Heritage speakers’ online processing of the Spanish subjunctive: A comprehensive usage-based study

Abstract

The inherent variability of heritage grammars is still poorly understood. The present study challenges employs a usage-based approach to integrate sociolinguistic data into the design of a psycholinguistic experiment that examines processing of the Spanish subjunctive during online comprehension in heritage speakers. The findings reported highlight that factors such as the community examined, the ecological validity of the materials used and the diversity of explanatory variables included in analyses can contribute significantly to a more unified theory of heritage language acquisition and processing.