Lost and Found? Shifts in Heritage Speakers’ Processing of Mood Morphology over the Course of a Semester Abroad
Of the few studies that have investigated the linguistic development of heritage speakers (HSs) in the study abroad (SA) context, none have utilized on-line experiments, in spite of these tasks’ clear methodological benefits. In this study, therefore, we test HSs’ on-line sensitivity to lexically se...
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2025-06-01
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| author | David Giancaspro Sara Fernández Cuenca |
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| description | Of the few studies that have investigated the linguistic development of heritage speakers (HSs) in the study abroad (SA) context, none have utilized on-line experiments, in spite of these tasks’ clear methodological benefits. In this study, therefore, we test HSs’ on-line sensitivity to lexically selected mood morphology in Spanish. Ten adult HSs completed a self-paced reading task at the beginning and end of a fifteen-week-long SA program in Spain. The task assessed both (a) whether HSs were sensitive to mood incongruencies (e.g., by slowing down after ungrammatical verbs) and (b) whether that (in)sensitivity was different with regular vs. irregular verbs. It was hypothesized that participants would be more sensitive to mood with irregular verbs and that their mood sensitivity would increase over the course of the semester abroad, but these hypotheses were only partially supported. Although HSs developed sensitivity to mood incongruencies with regular verbs over the course of the semester abroad, they showed the reverse pattern with irregular verbs, demonstrating sensitivity at Session 1 but not Session 2. Nonetheless, because participants’ reading times decreased sharply over the semester—and without any concomitant decrease in comprehension accuracy—we argue that SA immersion likely does facilitate morphosyntactic processing in the HL. |
| format | Article |
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| institution | Kabale University |
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| language | English |
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| spelling | doaj-art-b9d7a1fdfd874947847090dfb0bb43b32025-08-20T03:58:31ZengMDPI AGLanguages2226-471X2025-06-0110716310.3390/languages10070163Lost and Found? Shifts in Heritage Speakers’ Processing of Mood Morphology over the Course of a Semester AbroadDavid Giancaspro0Sara Fernández Cuenca1Department of Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA 23173, USADepartment of Spanish, College of Arts and Sciences, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC 27109, USAOf the few studies that have investigated the linguistic development of heritage speakers (HSs) in the study abroad (SA) context, none have utilized on-line experiments, in spite of these tasks’ clear methodological benefits. In this study, therefore, we test HSs’ on-line sensitivity to lexically selected mood morphology in Spanish. Ten adult HSs completed a self-paced reading task at the beginning and end of a fifteen-week-long SA program in Spain. The task assessed both (a) whether HSs were sensitive to mood incongruencies (e.g., by slowing down after ungrammatical verbs) and (b) whether that (in)sensitivity was different with regular vs. irregular verbs. It was hypothesized that participants would be more sensitive to mood with irregular verbs and that their mood sensitivity would increase over the course of the semester abroad, but these hypotheses were only partially supported. Although HSs developed sensitivity to mood incongruencies with regular verbs over the course of the semester abroad, they showed the reverse pattern with irregular verbs, demonstrating sensitivity at Session 1 but not Session 2. Nonetheless, because participants’ reading times decreased sharply over the semester—and without any concomitant decrease in comprehension accuracy—we argue that SA immersion likely does facilitate morphosyntactic processing in the HL.https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/10/7/163heritage speakersbilingualismsubjunctive moodverbal morphologyself-paced readinglanguage processing |
| spellingShingle | David Giancaspro Sara Fernández Cuenca Lost and Found? Shifts in Heritage Speakers’ Processing of Mood Morphology over the Course of a Semester Abroad Languages heritage speakers bilingualism subjunctive mood verbal morphology self-paced reading language processing |
| title | Lost and Found? Shifts in Heritage Speakers’ Processing of Mood Morphology over the Course of a Semester Abroad |
| title_full | Lost and Found? Shifts in Heritage Speakers’ Processing of Mood Morphology over the Course of a Semester Abroad |
| title_fullStr | Lost and Found? Shifts in Heritage Speakers’ Processing of Mood Morphology over the Course of a Semester Abroad |
| title_full_unstemmed | Lost and Found? Shifts in Heritage Speakers’ Processing of Mood Morphology over the Course of a Semester Abroad |
| title_short | Lost and Found? Shifts in Heritage Speakers’ Processing of Mood Morphology over the Course of a Semester Abroad |
| title_sort | lost and found shifts in heritage speakers processing of mood morphology over the course of a semester abroad |
| topic | heritage speakers bilingualism subjunctive mood verbal morphology self-paced reading language processing |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/10/7/163 |
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