Causative verbs in the grammar of Spanish heritage speakers

This study examines argument structure overgeneralizations among heritage speakers of Spanish who exhibit varying degrees of proficiency in the heritage language. Two questions motivated the design of the study: (1) Do heritage speakers differ from native speakers in their acceptance of causative errors? And if so, (2) which classes of verbs are most susceptible to this overgeneralization? A sentence acceptability task targeting two verb classes (unaccusatives and unergatives) was administered to 58 heritage speakers and a comparison group (n = 22) of monolingually-raised native speakers of Spanish. The results confirm that heritage speakers, in contrast to native speakers, accept causative errors with a variety of intransitive verbs. Unaccusative verbs are more readily accepted in transitive frames than unergatives for all groups. Acceptance rates for individual verbs are a function of the particular verb’s compatibility with external causation as well as the possibility of being transitive in English.