COMPLEX KNOWLEDGE OF COMPLEX SENTENCES: A REVIEW OF PASSIVES IN HERITAGE SPANISH
COMPLEX KNOWLEDGE OF COMPLEX SENTENCES: A REVIEW OF PASSIVES IN HERITAGE SPANISH

Summary/Abstract: Passive sentences in Spanish come in different varieties and present complexity at the syntactic, seman-tic and morphological level. This study reviews research showing that child and adult heritage speakersof Spanish develop basic knowledge of these complex sentences early on, even when these are not veryfrequent in spoken input, but they may be less efficient than baseline speakers interpreting differentword orders, gender agreement, the semantics of the by-phrase, and the aspectual interpretation of thecopulas ser and estar. Accuracy with the production and comprehension of passives is related to profi-ciency in the heritage language, and literacy experience enhances the acquisition of all the complexitiesof verbal passives in Spanish.

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