The use of generic subjects by Romanian heritage language speakers in multilingual contexts
The use of generic subjects by Romanian heritage language speakers in multilingual contexts

Summary/Abstract: This study examines the use of plural nouns in generic contexts among heritage speakers of Romanian growing up in an English-dominant context in Canada and acquiring French as a third language through the French Immersion program. Building on cross-linguistic research on genericity, we investigate whether these children produce target-like plural noun forms in Romanian compared to English and French, and whether their performance reflects cross-linguistic influence or factors tied to heritage language maintenance. Sixteen heritage Romanian children and five Romanian-dominant controls completed elicitation tasks in all three languages, testing both generic and specific contexts. Statistical analyses revealed significant differences across languages, with Romanian showing the lowest accuracy, particularly in generic contexts, and English showing near-target performance. These results provide new empirical evidence from a rarely studied population, highlighting the vulnerability of heritage morphosyntax to dominant-language structural patterns. The findings underscore the importance of heritage language input and the potential for typologically related languages, such as French, to support heritage language maintenance.

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