On the production of preterite vs. imperfect distinctions in child heritage Spanish in contact with English

This thesis examines the acquisition of past tense morphology among simultaneous Spanish-English bilingual children living in the American Midwest. Tense and aspect lie at the syntax-semantics interface and are difficult for bilinguals and L2 learners (Cuza, 2010a, 2010b; Cuza, Pérez-Tattam, Barajas, Miller & Sadowski, forthcoming; Silva-Corvalán, 1994; 2003) but not for monolingual children (Hernández-Pina, 1984). This cross-sectional study explores the production of tense and aspect with different combinations of predicate and situation type in order to more accurately describe the acquisition process. Results from a controlled production task suggest interrupted acquisition of tense and aspect upon entering schooling. We later see what appears to be transfer from English around the time that language dominance switches to English, evidenced by an almost exclusive use of the preterite morpheme to denote pastness. With age accuracy improves, but the older children still overextend the preterite somewhat. In contrast to previous research (Polinsky, 2011), it appears that Spanish-English bilingual children may not experience a steady decline in minority language proficiency throughout the lifespan. Similarities between these children\u27s data and existing L2 production data are also discussed