Cover not available

Article published In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 4:1 (2014) ► pp.1–33

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Causative verbs in the grammar of Spanish heritage speakers

 | University of California, Santa Cruz
Published online: 21 February 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.4.1.01ziz
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.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Defining the population
  • 3.Linguistic background
    • 3.1Lexical causatives
    • 3.2The Unaccusative Hypothesis
  • 4.Previous research
  • 5.Research questions
  • 6.Method
    • 6.1Participants
    • 6.2Description of the instruments
      • 6.2.1Spanish placement tests
      • 6.2.2Vocabulary knowledge test
      • 6.2.3Sentence acceptability test
    • 6.3Data analysis
      • 6.3.1Spanish placement tests
      • 6.3.2Vocabulary knowledge test
      • 6.3.3Sentence acceptability test
  • 7.Results
    • 7.1Spanish placement tests and vocabulary knowledge test
    • 7.2Sentence acceptability test
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion and future directions
  • Notes
  • References
References (81)
References
Alarcón, I.V. (2011). Spanish gender agreement under complete and incomplete acquisition: Early and late bilinguals’ behavior within the noun phrase. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14(3), 332–350. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Alexiadou, A., Anagnostopoulou, E., & Everaert, M (Eds.). (2004). The unaccusativity puzzle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ambridge, B., Pine, J., Rowland, C., & Young, C. (2008). The effect of verb semantic class and verb frequency (entrenchment) on children’s and adults’ graded judgments of argument-structure overgeneralization errors. Cognition, 1061, 87–129. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aranda, A. (1990). La expresión de la causatividad en español actual [Causativity expression in contemporary Spanish]. Zaragoza: Libros Pórticos.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Au, T., Knightly, L., Jun, S., & Oh, J. (2002). Overhearing a language during childhood. Psychological Science, 131, 238–243. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beaudrie, S., & Ducar, C. (2005). Beginning level university heritage programs: Creating a space for all heritage language learners. Heritage Language Journal, 31, 1–26.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (1982). Evaluating competing linguistic models with language acquisition data: Implications of developmental errors with causative verbs. Quaderni di Semantica, 31, 5–66.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1988). The “no negative evidence” problem: How do children avoid constructing an overly general grammar? In J.A. Hawkins (Ed.), Explaining language universals (pp. 73–101). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Braine, M., & Brooks, P.J. (1995). Verb argument structure and the problem of avoiding an overgeneral grammar. In M. Tomasello & W.E. Merriman (Eds.), Beyond names for things: Young children’s acquisition of verbs (pp. 352–376). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brooks, P.J., Tomasello, M., Dodson, K., & Lewis, L. (1999). Young children’s overgeneralizations with fixed transitivity verbs. Child Development, 701, 1325–1337. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burzio, L. (1986). Italian syntax: A government-binding approach. Dordrecht: Reidel. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cabrera, M., & Zubizarreta, M.L. (2003). On the acquisition of Spanish causative structures by L1 speakers of English. In J. Liceras (Ed.), Proceedings of the 6th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (pp. 24–33). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2005). Overgeneralization of causatives and transfer in L2 Spanish and L2 English. In D. Eddington (Ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 6th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages (pp. 15–30). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cabrera, M. & Zubizarreta, M.L. (2007). Transfer in periphrastic causatives in L2 English and L2 Spanish. In S. Baauw, F. Drijkoningen, & M. Pinto (Eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2005 (pp. 39–58). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carreira, M., & Potowski, K. (2011). Commentary: Pedagogical implications of experimental SNS research. Heritage Language Journal, 81, 134–151.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chierchia, G. (1989). A semantics for unaccusatives and its syntactic consequences. Unpublished manuscript, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Cuza, A., & Frank, J. (2011). Transfer effects at the syntax-semantics interface: The case of double-que questions in heritage Spanish. The Heritage Language Journal, 81, 66–89.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, M. (2006). A frequency dictionary of Spanish: Core vocabulary for learners. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Prada Pérez, A., & Pascual y Cabo, D. (2011). Invariable gusta in the Spanish of heritage speakers in the US. In J. Hershenschon & D. Tanner (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (pp. 110–120). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dixon, R.M.W. (2000). A typology of causatives: Form, syntax, and meaning. In R.M.W. Dixon & A.Y. Aikhenvald (Eds.), Changing valency: Case studies in transitivity (pp. 30–83). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fairclough, M., Belpoliti, F., & Bermejo, E. (2010). Developing an electronic placement examination for heritage learners of Spanish: Challenges and payoffs. Hispania, 931, 273–291.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gropen, J., Blaskovich, J., & DeDe, G. (1996). Come it closer: Causative errors in child speech. In A. Stringfellow, D. Cahana-Armita, E. Hughes, & A. Zukowski (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 272–283). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Helms-Park, R. (2001). Evidence of lexical transfer in learner syntax: The acquisition of English causatives by speakers of Hindi-Urdu and Vietnamese. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 231, 71–102. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hopper, P., & Thompson, S. (1980). Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language, 561, 251–299.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Legendre, G. (2007). On the typology of auxiliary selection. Lingua, 117(9), 1522–1540. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levin, B., & Rappaport Hovav, M. (1995). Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2005). Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lynch, A. (2008). The linguistic similarities of Spanish heritage and second language learners. Foreign Language Annals, 411, 252–281. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (5th ed.). (2009). London: Pearson Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marcotte, J.P. (2005). Causative alternation errors in child language acquisition. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
. (2006). Causative alternation errors as event-driven construction paradigm completions. In E.V. Clark & B.F Kelly (Eds.), Constructions in acquisition (pp. 1–23). Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McKoon, G., & Macfarland, T. (2000). Externally and internally caused change of state verbs. Language, 761, 833–858. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mirabal, D. (2009). Vivas en su jardín: La verdadera historia de las hermanas Mirabal y su lucha por la libertad [Alive in their garden: The true story of the Mirabal sisters and their fight for freedom]. New York: Vintage Español.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (1999). Causative errors with unaccusative verbs in L2 Spanish. Second Language Research, 151, 191–219. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2001). Agentive verbs of manner of motion in Spanish and English as second languages. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 231, 171–206. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2005). Second language acquisition and first language loss in adult early bilinguals: Exploring some differences and similarities. Second Language Research, 21(3), 199–249. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2006). On the bilingual competence of Spanish heritage speakers: Syntax, lexical-semantics and processing. International Journal of Bilingualism, 101, 37–69. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2009). Knowledge of tense-aspect and mood in Spanish heritage speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism, 131, 239–269. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2010). Dominant language transfer in adult second language learners and heritage speakers. Second Language Research, 26(3), 293–327. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2011a). Spanish heritage speakers: Bridging formal linguistics, psycholinguistics, and pedagogy [Introduction to special issue]. Heritage Language Journal, 81, i–v.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2011b). Morphological errors in Spanish second language learners and heritage speakers. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 331, 163–192.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montrul, S., & Bowles, M. (2009). Back to basics: Incomplete knowledge of differential object marking in Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 121, 363–383. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montrul, S., Foote, R., & Perpiñán, S. (2008). Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. Language Learning, 581, 503–53. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montrul, S., & Ionin, T. (2010). Transfer effects in the interpretation of definite articles by Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 131, 449–473. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montrul, S., & Polinsky, M. (2011). Why not heritage speakers? Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 11, 58–62.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moore, M. (1993). Second language acquisition of lexically constrained transitivity alternations: Acquisition of the causative alternation by second language learners of English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.
Obregon, P. (2010). Usage and experiential factors as predictors of Spanish morphosyntactic competence in US heritage speakers. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.
Otheguy, R., & Stern, N. (2011). On so-called Spanglish. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15(1), 85–100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pascual y Cabo, D., & Rothman, J. (2012). The (il) logical problem of heritage speaker bilingualism and incomplete acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 33(4), 450–455. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perlmutter, D.M. (1978). Impersonal passives and the unaccusative hypothesis. In Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 157–189). University of California, Berkeley. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pires, A., & Rothman, J. (2009). Disentangling sources of incomplete acquisition: An explanation for competence divergence across heritage grammars. International Journal of Bilingualism, 131, 211–238. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Polinsky, M. (2008). Gender under incomplete acquisition: Heritage speakers’ knowledge of noun categorization. Heritage Language Journal, 61, 40–71.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2011). Reanalysis in adult heritage language: New evidence in support of attrition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 331, 305–328. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Potowski, K., Jegerski, J., & Morgan-Short, K. (2009). The effects of instruction on linguistic development in Spanish heritage language speakers. Language Learning, 591, 537–579. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pye, C. 1994: A cross-linguistic approach to the causative alternation. In Y. Levi (Ed.), Other children, other languages (pp. 109–138). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Real Academia Española. (2005). Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. Spain: Santillana.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roggia, A. (2011). Unaccusativity and word order in Mexican Spanish: An examination of syntactic interfaces and the split intransitivity hierarchy. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA.
Rothman, J. (2007). Heritage speaker competence differences, language change and input type: Inflected infinitives in heritage Brazilian Portuguese. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(4), 359–389. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2009a). Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 131, 155–163.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2009b). Pragmatic deficits with syntactic consequences?: L2 pronominal subjects and the syntax-pragmatics interface. Journal of Pragmatics, 411, 951–973.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ruiz-Sánchez, C. (2006). Causative hacer and dejar . In J.C. Clements & J. Yoon (Eds.), Functional approaches to Spanish syntax (pp. 278–299). UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shibatani, M. (1976). The grammar of causative constructions: A conspectus. In M. Shibatani (Ed.), Syntax and semantics 6: The grammar of causative constructions (pp. 1–40). New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shibatani, M., & Pardeshi, P. (2002). The causative continuum. In M. Shibatani (Ed.), The grammar of causation and interpersonal manipulation (pp. 85–126). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (2008). The limits of convergence in language contact. Journal of Language Contact, 21, 213–224. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, C.S. (1970). Jespersen’s ‘move and change’ class and causative verbs in English. In M.A. Jazayery, E.C. Polomé, & W. Winter (Eds.), Linguistic and literary studies in honor of Archibald A. Hill: Descriptive linguistics (Vol. 21, pp. 101–109). Mouton: The Hague.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (2000). Gradients in auxiliary selection with intransitive verbs. Language, 76(4), 859–890. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2004). Gradience at the lexicon-syntax interface: Evidence from auxiliary selection and implications for unaccusativity. In A. Alexiadou, E. Anagnostopoulou, & M. Everaert (Eds.), The unaccusativity puzzle (pp. 243–268). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2011). Pinning down the concept of ‘interface’ in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 11, 1–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Theakston, A. (2004). The role of entrenchment in children’s and adults’ performance on grammaticality judgment tasks. Cognitive Development, 191, 15–34. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tsimpli, I., & Sorace, A. (2006). Differentiating interfaces: L2 performance in syntax-semantics and syntax-discourse phenomena. In D. Bamman, T. Magnitskaia, & C. Zaller (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 653–664). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Valdés, G. (2005). Bilingualism, heritage language learners, and SLA research: Opportunities lost or seized? The Modern Language Journal, 89(3), 410–426. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
White, L. (2011). Second language acquisition at the interfaces. Lingua, 1211, 577–590. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolff, P. (2003). Direct causation in the linguistic coding and individuation of causal events. Cognition, 881, 1–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zapata, G., Sánchez, L., & Toribio, A.J. (2005). Contact and contracting Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism, 91, 377–395. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zubizarreta, M.L. (1985). The relation between morphophonology and morphosyntax: The case of Romance causatives. Linguistic Inquiry, 161, 247–289.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zubizarreta, M.L., & Oh, E. (2007). On the syntactic composition of manner and motion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zyzik, E. (in press). Expressing causation in Spanish: A functional analysis of heritage speakers’ written production. Heritage Language Journal, 11(1).
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Gonzalez, Becky
2023. Syntactic licensing in heritage Spanish: Psych verbs and the middle voice. International Journal of Bilingualism 27:5 ► pp. 776 ff. DOI logo
Ionin, Tania
2021. Semantics of Heritage Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 668 ff. DOI logo
Gonzalez, Becky Halloran
2020. The Syntactic Distribution of Object Experiencer Psych Verbs in Heritage Spanish. Languages 5:4 ► pp. 63 ff. DOI logo
Ortega, Lourdes, Sang-Ki Lee & Munehiko Miyata
2018.  What is happened? Your amazon.com order has shipped . In Language Learning, Discourse and Cognition [Human Cognitive Processing, 64], ► pp. 213 ff. DOI logo
Ionin, Tania & Eve Zyzik
2014. Judgment and Interpretation Tasks in Second Language Research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 34 ► pp. 37 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Grammatical Aspects of Heritage Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 579 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue