them
incompletely and are insecure about how to use them, but on the other hand also
feel that the “a + pronoun” strategy is highly marked. Perhaps, that makes them
avoid pronominalization altogether.
In summary then, whereas the evidence on the stability of dative Experiencers
was not conclusive, the study presented here suggests that the use of
prototypical datives, dative External Possessors, dative Human Sources and
datives of interest is fairly stable in bilinguals, except for those with limited
childhood exposure to Spanish. I argued that the consistent preference for nondative
strategies of this group, was primarily attributable to instability of the
dative clitic, which affected even the encoding of prototypical indirect objects.
The population under study consisted of only proficient and regular users of
a heritage language, with close participation in a speech community, but nevertheless
on closer examination revealed a division between a group with fairly
stable structures and one with drastically different patterns relatable to incompleteness.
I would argue that it is important to carefully tease apart acquisition
profiles when studying heritage populations. At the same time, “overhearers”,
whose striking features can tell us about effects of reduced exposure, should be
considered very relevant for heritage language research. And, as they become
proficient participants in bilingual communities, for studying stability in scenario’s
of language contact.
References
Au, Terry Kit-fong, Janet S. Oh, Leah M. Knightly, Sun-Ah Jun, Laura F. Romo, 2008: Salvaging
a childhood language. Journal of memory and language 58 (4), 998–1011.
Au, Terry Kit-fong, L. M. Knightly, Sun-Ah Jun, Janet S. Oh, 2002: Overhearing a language
during childhood. Psychological Science 13 (3), 238–243.
Benmamoun, Elabbas, Silvina Montrul, Maria Polinsky 2010: White paper: Prolegomena to
heritage linguistics. Heritage Linguistics. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and
Harvard University. In: www.nhlrc.ucla.edu/pdf/HL-whitepaper.pdf ED 04/2012
Bullock, Barbara E., Almeida Jacqueline Toribio 2004: Introduction: Convergence as an emergent
property in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7 (2), 91–93.
Domínguez, Laura 2003: Interpreting reference in the early acquisition of Spanish clitics. In:
Montrul & Ordóñez (eds.), 212–228.
Draye, Luk 1998: The case of the causee. In: Willy Van Langendonck, William Van Belle (eds.)
1998: The Dative. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Extra, Guus, Jan Jaap De Ruijter (eds.) 2001: Babylon aan de Noordzee. Nieuwe Talen in Nederland.
Amsterdam: Bulaaq.