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 Advances in Spanish
as a Heritage
Language
S TUD IES IN BI L INGUAL ISM

edited by
Diego Pascual y Cabo

49

john benjamins
publishing company
Advances in Spanish as a Heritage Language
Studies in Bilingualism (SiBil)
issn 0928-1533
The focus of this series is on psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of
bilingualism. This entails topics such as childhood bilingualism, psychological
models of bilingual language users, language contact and bilingualism, maintenance
and shift of minority languages, and socio-political aspects of bilingualism.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/sibil

Editors
Jason Rothman Ludovica Serratrice
University of Reading & Universty of Reading
UiT, the Artic University of Norway

Advisory Editorial Board

Sarah Bernolet Aafke Hulk Monika S. Schmid
Ghent University University of Amsterdam University of Essex
Ellen Bialystok Judith F. Kroll Darren Tanner
York University Pennsylvania State University University of Illinois Urbana
Elma Blom Tanja Kupisch Champaign
Utrecht University University of Konstanz Enlli Thomas
Kees de Bot Terje Lohndal Bangor University
University of Groningen Norwegian University of Ianthi Maria Tsimpli
Marc Brysbaert Science and Technology Cambridge University
Ghent University Gigi Luk Sharon Unsworth
Cécile De Cat Harvard University Radboud University Nijmegen
University of Leeds Viorica Marian Marilyn Vihman
Annick De Houwer Northwestern University University of York
University of Erfurt Loraine K. Obler Li Wei
Cheryl Frenck-Mestre CUNY University College London
Aix-Marseille Université Johanne Paradis Marit Westergaard
Belma Haznedar University of British Columbia UiT, the Artic University of
Bogaziçi University Michael T. Putnam Norway
Erika Hoff Pennsylvania State University Stefanie Wulff
Florida Atlantic University Ute Römer University of Florida
Georgia State University

Volume 49
Advances in Spanish as a Heritage Language
Edited by Diego Pascual y Cabo
Advances in Spanish
as a Heritage Language

Edited by

Diego Pascual y Cabo

Texas Tech University

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Amsterdam / Philadelphia
 TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8

the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence

of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

doi 10.1075/sibil.49
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2016014931 (print) / 2016024988 (e-book)
isbn 978 90 272 4191 7 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6687 3 (e-book)

© 2016 – John Benjamins B.V.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com
To Teo and Pau, my favorite heritage speakers
 Table of contents

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction
Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research 1
Diego Pascual y Cabo

Unit I: Formal approaches to Spanish as a Heritage Language

Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition:
Bridges for pedagogically oriented research 13
Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo
A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 27
Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock
On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 51
Rajiv Rao
Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late
Spanish-English bilinguals 81
Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating
Losing your case? Dative experiencers in Mexican Spanish and heritage
speakers in the United States 99
Silvina Montrul

Unit II: Educational approaches to Spanish as a heritage language

Current issues in Spanish heritage language education 127
Kim Potowski
Advances in Spanish heritage language assessment:
Research and instructional considerations 143
Sara M. Beaudrie
A general framework and supporting strategies for teaching mixed classes 159
Maria M. Carreira
 Advances in Spanish as a heritage language

Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners:

An interdisciplinary endeavor 177
María Luisa Parra
Heritage language healing? Learners’ attitudes and damage control in a
heritage language classroom 205
Ana Sánchez-Muñoz

Unit III: Future lines of development in heritage language education

Emerging trends with heritage language instructional practices:
Advances and challenges 221
Marta Fairclough
New directions in heritage language pedagogy: Community service-learning
for Spanish heritage speakers 237
Kelly Lowther Pereira
Heritage language learning in study abroad: Motivations, identity work,
and language development 259
Rachel L. Shively
Online courses for heritage learners: Best practices and lessons learned 281
Florencia Giglio Henshaw
Flipping the classroom: A pedagogical model for promoting
heritage language writing skills 299
Julio Torres

Afterword
Looking ahead 325
Maria Polinsky
Author Index 347
Subject Index 351
 Acknowledgements

The final product that you see here today is nothing, if not the result of a team effort.
Contributions have been many and varied: be it with a chapter, with a review, with
mentoring, with editorial support, or even with time to help me brainstorm solu-
tions for various challenges. Among many others, I am indebted to Dalila Ayoun, Sara
Beaudrie, Melissa Bowles, Barbara Bullock, Jennifer Cabrelli Amaro, José C ­ amacho,
María Carreira, Cecilia Colombi, Maite Correa, Alex Cuza, Ana de Prada Pérez,
Laura Domínguez, Idoia Elola, Anna María Escobar, Marta Fairclough, Josh Frank,
Kim Geeslin, David Giancaspro, Florencia Giglio Henshaw, Inmaculada Gómez Soler,
Susan Hendriks, Claudia Holguín, Mike Iverson, Jill Jegerski, Olga Kagan, Gregory
Keating, Tanja Kupisch, Jennifer Leeman, Juana Liceras, Amalia Llombart, Gillian
Lord, Kelly Lowther Pereira, Andrew Lynch, Silvina Montrul, Julia Oliver Rajan, María
Luisa Parra, Masha Polinsky, Kim Potowski, Rajiv Rao, Leah Roberts, Ana Roca, Jason
Rothman, Liliana Sánchez, Ana Sánchez Muñoz, Ludovica Serratrice, Rachel Shively,
Carmen Silva-Corvalán, Marta Tecedor, Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, Julio Torres,
Ianthi Maria Tsimpli, Kees Vaes, Guadalupe Valdés, Elena Valenzuela, Bill VanPatten,
Damián Vergara Wilson, and Eve Zyzik.
I am also grateful to my students and colleagues at Texas Tech University. Particu-
larly, I am thankful for the assistance provided by Josh de la Rosa Prada and Cheryl
Maqueda during the laborious editing process. Most notably, I’d like to thank Erin
Collopy, chair of the Department, for her continuous support on this and on many
other projects. I feel mostly indebted to Lloyd Allred, James Lemon, Theresa Madrid,
and Stephanie Santos whose help and patience towards me these last few years have
been comforting and unfailing.
Finally, I wish to thank Laurie, my beloved wife, whose companionship, support,
and advice I most cherish and value.
 Charting the past, present, and future of
Spanish heritage language research

Diego Pascual y Cabo

Texas Tech University

In September of 2014, coinciding with the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month,

the United States Census Bureau published a news release reporting that the Hispanic1
population had reached the 54 million people mark. By mid-2016, that number had
already increased to over 55 million people. And this growing trend is not expected
to slow down anytime soon since large numbers of Hispanics continue to relocate in
US territory. Considerably faster than what had been previously estimated, this figure
establishes the US as the second largest Hispanic community in the world (only after
Mexico with approximately 122 million people).
Unsurprisingly, such demographic changes have had (and will continue to have
in the years to come) a significant and direct repercussion on many spheres of US
society. From economy to politics, from the media to the arts, the Hispanic presence
cannot be denied. Testimony to this is the large number of US Spanish-language
television networks, radio-stations, newspapers, and magazines that have surfaced
to meet the ever-growing demand. Given this backdrop, and in recognizing its
increasing value and universality, Spanish has unquestionably become the US “for-
eign language” of choice across secondary and postsecondary education. For quite
some time now, most students have been choosing to study Spanish over French or
German not just as a way to fulfill their foreign language requirements, but as a prac-
tical investment that will translate into gains in tomorrow’s job market (see e.g., Gar-
cía, 2009). Regrettably, a somewhat different scenario – one of language loss across
generations – is observed among large numbers of Hispanic immigrants and their
offspring. In addition to the natural shift that generally takes place around the 3rd
generation (e.g., Klee & Lynch, 2009), many newcomers choose to abandon impor-
tant aspects of their heritage, including their traditions, their lifestyle, and their lan-
guage to speed up the process of acculturation (e.g., Niño-Murcia & Rothman, 2008;

. Herein, the terms Hispanic or Latino are used interchangeably, with no distinction and
without any negative connotation.

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.01pas
© 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company
 Diego Pascual y Cabo

Potowski, 2010). ­Furthermore, other reasons accounting for such language loss
include, but are not limited to the barrage of political discourses that delegitimize
immigrant languages/cultures and the internalization of prejudiced assimilative-
ideologies in the face of the prevalent ­American monolingualism/monoculturalism
(e.g., Pavlenko, 2002). For example, cases such as the English Only Movement dur-
ing the 1980s or the more recent Arizona ­anti-immigrant law have only worsened
the already rather negative feelings and the stigma associated to this language and
its users (e.g., Potowski, 2010).
That said, as early as the 1970s but especially in the 1980s, scholars such as
Roca, Valdés, Zentella and colleagues were instrumental in articulating convincing
arguments regarding the overall positive value of (Spanish-English) bilingualism,
biculturalism, and biliteracy in the US. Since then, there has been an exponen-
tial increase in the number of studies and publications focusing on this important
­topic.2 As a whole, this still-developing line of inquiry has raised questions regarding
social, linguistic, and educational inclusion, which in turn have allowed for the field
to significantly move forward. While still gaining insights into what bilingualism
and biculturalism really mean (e.g., Crawford, 1992; Piller, 2001), we are now more
familiar with what future directions to take and what the challenges that we need
to overcome are. For example, in addition to the purely linguistic concerns, it is of
crucial need that we become more attuned with linguistic attitudes and ideologies
(e.g., Rivera Mills, 2012), linguistic identity (e.g., Leeman, 2012), social inclusion
(e.g., Fairclough, 2005) as well as with language policy and planning (e.g., Martinez,
2012). Creating, developing and fomenting awareness of these issues can translate
into increased access to and opportunities for maintaining home/minority dialects
(e.g., Rivera Mills, 2012).
Supported and fortified by this enriched understanding, growing numbers of
higher-ed institutions as well as high schools across the nation are pushing towards the
inclusion of Spanish courses for native/bilingual/heritage speakers in their curricula.
Recent changes in this respect have been nothing short of exceptional.3 For example,
it should be noted that while in the 1990’s only approximately 18% of higher-ed insti-
tutions in the US offered courses this particular population, this percentage rose to

. For an overview of scholarship on Spanish in the US, we refer the reader to Roca (2000),
Colombi & Roca (2003), Lipski (2008) and Beaudrie & Fairclough (2012).
. In fact, the Hispanic youth, as the largest and youngest minority ethnic group in the US, is
being particularly targeted on many fronts, not just linguistically (Carreira & Beeman, 2014),
since by force of numbers alone, the kinds of adults these young Latinos become will help
shape the kind of society America becomes in the 21st century (Taylor, 2009).
 Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research 

almost 40% by 2011 (Beaudrie, 2011, 2012). More recent reports continue to foresee
a bright future for this sort of courses as they continue to grow exponentially all over
the country (Tecedor & Mejia, 2015). Fortunately, these programs are not growing
just in quantity, but also in quality. Little by little, as we become more cognizant of the
issues discussed earlier, we are better able to reach a wider net of Spanish-speaking
­students in many meaningful ways. For example, the expansion rather than replace-
ment approach and the incorporation of seminal principles of linguistic instruction
such as language maintenance, bilingual range expansion, transferring of literacy skills
or engagement with the community are now commonplace in most if not all courses
for native/bilingual speakers (e.g., Valdés, 1997).
Unfortunately, even in this context of (apparent) linguistic headway, not every-
one shares this view. For example, the changing conditions of the current linguistic
panorama pose an important challenge to more traditional understandings of what
language is and/or what it should be. Take for instance Piña-Rosales, Covarrubias,
Segura, and Fernández (2010) guide to speaking Spanish “correctly.” In this publica-
tion, from a dogmatic and normative perspective that permeates from beginning to
end, Piña-Rosales et al. present a number of solutions and strategies to “help” speak-
ers use the Spanish language decorously in the context of the US. As noted by Lynch
and Potowski (2014), such a stand on language is misleading as it reveals not only
indifference to many of the issues involved in language contact situation, but also a
complete disregard to the millions of speakers that are found in such a context. Our
goal herein, and the purpose of this edited volume in general, is a different one: we
aim to provide an objective and linguistically informed view of Spanish in the US,
generally referred to as Spanish as a heritage language, a term on which we expand
below.

1. Spanish as a Heritage Language

The term heritage language is currently used to identify a minority/immigrant language

that differs from the dominant/societal language for any given context (e.g., Fishman,
2006). Justifiably then, those who speak a heritage language are generally referred to as
heritage speakers4 (HS) but have also been called semi-speakers, pseudo-bilinguals, or
incomplete acquirers (Dorian, 1981; Baker & Jones, 1998; Montrul, 2008).

. For a detailed overview of the different features that characterize heritage speakers, and
how these differ from traditional second language learners, we refer the reader to Potowski
and Lynch (2014) as well as to Beaudrie, Ducar and Potowski (2014).
 Diego Pascual y Cabo

As is usually the case for most immigrants, learning the majority language is
­central to a full social integration and professional functioning. Nevertheless, despite
the supremacy of a prevailing societal language, the heritage language continues to be
used to different degrees in the household. Given this, their offspring generally acquire
the heritage language naturally, in the family environment, and from early on. That
said, and despite generalizations, HSs do not represent a homogeneous group. While
it is true that most HSs end up being proficient speakers of the societal language, their
command of the heritage language is generally characterized by a great deal of vari-
ability. That is, while some HSs can use the heritage language fluently and effortlessly,
others struggle when performing basic language functions. Even more drastic is the
case of individuals who have maintained strong cultural ties to the heritage language
but that have no linguistic competence beyond some knowledge of culturally signifi-
cant lexical items. The HS linguistic differences observed are generally accounted for
in Polinsky and Kagan’s (2007) broad and narrow definitions of HS. According to the
broad definition, linguistic competence is not regarded as an essential exclusion crite-
rion and thus, an individual is considered a HS provided that she/he has been able to
maintain strong cultural connections with the heritage culture. The narrow definition
suggests that, in addition to the cultural ties, a HS must have at least minimal commu-
nicative capacity in the heritage language. Given the wide-ranging nature of the work
included in this volume, either definition is adopted according to the specifics goal(s)
of each chapter.
Crucially, the societal imbalance of the languages involved combined with the
age of exposure to the societal language have been shown to be deterministic in
an individual’s linguistic development (e.g., Valdés, 1997; Montrul, 2008). That is,
placement in the abovementioned linguistic continuum depends not only on the
exposure to the heritage language (and to the heritage culture) but also on the tim-
ing of such exposure. In this sense, the term simultaneous bilingual is used to refer
to someone who acquired both languages from birth. Sequential bilinguals, on the
other hand, differ from simultaneous bilinguals in that they first grew up as mono-
lingual speakers of the heritage language. Consistent exposure to the societal lan-
guage does not generally start until around the age of 4/5 years old, coinciding with
the beginning of their formal education. From that moment on, opportunities to use
the heritage language are mostly restricted to the home environment and a gradual
shift in linguistic dominance is generally observed. Except in some very exceptional
cases, eventually blending (both culturally and linguistically) into mainstream
­society is the natural outcome.
From a strictly formal linguistic point of view, the field of Spanish HS bilingualism
has been mainly concerned with examining the nature of HSs’ linguistic k­ nowledge
as their heritage language develops under reduced input conditions (See the work
of Cuza, Montrul, Rothman, Valenzuela among many others). This is of interest to
 Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research 

the linguistic community since, despite the noticeable similarities in the processes
of acquisition (i.e., acquisition takes place from birth and naturalistically), the con-
sensus is that HSs often exhibit differences in their knowledge and use of the heri-
tage language when compared to age-matched monolingual speakers. Although such
­differences have been documented in different domains (e.g., phonetics, phonology,
syntax), the area of morphosyntax seems to be especially vulnerable to c­ rosslinguistic
influence (e.g., Rothman, 2009; Montrul, 2008, 2010, 2016; Pascual y Cabo, 2015). This
particular outcome of language acquisition has been generally referred to under the
umbrella term incomplete acquisition (e.g., Montrul, 2008), but can also be explained
in terms of language attrition or complete acquisition of contact varieties (e.g., Putnam
& Sánchez, 2013; P ­ ascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012).
As noted earlier, the last decades of research have yielded key advances in all
areas of research on Spanish HS bilingualism including, but not limited to, applied
and formal linguistics, sociolinguistics, and educational linguistics. As a result of these
advances, we now have a fundamental knowledge of the main issues involved in the
acquisition, development, and maintenance of Spanish as a heritage language. But, as
the number of Spanish HSs continues to grow, so does our need (as well as our respon-
sibility) for a better understanding of these issues. We hope that this volume, which we
introduce next, is able to capture current debates in the field so as to lead the way to
other questions that future research will need to address.

2. This volume

The present volume focuses on recent developments of Spanish as a heritage language

in the context of the United States, a topic that is approached from two intercon-
nected points of view. First, although in this particular setting, Spanish is a prima facie
­example of a heritage language, it is definitely not the only one (see e.g., Potowski,
2010). In other words, Spanish is but one example of the heritage language phenome-
non and thus, the general contributions included in this volume can also be applicable
to other heritage languages in different contexts such as Turkish in Sweden, or Arabic
in France. Second, while the role of the Spanish-speaking immigrant community in
the US is consistently becoming more noticeable, no one can deny that this minority
group (broadly speaking), and its language as an extension, also suffer from strong
prejudice and stigma (e.g., Parodi, 2008). Interestingly, such strong sentiments are not
repeated, at least not to the same degree, in places such as the United Kingdom or
Australia, even if the majority/minority language combination is held constant. As
is true of all cases of bilingualism, Spanish heritage language development cannot be
fully described or explained without first understanding and then bringing together
all the linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects involved in all of these contexts. However,
 Diego Pascual y Cabo

before such enterprise can be meaningfully undertaken, it is worthwhile to address

these issues separately and exhaustively. Thus, the study of Spanish in this specific
sociolinguistic environment renders this, a topic in dire need of special attention.
Additionally, despite there being a fair amount of scholarship on Spanish as a
­heritage language (e.g., Colombi & Roca, 2003; Roca, 2000; Beaudrie & Fairclough,
2012; Beaudrie, Ducar, & Potowski, 2014; Potowski & Lynch, 2014; Potowski &
Carreira, 2004, 2014; Potowski, 2005; Valdés, 2001), resources that appropriately
combine formal theoretical and experimental studies, classroom oriented research,
and pedagogically oriented insights are not only very limited, but also do not meet
the soaring demands of the field. By bringing together the most recent develop-
ments from all of the abovementioned angles of orientation, we aim to lessen this
gap in the literature.
A central feature of this volume is our commitment to provide state-of-the-art
research on Spanish HS bilingual development from a variety of perspectives and
theoretical backgrounds. With this, we aim not only to inform those readers inter-
ested in Spanish as a heritage language, but also to serve as a reference tool upon
which other scholars and practitioners can advance the field further. To achieve
this goal, we have specially commissioned all chapters presented herein, bringing
together therefore the work of a total of 21 HS specialists. To ensure the quality
of the volume, a total of 42 reviews were solicited. We are indebted to the follow-
ing reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions: Ann Abbott (Univer-
sity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Evelyn Duran (Lehman College), Vanessa
Elias (Indiana University), Idoia Elola (Texas Tech University), Maria Fionda
(University of M ­ ississippi), Josh Frank (University of Texas, Austin), Isabel Gib-
ert Escofet (Universitat Rovira I Virgili), Florencia Giglio Henshaw (University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Inmaculada Gómez Soler (University of Memphis),
­Nicholas Henriksen (University of Michigan), Mike Iverson (Indiana University,
­Bloomington), Jill Jegerski (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Alejandro
Lee (Central Washington University), Verónica Loureiro Rodríguez (University of
Manitoba), Kelly Lowther Pereira (University of North Carolina, Greensboro), Dalia
Magaña (University of California, Merced), Joanne Markle LaMontagne (University
of Toronto), Trudie McEvoy (University of Arizona), Kim Potowski (University of
Illinois, Chicago), Ana de Prada Pérez (University of Florida), Rajiv Rao (University
of Wisconsin, Madison), Alegría Ribanedeira (Colorado State University, Pueblo),
Josh de la Rosa Prada (Texas Tech University), Rebeca Ronquest (North ­Carolina
State University), Francisco Salgado (CUNY, College of Staten Island), María
Spicer-Escalante (Utah State University), Cathy Stafford (University of Wisconsin,
­Madison), Michael Tallon (University of the Incarnate Word), Greg Thompson
(Brigham Young University), Julio Torres (University of California, Irvine), Damian
 Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research 

Vergara Wilson (University of New Mexico), Daniel Villa (New Mexico State Uni-
versity), and Alvaro Villegas (University of Central Florida).
As previously discussed, the 16 chapters included in the remainder of this
­volume address several lines of research, all pertaining to the overarching theme
of Spanish as a heritage language. These chapters are organized into 3 thematic
units, with each one introduced by top scholars in their respective subfields of
study. The first unit, “Formal Approaches to the Study of Spanish Heritage Speaker
­Bilingualism” is introduced by Jason Rothman, Ianthi Tsimpli, and Diego Pascual
y Cabo (­Chapter 2). Included in this section are empirical and theoretical explora-
tions of the incorporation of corpus data as a new form of observation for character-
izing the ­Spanish of heritage speakers in the United States (Chapter 3 by ­Jacqueline
Almeida Toribio & Barbara Bullock); nuclear tonal configurations based on utter-
ance type and pragmatic meaning (Chapter 4 by Rajiv Rao); relative clause attach-
ment preferences (Chapter 5 by Jill Jegerski, Gregory Keating, & Bill VanPatten);
and structural simplification and case erosion with respect to dative experiencer
verbs (­Chapter 6 by Silvina Montrul). Kim Potowski introduces the second unit of
the volume entitled “Educational Approaches to Spanish as a Heritage Language”
(Chapter 7). Some of the discussions included within this unit relate to academic
placement of heritage language learners (Chapter 8 by Sara Beaudrie); attending to
the needs of heritage language learners in mixed classrooms (­Chapter 9 by María
Carreira); the relationship between Spanish heritage language education and iden-
tity (­Chapter 10 by María Luisa Parra); and linguistic attitudes towards the heri-
tage language (­Chapter 11 by Ana Sánchez Muñoz). Marta Fairclough (­Chapter 12)
is responsible for the i­ntroduction of the third and last unit of the volume. The
main goal of this unit is to provide the reader with a sense of what future lines of
development within heritage language instruction are likely to be as well as what
the advantages and/or challenges of these practices might look like. The discus-
sions included within this unit are the incorporation of community engagement/
service learning in the heritage language curriculum (Chapter 13 by Kelly Lowther
Pereira); heritage language learners and the study abroad experience (Chapter 14 by
Rachel Shively); the use of 100% online courses to teach heritage language learners
(­Chapter 15 by ­Florencia Giglio H ­ enshaw), and the implementation of the flipped-
classroom approach (Chapter 16 by Julio Torres).
To conclude the volume, an afterword by Maria Polinsky presents an integrated
summary of the main ideas discussed within these units and addresses the future
development of the field both in terms of research and instructional practices.
It is our hope that the diversity of approaches included herein as well as the ideas
presented provide a valuable resource for researchers, students, and professionals
working in diverse areas of Spanish as a heritage language.
 Diego Pascual y Cabo

References

Baker, C., & Jones, S. P. (1998). Encyclopedia of bilingualism and bilingual education. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Beaudrie, S. (2011). Spanish heritage language programs: A snapshot of current programs in the
Southwestern United States. Foreign Language Annals, 44(2), 321–337.
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unit i

Formal approaches to Spanish as a

Heritage Language
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage
language acquisition
Bridges for pedagogically oriented research

Jason Rothman1,2, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli3 &

Diego Pascual y Cabo4
1University of Reading / 2UiT, The Arctic University of Norway /
3University of Cambridge / 4Texas Tech University

The goal of this chapter is to lay out the central themes of heritage language
acquisition research adopting a formal/theoretical linguistic perspective.
Specifically, we aim to provide a detailed discussion of the nature of heritage
language grammars. In doing so, we will address the debates on how to explain
heritage speaker competence differences from monolingual baselines and more.
This chapter will not be limited to discussions of Spanish as a heritage language,
but rather will highlight the important role that Spanish has played and will
continue to play in the development of heritage language acquisition studies.
Finally, we will offer some comments/insights on how the information covered
regarding the formal linguistic properties of heritage speaker knowledge should
be considered for and implemented in heritage language pedagogies and thus
dealing with heritage speakers in the classroom setting.

1. Introduction

As is true of all cases of language acquisition, Heritage Language (HL) acquisition can
be studied from multiple traditions. The questions that motivate research programs
from different perspectives are therefore necessarily destined to be only partially
overlapping. The fields of study to which this book makes a significant contribution
illuminate this statement. Although there is a justifiable need for some level of inde-
pendence between (abstract) theory and practice, strict independence in HL studies
runs antithetical to everyone’s goals. It is fair to say that researchers interested in HL
pedagogy would achieve better results if their endeavours built on knowledge obtained
from HL acquisition in naturalistic contexts. Equally, heritage language development
in the classroom setting provides an indispensable testing laboratory for questions and
hypotheses formulated by formal linguistic HL theorists. The connections that the two

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.02rot
© 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

sides should have cannot be overstated. However, at present, there is little ­connection
between formal linguistic and pedagogically oriented HL researchers, despite compel-
ling reasons to the contrary. Within this context, the purpose of this chapter is three-
fold: (i) to provide the reader with a brief introduction to formal linguistic studies of
heritage language acquisition; (ii) to serve as a bridge between the two subfields of
study so as to invite greater collaboration as we have laid out the need for above; and
(iii) to introduce the chapters included in this unit.
Formal linguistic studies examining HL acquisition in the “wild” have mostly
focused on describing the grammatical competence of adult heritage speakers, and
on theorizing about how/why these grammars developed in the ways they did.
That is, formal linguistic studies look at the (mostly adult) outcomes of ­naturalistic
­language acquisition in a very specific sociolinguistic situation that defines the
parameters of HL bilingualism. In the past decade or so, there has been a prolifera-
tion of research of this type. On the whole, this research has consistently shown
that HL bilinguals – especially under favourable conditions of access to ample input
of high quality – have sophisticated HL grammars; however, they are to various
degrees and in various domains significantly different from age-matched mono-
linguals (see e.g., Montrul, 2008, this volume; Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky,
2013 for review). Details aside for now, such a consistent result is very appealing to
formal linguists for the conundrum it presents. After all, HL bilinguals are native
speakers of the HL since, like monolinguals, they acquired the HL naturalistically
in early childhood (see Rothman & ­Treffers-Daller, 2014). So, why should they be
significantly different from monolingual controls? There are obvious variables that
will at least partially factor into any reasonable ultimate answer to this question. For
example, the fallacy of comparing bilinguals and monolinguals (e.g., Bley-Vroman,
1983), the role of formal education and literacy in monolingual knowledge, the
comparability of the quantities and qualities of the inputs each group receives are
all factors which could contribute to differences of HL speakers from monolingual
controls (see Pascual y Cabo & R ­ othman, 2012 for discussion). Equally clear, how-
ever, is that none of the aforementioned variables alone or even in combination
would explain the range of differences seen in HL competences. For the theoretical
linguist then, HL bilinguals in the “wild” provide a naturally occurring laboratory
to test important questions of considerable debate. For example: (i) Under reduced
input, what parts of grammar seem particularly robust and what parts of grammar
are more affected? (ii) What does this reveal about the nature of language and its
mental constitution? (iii) What do HL bilingual outcomes tell us about the nature
vs. nurture debates in linguistics?
More pedagogically focused studies of HL acquisition necessarily focus on
other questions, precisely because they deal with similar sets of bilinguals outside
of the “wild.” In a way, HL bilinguals in the classroom are a proper subset of all HL
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

­ ilinguals since they necessarily include only those that seek formal training and
b
literacy of the HL. By definition, assuming the focus is on the traditional ques-
tions, formal linguistic researchers have tended not to be primarily interested in
what happens in the classroom context since the classroom itself constitutes an
additional, specific variable (but see, e.g., Montrul & Bowles, 2010). Such a mind-
set, however, has largely resulted in a missed opportunity for the typical formal
linguist. Studies in the classroom setting, when carefully constructed, could be very
productive towards adjudicating between various proposals of how and why heri-
tage grammars differ from monolingual ones, a point to which we will return in
greater detail. Classroom HL studies must deal with a different reality than formal
linguistic studies do. As is true of all language classrooms, the HL classroom brings
together a heterogeneous population. Even though all students are HL bilinguals,
it is very unlikely that any given cohort will be of the same linguistic proficiency
level. This heterogeneity produces linguistic challenges similar to those of the L2
classroom. Pedagogically oriented HL studies often seek to examine what particular
interventions do for HL bilinguals, what their specific needs are, and the like. In
this respect, HL pedagogy can shed light on the areas of HL grammar which are
more vulnerable, benefit more or less from intervention, and, perhaps, belong more
to the periphery than to the core.
Ideally, a mutually beneficial relationship could exist between pedagogically
oriented treatments of HL acquisition and formal descriptions from the HL. For
example, specific classroom interventions designed on the basis of what formal
­linguistic studies reveal about HL competence can test theoretical questions within
language pedagogy. A very good example of such good practice can be seen in
Potowski, Jegerski and Morgan Short’s (2009) study of the development of past sub-
junctive in Heritage bilingual Spanish, using testing between two teaching meth-
odologies. Our point here is not to suggest that there are no connections between
formal linguistic and pedagogical oriented approaches to HL bilingualism, but
rather that there is room for more profitable and more pervasive connections. For
such connections to be maximally beneficial, an open dialogue of understand-
ing must be established. This means that formal linguistic discussions need to be
accessible to HL pedagogy by presenting the research itself and the debates within
their sub-field in an appropriate and theory-neutral way. The main purpose of this
­chapter, then, is a concise first attempt at building this bridge. Beyond briefly cover-
ing the basics of what formal linguistic studies have described related to HL bilin-
gual grammars as well as the theoretical positions within formal linguistic theory
on how and why HL grammars take the shape they do, we will inject our views
in terms of what is at stake from a formal linguistic perspective related to these
positions. Specifically, we will discuss the consequences of the terminology that
derives from such perspective for pedagogically oriented researchers and teachers.
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

We see this discussion as the first building block of the bridge between formal HL
approaches and HL pedagogy in view of the possible far-reaching i­ mplications that
clarity and specificity in theoretical approaches can bring to the implementation
of research in teaching practice. In particular, misunderstanding findings which
reveal HS differences from monolingual norms can promote a pedagogical point
of departure that is unintended by formal linguists as it is linguistically inaccurate.
Similarly, the view of “fixing” heritage grammars from a broken state to an unbro-
ken one via pedagogical intervention in no way derives from formal linguistic con-
cepts or ­empirical data sets.

2. F
 ormal linguistic approaches to HL bilingualism: The data trends
and the debates

2.1 Who qualifies as a HL bilingual?

As pointed out in the introductory chapter of this volume, it is perhaps prudent to
start this section by defining what a HL bilingual is taken to be in the context of
(most) formal linguistic studies. It might seem evident that all researchers would
agree on and thus use the same profile characteristics when determining which indi-
viduals qualify as HL bilinguals. However, this is not immediately clear in practice.
Indeed, for certain purposes and research questions, a broad, inclusive definition
might be useful. For example, a HL learner – note that learner is used ­purposefully –
might be anyone who has (strong) familial ties to a particular language and/or
­culture, for example, a second or third generation Korean-American. This person
might not speak Korean, but has been somewhat exposed to the language indirectly
all her life and very much brought up in the traditional culture. Under a situation
where this individual matriculates in a Korean class at University-level, understand-
ing that this individual brings motivations and some linguistic/cultural knowledge
that the non-Korean-descendant learner has is useful and might justify treating this
person as a HL learner for teaching and pedagogically-oriented research purposes.
However, given the questions that formal linguistic studies focus on, such an indi-
vidual is not a HL bilingual, at least not in the sense we typically understand for
heritage speakers. A heritage speaker (HS) – emphasis on the speaker – usually refers
to HL bilinguals that have – to various degrees – naturally acquired communicative
competence in the HL.
Within the framework of formal linguistics which seeks to describe and explain
the grammar of HSs, some grammatical competence in the HL is presupposed.
Thus, despite the fact that different formal linguistic studies examine various levels
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

of HS ­proficiency – usually assessed in comparison to age-matched monolinguals

(see P­ ascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012; Putnam & Sanchez, 2013; Bullock & Toribio,
this volume for issues with this practice) all these studies investigate speakers of a
HL acquired naturalistically in a home setting. Although various formal linguistic
­definitions of HS and HL exist (see e.g., Montrul, 2008; Benmamoun et al., 2013), we
offer the one below taken from Rothman (2009) as the one we follow herein, noting
that all available definitions accord with the basic characterizing descriptors.
A language qualifies as a heritage language if it is a language spoken at home
or otherwise readily available to young children, and crucially this language is
not a dominant language of the larger (national) society…. the heritage language
is acquired on the basis of an interaction with naturalistic input and whatever
in-born linguistic mechanisms are at play in any instance of child language
acquisition. Differently [from monolingual acquisition], there is the possibility
that quantitative and qualitative differences in heritage language input, influence
of the societal majority language and differences in literacy and formal education
can result in what on the surface seems to be arrested development of the heritage
language or attrition in adult bilingual knowledge. (Rothman, 2009: 156)

In light of the above, we can summarize a HS as a bilingual speaker of the HL who

developed knowledge of the HL naturalistically. A HS is either a simultaneous bilin-
gual (2L1) of both the HL and the societal language or initially a monolingual of the
HL who became an early child L2 learner of the societal language. More often than
not, the HS becomes dominant in the societal language, which often corresponds to
the sole language of her formal education throughout her lifespan and the language
in which she primarily socializes outside the home, starting in early childhood. As
obvious as it should be that eventual dominance in the societal language does not
change the fact that the HSs are L1 acquirers of the HL (uniquely or the HL is one of
two L1s), it is not always clear that HSs are treated, as they should be, as a sub-type of
native speakers of the L1 (see Leal Mendez, Rothman & Slabakova, 2015; Rothman &
Treffers-Daller, 2014).

2.2 What do formal linguistic studies reveal?

Rather than delve into too many details with respect to individual data sets, we will
endeavour to concisely explain the general trends that formal linguistic research has
revealed with respect to HS competence. Inevitably, this means we will oversimplify
complex issues. We refer the reader to two sources that comprise in-depth and accessi-
ble state-of-the-science reviews of much of the empirical work on formal linguistic HS
studies that are very exhaustive to the date of their publications, (a) Montrul (2015),
and (b) Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky (2013).
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

A survey of HS studies overwhelmingly shows that HS competence tends to differ

from matched monolinguals in the following ways:

1. HL grammatical competence and performance differ from monolingual norms to

various degrees in various domains.
2. HSs often show partial knowledge as opposed to an utter lack of knowledge.
3. Heritage language competences can differ significantly from one another whereby
some are much more “proficient” holistically (and in various domains) than
others.

Observation (1) refers to the fact that HSs often perform on a continuum across dif-
ferent domains of grammar. For example, generally speaking HSs tend to show better
conformity in the phonological domain than in some areas of morphology and syntax
(but see Rao, this volume). We could further divide trends within a single domain.
Within morpho-syntax, for example, it has been observed that HSs are more likely
to parallel monolingual native speaker knowledge in core syntactic properties as
opposed to interface-conditioned properties (e.g., Sorace, 2011). Take for example,
gender assignment and agreement. In Spanish, assignment/agreement of gender is
both a lexical and syntactic property. Gender assignment on the noun itself is a lexical
process that specifies the gender value (masculine or feminine for Spanish) as part of
the entry of the word. Gender agreement within the D(eterminer) P(hrase) involves
the matching process of the lexical gender feature of the noun with the gender features
of articles, demonstratives quantifiers and adjectives that co-occur with that noun.
This matching process is a syntactic operation with morphological and phonological
implications on the form of all the agreeing items (e.g., ‘el’ vs. ‘la’ etc). HSs are accurate
with gender agreement, meaning the syntax of gender is in place, whereas they have
some issues with lexical gender assignment (see Montrul, Foote & Perpiñán, 2008).
Observation (2) seemingly overlaps with the final example offered for observa-
tion (1). That is, HSs often show partial knowledge of particular properties of gram-
mar as opposed to utter lack of knowledge. Consider subjunctive mood in Spanish.
Unlike English, Spanish has a complex system of mood encoded in specific mor-
phology on the verb. HSs of Spanish exhibit differences from monolingual Spanish
speakers with use of subjunctive mood morphology (e.g., Montrul, 2009; Montrul &
Perpiñán, 2011). However, some uses of the subjunctive are much more variable than
others. In fact, HSs at high levels of proficiency are quite accurate with the subjunc-
tive when it is syntactically obligatory, as is the case with volitional contexts intro-
duced with the verb querer ‘to want’ (e.g., Pascual y Cabo, Lingwall, & Rothman
2012). In other contexts where the subjunctive is possible but not obligatory and in
which the choice of indicative vs. subjunctive depends on semantic-pragmatic prop-
erties, HSs tend to differ more significantly from monolingual controls. In a study
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

comparing subjunctive mood in purpose clauses (i.e. after para que ‘in order to’) with
relative clauses where the use of subjunctive depends on the absence of presupposi-
tion, Giancaspro (2014) shows that HSs perform just like native monolinguals in the
former but not in the latter context. This study indicates that at least partial knowl-
edge of subjunctive is available to HSs since in certain (semantic) contexts they too,
like monolingual controls, are sensitive to mood distinctions, while in other contexts
their knowledge differs from that of controls.
Observation (3) refers to the fact that HSs’ knowledge of the HL is not as con-
sistent across individuals as one expects of other sets of native speakers, particularly
monolinguals. This fact is not at all surprising when one considers the continuum of
exposure type (quantity and quality), their individual patterns of use of the HL, the level
of literacy they have in the HL, the status of the HL in the society in which they live,
or their access to other speakers of the HL. These differences do not normally pertain
to native monolinguals, at least not in the same way. While we typically do not use
terms like intermediate and advanced levels to describe monolinguals, these terms are
used in HS studies to equate their relative level as compared to matched monolingual
norms. It is worth pointing out that one could, using the same rubric of an idealized
standard comparison, observe such differences across monolinguals (see Dąbrowska,
2012), although this is beyond the scope of this chapter. Suffice it to say, that HSs even
when seemingly under very comparable input conditions do not always show the same
level of conformity that one expects in monolingual contexts. Although variables must
conspire to explain this, it is possible in a HS context to have members of the same fam-
ily differ significantly from one another despite the fact that key indicators such as Socio
Economic Status (SES) that normally explain differences in monolinguals are controlled
for. Proficiency tendencies for particular HL groups, at least in the US where HSs have
been studied most prolifically, have been noted. Whereas Spanish and ­Portuguese HSs
in the US tend to be at the intermediate to advanced proficiency levels, HSs of Russian
and Korean tend to achieve lower levels of proficiency. This observational fact is likely
a by-product of the sociolinguistic realities of particular languages in a particular envi-
ronment. One can imagine that Russian HSs, for example, in another context such as
the Ukraine will differ in this regard to those studied in the US.

2.3 How and why: The debates on sourcing different outcomes

As alluded to above, it is not the case that HSs’ knowledge of the HL is entirely
different from that of monolinguals. Indeed, for some domains of grammar HSs
perform indistinguishably from some monolinguals (e.g., Leal Méndez et al., 2015).
Much of the focus of the field, however, has been on the differences HS grammars
often present. The reason for this is two-fold: (a) differences are abundant enough
to be considered representative and (b) differences are theoretically relevant on
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

v­ arious planes. By abundant, we are referring to the fact that it is not at all difficult to
uncover some degree of difference between native monolinguals and even the most
proficient of HSs at various grammatical points. By significant and theoretically rel-
evant, we are referring to one of the core questions of HS studies from a formal
linguistic perspective: How and why does early naturalistic acquisition of a native
language result in differences between native monolinguals and HS populations in
adulthood? Answers to this question promise to have far-reaching implications for
linguistic and acquisition theories. To name just a few, uncovering the variables that
conspire to explain these differences will shed light on the role input has (e.g., quan-
tity and quality) for acquisition more generally and specifically for the acquisition
of particular properties, on the selectively vulnerable domains of grammar in bilin-
gualism, and on the role of age of acquisition on grammatical outcomes (see Tsimpli,
2014 for a critical overview).
A major focus of formal linguistic HS studies – probably the main source of
debate as well – regards various proposals that attempt to answer the question above
regarding the source of differences between the end-state grammars of monolingual
vs. HS bilingual early native acquisition. Although it is clear that bilingualism itself is
a factor and influence from the societal language – typically the dominant language
of HSs – can explain some of the differences, it is equally apparent that these two
considerations alone or together could not explain the gamut observed. There are
four hypotheses that are formalized in the literature. To our mind, none of them are
mutually exclusive to the others. In other words, it is possible – likely in our view –
that each of these proposals explains in part a subset of the differences and that all
contribute to HS end-state differences.
The first proposal is that arrested development is a main contributor (see
­Montrul, 2008). Arrested development refers to a point in the developmental
sequence of HL acquisition where development ceases, that is, at a point in child
language acquisition short on convergence on the adult variety of the HL. Presum-
ably, arrested development correlates with reductions in input and the start of shifts
in dominance towards the societal language at which point further development in
the HL does not occur. This view is often referred to by the label incomplete acqui-
sition. The general idea of incomplete acquisition is that HSs, for a myriad of rea-
sons, do not fully acquire the HL. The second proposal is that of HL attrition, the
non-pathological loss or erosion of previously acquired linguistic representations
(Polinsky, 2011). The idea is that HSs have acquired a HL grammar not qualitatively
different from monolinguals but with certain properties lost or eroded as the HS
shift in dominance towards the societal language.
Note that both of these proposals, in our view, make some presuppositions about
the input available to HSs. Something can only be incompletely acquired or acquired
and lost – the case of attrition – if the exposure to the HL that the HSs receive
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

­ rovided the cue within the input that could lead to convergence on the monolin-
p
gual variety in the first place. The third proposal, alternatively, focuses more on the
qualitative nature of the input to which HSs are exposed, offering the possibility that
some of the differences in HSs might be traced back to qualitative differences in the
input provided to them by speakers of the HL who themselves might be undergo-
ing attrition or as a result of not having been exposed to certain structures given a
lack of formal education in a standard monolingual variety (Sorace, 2004; Rothman,
2007; Pires & Rothman, 2009; Montrul & Sanchez-Walker, 2013). This approach is
known as input delimited differences in the literature. Under such a view, systematic
differences between HS and monolingual varieties are viewed as dialectal differences.
As such HSs can be said to fully acquire the HL, just a different variety than the one
monolinguals acquire. The fourth proposal is that HSs differences reflect a differ-
ent path of acquisition than monolinguals (Putnam & Sanchez, 2013). Like proposal
three, such a view sidesteps the issue of labelling HS as incomplete. Instead, the idea
is that HS grammars are complete grammars of a different kind than monolinguals.
­Differently from arrested development or attrition, there is no stopping of develop-
ment or reversal. Instead, there is a change in path, which is a point at which HS chil-
dren diverge from monolingual children as they both continue to develop towards a
steady state grammar.
Of these four proposals, the most influential to date has been incomplete acquisi-
tion. The term incomplete acquisition to describe the state of HS grammars is almost
a ubiquitous term. Disentangled from any evaluative meaning that one might assign
to the term, to which we return in the next section, it is clear why this view is the
most accepted. In the first place, provided one accepts the monolingual comparison
against which incompleteness is benchmarked, it is descriptively accurate. Secondly,
if it is used, as it often is, as an umbrella term referring to differences as opposed to
being linked exclusively to arrested development then the other three proposals could
be subsumed under it as contributing factors that give rise to incomplete acquisition.
Although no linguists who have used this term – ourselves included historically – have
intended to convey any evaluative innuendo, it is not clear that this term is either
descriptively accurate or especially useful for non-linguists (see Pascual y Cabo &
Rothman, 2012 for discussion). In the next section, we will develop this further, spe-
cifically linked to how it relates to HL classrooms.

3. The classroom is not a locus of completion

As stated from the outset, our goals herein are to summarize the research that formal
linguists have carried out and link this research to scholarship and practice in HL
pedagogy. We now turn to our second goal.
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

Formal linguistic studies can contribute to HL pedagogy if there is properly con-

textualized dissemination and translation of findings, specifically for pedagogically
oriented purposes. Formal linguistic studies provide descriptions of loci of differences
between monolinguals and HSs. For pedagogical purposes, explaining how and why
differences obtain is of little use (unless the source of said differences may be metalan-
guage or literacy development), but knowing what those differences are can be very
useful. Formal linguistic research also endeavours to correlate variables that might
explain why some HSs are relatively less divergent from monolinguals than others.
Knowing how HSs differ from the monolingual standard and which variables reliably
correlate to intragroup differences across HSs of the same HL can facilitate the cre-
ation of empirically-informed pedagogies for HSs of any given HL and also for specific
subsets of HSs of that particular profile.
As just described, one might get the wrong impression that HL education is
meant to complete an incomplete process. In other words, formal linguistic studies
can inform where the “holes” in knowledge are, so that specific interventions can be
designed to fill in the gaps. As always, context is extremely important. In the situa-
tion of a HL classroom, HSs are generally being taught a particular standard variety.
For many, this will also be their first exposure to literacy in the HL. As we see it, HSs
need instruction on ­literacy, the standard grammar, and cultural knowledge. Thus,
HL teaching ought to be viewed as akin to language arts education in monolingual
settings, geared at age and context appropriate levels of maturity, meta-linguistic and
meta-cognitive knowledge. In many places, to be sure, this is happening. A key piece
to the success of educating HSs in their HL is to understand that HSs are not linguisti-
cally broken simply because they are different from monolinguals, and so the goal of
HL education is not to fix them but to consolidate developed or developing knowledge
of the HL. Communicatively competent HSs are native speakers of a dialect of the
HL, however different from a monolingual standard. Seen this way, adult HSs who
take classes in the standard variety of the HL might be better viewed as a specific type
of third-language learners, as suggested by Polinsky (2015). In any case, just like the
goal of teaching standard American English across the United States in language arts
classes is not intended to replace dialectal variation, but rather to provide educated
pupils with another variety/register that in certain contexts might be expected and
more appropriate, so too is the case of teaching standardized varieties to HSs.
Formal linguistic studies that repeatedly show differences between HSs and
monolingual norms are simply documenting in real time a naturally occurring pro-
cess of emerging dialect formation. HL speakers are thus speakers of a variety whose
characteristics are primarily defined by bilingualism itself, namely by external factors
(input quality and quantity) that have been repeatedly shown to affect language devel-
opment in bilinguals, and developmental patterns which affect the timing of emer-
gence and mastery of specific phenomena in monolingual and bilingual children alike
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

(­Tsimpli, 2014). As we mentioned, it is because HSs provide a unique glimpse into

processes that are integral to many questions of importance to language and cognitive
sciences that so many formal linguists and psycholinguists have studied them in the
past two decades in particular. In our choice of labels, such as incomplete acquisi-
tion, we might have given the impression that the job of HS teaching is to complete a
stunted (incomplete) acquisition process. We challenge this approach by suggesting
that a promising relationship between formal linguistics and HL pedagogy is one of
informing what the specific needs are of HSs who already speak a closely related vari-
ety to the new standard one the classroom seeks to provide.
Up to this point, we have addressed two of the three goals we posited at the ­outset
of this chapter: we have provided an introduction to the formal/theoretical study of
heritage speaker bilingual development and we have underscored the importance
of building bridges between theory and practice. Next, to address our final aim, we
­present an integrated summary of the four chapters included in this unit.

4. Reviewing the chapters in this section

Our earlier claim that heritage languages are not incomplete is not meant to deny the
seemingly ever-present differences observed with regards to HS knowledge and use
of the HL (e.g., Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012). Such differences have been docu-
mented in a variety of properties and domains, with those found in the area of mor-
phosyntax being singled out as most vulnerable (e.g., Montrul, 2008, 2010; ­Rothman,
2009; Pascual y Cabo, 2015). Although to date many developments have been made
and have allowed the field to move forward in our understanding of HS bilingual
development, there remain open theoretical and empirical issues which require addi-
tional research. Thus, to further advancements in the field, the four chapters included
in this section analyse new data on a variety of properties and provide different view-
points on current debates.
Additionally, in line with the general spirit of advancement and development that
this v­ olume aims to convey, is the effort to build bridges between different method-
ological approaches, perspectives and even (sub)disciplines. In this sense, Jacqueline
Toribio and Barbara Bullock’s proposal (Chapter 3) aims to close in on the distance
between HL formal/theoretical research and language variation studies by presenting
a corpus-based approach as a new form of observation for characterizing Spanish as
a HL. The integration of this novel approach into the general HL research program
allows for new analyses, which, in turn, can make new and meaningful connections
between the HL, its speakers, and the HL input they are exposed to.
As discussed, while most previous research on HSs has examined knowledge
and use of ­morphosyntactic properties, the areas of phonetics and phonology remain
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

largely understudied (but see e.g., Amengual, 2012; Au, Knightly, Jun & Oh, 2002, Rao,
2014). Filling an important gap in the literature is, therefore, Rajiv Rao’s experimental
study on Spanish HS nuclear tonal configurations (Chapter 4). Rao’s data indicate that
utterance type (statements and questions) and pragmatic meaning influence nuclear
intonation differently for HSs than for native speakers. According to Rao, the differen-
tial nature of the (intonational) input to which HSs are exposed seems to be respon-
sible for the outcomes observed.
In Chapter 5, Jegerski, VanPatten, and Keating examine ambiguous relative clause
attachment preferences among HSs and adult L2 learners. Employing a computerized
off-line sentence interpretation task, they found that while late bilinguals favored a
single attachment strategy in both of their languages, as in Dussias and Sagarra (2007),
heritage bilingual participants exhibited distinct attachment preferences in each of
their languages. Jegerski et al. take this to indicate that early bilinguals may be more
likely to use language-specific sentence comprehension strategies, which is more in
line with a two-processor model of bilingual sentence comprehension.
In an examination of structural simplification and case erosion of Spanish indi-
rect objects and dative experiencer verbs (gustar-like), Silvina Montrul (Chapter 6)
observes that not only HSs, but also first generation immigrants, and (to some extent)
native speakers from the same linguistic background show a tendency to accept
ungrammatical sentences without the required preposition “a.” Consistent with previ-
ous research (e.g., Silva Corvalán, 1994; Pascual y Cabo, 2013; Pires & Rothman, 2009)
she contends that in addition to limited exposure to input during late childhood, the
structural changes observed can also be related to the individual grammars of some of
the HSs’ input providers (i.e., first generation immigrants), who may have undergone
attrition.

5. Some concluding remarks

In an effort to provide a broad base for the discussions that will follow in this the-
matic section, we started our contribution by laying out the central topics and main
research trends in the field of HS acquisition from a formal/theoretical linguistic
perspective. Some of the issues included in this discussion were (i) the definition of
HS, (ii) the differential nature of HS linguistic outcomes, and (iii) the source of the
HS differences. Additionally, we have provided a rationale for linking formal lin-
guistics to HL pedagogical approaches. Specifically, our goal was to raise awareness
about the inadequacy of the label incomplete acquisition to describe the documented
HS competence differences from monolingual baselines on the basis that its use may
encourage unwarranted misinterpretations and misgeneralizations.
Lastly, we have summarized the four chapters included in this section. As we see
it, the w
­ ide-reaching discussions included therein are good examples of the kind of
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

research needed to yield a more fine-grained understanding of the issues of interest to

the field of HS acquisition/bilingual development. To be sure, such an understanding
is needed to continue to gain insights which will shape (and constrain) future research
and practice in the field.

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 A new look at heritage Spanish and
its speakers

Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

The University of Texas

In this chapter we advocate for the value of new forms of observation for
characterizing the Spanish of heritage speakers in the United States. As is widely
recognized, Spanish acquired in bilingual contexts is different from Spanish
acquired in monolingual settings; and, yet, the nature of bilingual U.S. Spanish
has not been adequately documented, even as the field of heritage language
studies advances. Here, we motivate the need to more accurately describe
heritage Spanish and to quantify variation in heritage Spanish speech. More
importantly, we propose a means of doing so; specifically, we endorse a corpus-
based approach, which allows for baselines that are vital in informing heritage
Spanish research.

1. Introduction

In this chapter, we advocate for the value of new forms of observation for character-
izing the Spanish of heritage speakers in the United States. It is largely assumed that
­Spanish acquired in bilingual contexts is different from Spanish acquired in monolin-
gual settings; and, yet, the nature of bilingual U.S. Spanish has not been adequately
­documented. Here, we motivate the need to more accurately describe heritage U.S.
Spanish, and we propose a means of doing so. Specifically, we endorse a corpus-based
approach to the study of heritage Spanish, one that adopts an emic practice in data col-
lection, and introduce the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project (Bullock & Toribio, 2013),
our first step towards involving heritage speakers in recording the continuity and inno-
vations that are manifested in their communities.
A parallel incentive for adopting a corpus-based methodology to heritage Spanish
is to bring heritage language studies in line with other studies of language variation.
As will be demonstrated with reference to Spanish in Texas, the scenario of Spanish in
the U.S. invites us to contemplate questions that remain central in language variation,
particularly the role of language contact, and the Spanish in Texas Corpus permits

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.03tor
© 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company
 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

us to begin to address them. Consider, in this respect, the following examples, which
illustrate what appears to be an innovative extension of the verb agarrar.1
(1) Agarrar + NP
a. Yo me esforcé para agarrar becas. [MF017]
‘I exerted myself to get scholarships.’
b. Agarré mi certificado, y con eso ya empecé. [AF130]
‘I got my certificate, and with that I started.’
c. 
Ellos agarraron esa tradición allá en México y aquí lo hacen todavía
cada año. [AM064]
‘They got that tradition there in México and here they still do it every
year.’
d. ¿Cómo agarraste el trabajo aquí? [AF004]
‘How did you get this job here?’

Is this innovative use of agarrar attributable to contact with English, i.e., is the
­construction calqued on the productive English collocation ‘get + NP’? Does the inno-
vation have consequences elsewhere the grammar, e.g., in the reduction in frequency
or displacement of Spanish-language alternatives? Questions such as these remain
unresolved because of the dearth of data on this variety and on the oral vernacular
from which it developed.
Scholars of U.S. Spanish often base their analyses on observations that are
­sporadic, and as a consequence, they potentially misapprehend the presence of par-
ticular features or constructions. For instance, the semantic extension of agarrar in
(1) may be perceived as an innovation in Texas or U.S. Spanish, when in fact it may
be diffused even among Spanish-speaking monolinguals in Mexico. Conversely, an
especially salient feature, such as the hacer +V sequences in (2), might be imputed as a
wide-spread property of Texas varieties, when it might instead be restricted to a small
network of speakers.
(2) Hacer + VEnglish
a. Mi familia también estaba contenta de mí, cause no hice drop out.
[AF004]
‘My family was also happy with me because I didn’t drop out.’
b. Nos podían hacer discipline más que ahora. [AF006]
‘They could discipine us more than now.’

. The data discussed throughout this paper is drawn from the Spanish in Texas Corpus
(Bullock & Toribio, 2013), one component resource of the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project.
Each example is identified by a unique speaker code, indicating speaker’s place of birth
(Mexico/U.S.A/Other), gender (M/F), and participant number.
 A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

c. Había un niño que me hacía mucho bully porque mi pelo estaba muy
largo. [MF066]
‘There was a boy who bullied me because my hair was very long.’
d. … para que hagamos translate. [AF006]
‘So that we can translate.’

In presenting an accurate portrait of heritage Spanish and rendering heritage Spanish

data relevant to studies of language variation, what is needed are large, representative
corpora with extensive metadata about the speakers and communities.
The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. Section 2, ‘Heritage
­Spanish and its speakers,’ situates our work within sociolinguistics and discuss the
benefits of corpus-based inquiry in the study of heritage lects. Section 3, ‘Documen-
tation,’ ­presents our efforts to document heritage Spanish, beginning with Spanish
speakers in Texas: §3.1 describes heritage speakers’ role in gathering language data
in their communities, §3.2 details the processing and current web presence of the
corpus data, and §3.3 delineates some of the many benefits accrued by the collec-
tion and inspection of authentic language samples. Section 4, ‘Variation,’ discusses
the two above-mentioned collocations – agarrar + NP (§4.1) and hacer + VEnglish
(§4.2) – and demonstrates that a corpus-based approach to investigating these inno-
vations in heritage U.S. Spanish can illuminate enduring questions about language
in the context of language contact. The discussion in §4.3 elaborates on the implica-
tions of our endeavors in this area for how we study and describe heritage language
forms. Section 5 concludes the chapter by summarizing the benefits yielded by cor-
pus-based studies for heritage learner classrooms and communities, for our chosen
­disciplines, and for society more generally.

2. Heritage Spanish and its speakers

Commenting on the multiple dimensions of the study of language in the early ­twentieth
century, Ferdinand de Saussure (1916 [1986: 7]) writes, “In the lives of individuals and
of society, language is a factor of greater importance than any other. For the study
of language to remain solely the business of a handful of specialists would be a quite
unacceptable state of affairs.” Over the past decades, scholars across sub-disciplines of
linguistics have adopted Saussure’s position and sought out ways to open up discus-
sions of language, inspiring all speakers – learners, parents, practitioners, and layper-
sons alike – to an appreciation of the importance of the study of social and ethnic
lects. As one example, Walt Wolfram’s pioneering efforts on sociolinguistic variation in
North Carolina have prompted popular conversations on historical and cultural legacy
and laid the foundation for lasting impact with innovations in K-16 curricula. And in
 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

California, Guadalupe Valdés has made significant strides in engaging with elective
and circumstantial second-language learners and their parents and teachers to design
pedagogical practices that support and supplement the learners’ multiple repertoires
as well as advance the development of standards that adequately reflect the richness of
the lects that learners possess.
Outside of sociolinguistics (Wolfram) and educational linguistics (Valdés), the
fields of Heritage Language Studies and Hispanic Linguistics continue to struggle
with documentation and evaluation of heritage Spanish. With some exceptions –
among them, Ana Celia Zentella, María Carreira, and Kimberly Potowski – linguists
have done little to promote public discussion or to provide advocacy on behalf of her-
itage Spanish learners or opportunities for learners to speak for themselves. Instead,
much energy has been devoted to what Valdés has called the challenges of ‘curricu-
larizing’ heritage language in line with foreign language studies. The there lies in the
need to identify a prescribed Spanish language norm (typically the elevated norma
culta) and to correct deviations from it. This approach neglects the resource that is
precisely the linguistic variation that heritage learners bring into the classroom, and
it wholly disregards the learners’ need to understand and deploy diverse, often non-
sanctioned language forms in managing their everyday interactions in the communi-
ties they inhabit.
Alternatively, heritage speakers’ linguistic systems have been the object of con-
trolled on-line or off-line experimental tasks, where their speech patterns, judgments,
repetitions, reaction times, eye-movements, summarizing etc. are compared to those
of monolingual native speakers and advanced second-language learners. In these stud-
ies, heritage speakers consistently demonstrate between-group behaviors that distin-
guish them from each of the other Spanish-speaking study populations, a finding that
is most commonly attributed to their language status – ‘heritage speaker’, understood
as a macro-variable. Of equal interest, however, is how these heritage speakers differ
from each other, and how they differ from one speech context to the next. If we are
to understand the language of heritage speakers as a variety of Spanish that presents
socially-structured variation, as all varieties of Spanish do, we need to complement
existing strands of research with corpus-based perspectives that will allow us to prop-
erly analyze the range of factors that contribute to variation.
In the following section, we present our first attempt toward capturing the
­Spanish of heritage speakers in the U.S. The model that we propose in pursuing this
aim enlists learners in documenting Spanish language speech in their communities
and enjoins educators and scholars to curate and share collections of local Spanish
speech for pedagogical and research purposes. Such a data-driven approach to Spanish
heritage language studies not only affords an agentive role for learners and educators,
but also makes available corpora that are vital in informing heritage Spanish research,
­dispelling myths about heritage Spanish and its speakers.
 A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

3. Documentation

At present, the picture of U.S. Spanish is clouded by a lack of accessible, ­comprehensive

data, and debates about the nature of the variation attested in heritage bilingual Span-
ish remain unresolved. Decontextualized examples of archaisms, non-canonical mor-
phological and syntactic usage, and English language insertions, as in the samples
of oral vernacular speech in (3), may be perceived as a striking divergence from the
norma culta, but overstating their presence obscures the fact that they are embed-
ded in a larger linguistic context that provides evidence of a robust Spanish-language
grammar.

(3) Oral vernacular

a. Yo creía que todos los mexicanos y latinos eran asina como yo aquí,
pero no, es diferente. [AF083]
‘I thought that all Mexicans and Latinos were like that like me here, but
no, it’s different.’
b. Mi papá fue nacido en San Luis Potosí, y se vino para los Estados
­Unidos a los quince años. [AF130]
‘My father was born in San Luis Potosí, and he moved to the United
States at age fifteen.’
c. Me gusta … juntarme con mis amigos a jugar bowling o ir a parties,
umm, juntarme con mi boyfriend, ir a las movies. [AF004]
‘I like to get together with my friends to play bowling or go to parties,
ummm, get together with my boyfriend to go to the movies.’

And, further scrutiny of extended speech shows that the speakers have access to com-
peting Spanish-language forms, and that they may be observed to alternate between
them, as shown in (4).

(4) Variation in usage

a. La verdad me molesta un poco que se me haiga olvidado … se me
hayan olvidado ciertas palabras, cierto vocabulario. [MM043]
‘The truth is that it bothers me a bit that I’ve forgotten … that I’ve
­forgotten some words, some vocabulary.’
b. 
Mistía mucho de escuela por ir a jugar a otros lugares con otros
teams. …Los días que faltaba podía jugar. [MF066]
‘I would miss a lot of school in order to go play in other places with
other teams. The days I missed, I could play …’

Whether collected in the field, in the classroom, or in the laboratory, such examples
cannot be properly understood without reference to their frequency and distribu-
tion in the speech of the individuals who produce them and in the communities in
 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

which they are found. In countering the mischaracterization of heritage Spanish and
its speakers, we need accountable and ecologically valid data.
The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project (Bullock & Toribio, 2013) was under-
taken as a first step towards providing a public resource of spoken U.S. Spanish.2
Funded through the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning
(COERLL), the purpose of the project is to profile Spanish as it is spoken through-
out Texas today and to provide open learning tools that allow learners, educators,
researchers, and the general public to explore Spanish language variation via authen-
tic language samples.

3.1 D
 ata collection
The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project provides a sampling of Spanish throughout the
vast territory of Texas. Though the majority of Spanish heritage speakers in the state
have historical roots in Mexico, there is a growing population of Spanish speakers with
origins in Central America, and there are many Texas residents with no ancestral links
to Mexico or Central America who speak Spanish on a regular basis. Accordingly,
in creating the corpus, we surveyed how Spanish is spoken by persons who reside in
Texas, rather than restrict our sample to those speakers of Mexican heritage or to those
born in Texas. This is one motivation for naming the corpus ‘Spanish in Texas’ rather
than ‘Texas Spanish’. More importantly, we selected the name to emphasize the fact
that the corpus reproduces Spanish as spoken in Texas, and not an emerging or unique
lect that is so specific to Texas that it deserves the state name as an attributive adjective.
For the purpose of gathering the data for creating the corpus, heritage Spanish
speakers (and several non-heritage students educated in dual-language programs)
were recruited as interns to collect language samples via semi-structured interviews
in their home communities.3 The interview protocol included a set of questions culled
from Historias, the National Public Radio StoryCorps Spanish-language segment. In
the Historias oral history project, pairs of Latino Americans record an exchange about
their life experiences in a mobile studio that travels around the U.S.; a list of questions
serves as prompts for the couples. For the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project, interns
selected from approximately 70 questions in Spanish that surrounded themes that
would be comfortably discussed between friends or family members, e.g., childhood

. The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project can be accessed online at 〈spanishintexas.org〉.

. All of the interns completed the university-mandated course for researchers working with
human subjects and participated in professional workshops in interviewing techniques and
video and audio recording. The interns were trained in two locations: in centrally-located
Austin, the capital of Texas, and in the Edinburgh/McAllen region of Texas, which borders
Reynosa, Mexico, some 500 kilometers to the south of the capital.
 A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

memories, family heritage, marriage and partnerships, vocational paths, (im)migra-

tion histories, aspirations for the future, identity and language; sample questions are
listed in (5).4

(5) Sample interview protocol questions

a. ¿Me puedes contar historias sobre las tradiciones culturales que
­celebras en tu familia? ¿Por qué son importantes?
‘Can you tell me stories about the cultural traditions that you celebrate
in your family? Why are they important?’
b. ¿Cómo te recordarían tus compañeros de escuela?
‘How would your schoolmates remember you?’
c. ¿Cómo crees que la vida de los latinos es diferente ahora en
­comparación con la época en la que crecieron tus padres? ¿En qué
forma crees que no ha cambiado?
‘How do you think the life of Latinos is different now as with the
era when your parents grew up? In what way do you think it has not
changed?’
d. ¿Cómo conociste a tu esposo/esposa, novio/novia, etc.?
‘How did you meet your husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend?’
e. ¿Qué lecciones te ha enseñado la vida laboral?
‘What lessons have you learned from your work life?’
f. Cuando conoces a una persona latina/hispana por primera vez, ¿cómo
sabes si hablar en inglés o en español?
‘When you meet a Latino/Hispanic person for the first time, how do
you know whether to speak in English or in Spanish?’
g. ¿En qué resultó diferente tu vida de lo que habías imaginado?
‘In way has your life turned out differently from what you had
i­ magined?’

The protocol also included a set of questions through which interns collected metadata
for each participant, capturing biographical information: sex, date and place of birth,
parents’ place of birth, language(s) of education, language(s) used in childhood with
parents and siblings, language(s) currently used with family, friends, and c­ o-workers,
and a rating of self-perceived Spanish proficiency in speaking, listening, reading,
­writing, and the importance placed on each. This information, which the interview-
ers entered directly into a Google Survey document in the field, can be informative in
analyzing and interpreting how linguistic forms vary as a function of individual and
social factors.

. 〈http://storycorps.org/historias/preguntas-sugeridas-de-historias/〉
 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

The student interns returned to their home communities and selected prospec-
tive participants from within their familial and social networks, yielding a sampling of
speakers with diverse profiles.5 At the time of this writing, 17 interns had conducted
134 interviews; of these, 96 interviews have been processed for the spanishintexas.org
site.6 The 96 participants present the following characteristics: There are 60 females
and 36 males, they span in age from 18 to 86, they reside across diverse regions of Texas
(El Paso in the far west, Lower Rio Grande Valley in the south, San Antonio, and the
central region that includes Austin, Houston, and the Dallas/Fort Worth region), and
they are predominantly U.S.-born (n = 54) or Mexican-born (n = 30).7 The interviews
ranged from approximately ten minutes to over an hour in length, and the ­primary
language used was Spanish, with occasional English insertions.

3.2 Processing and products

The Spanish data collected by the student interns was processed to produce online open
educational resources.8 Professional transcribers converted the oral interview data to
text files, and students subsequently hand-checked these for accuracy. The resultant
corpus from the 96 interviews is approximately 550,000 words in size. Each token in
the corpus has been annotated for language, part of speech (POS), and lemma, using
an automatic algorithm. The verbs were further classified according to person, mood,
and tense, and the nouns were marked for gender and number.
Under the umbrella of the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project, and with significant
student assistance, three resources and accompanying tools were created for end-users:
(i) the Spanish in Texas Corpus, (ii) the SpinTX Video Archive, and (iii) the Spanish
Grammar in Context. The Spanish in Texas Corpus, designed primarily for research-
ers, provides the complete set of full transcripts, with accompanying linguistic annota-
tions and speaker metadata. The corpus is open and available for download in several
formats in order to facilitate access to data and to accelerate research. In ­addition, there

. The interns explained the purpose of the study and participants’ rights to each inter-
viewee, and obtained informed consent for participation and, separately, for permission for
permanently archiving the video recordings for future research and educational purposes.
. The remaining interviews have not been included in the project materials largely because
of problems with sound quality, and two interviews have not been entered into the published
corpus because the speakers gave consent only for participation in the study but not for
­permission to archive their recordings.
. The other countries of birth represented were Colombia, El Salvador, Uruguay, Venezuela,
Argentina, Peru, Spain, and South Korea.
. “Open Educational Resources”, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation 〈www.hewlett.
org〉 (1 June, 2015).
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
 ‘The messages have been communicated to the Dowager, but she
persists in regarding them with incredulity. She is persuaded that
Lord —— fell a victim to foul play at Genoa, or Geneva, and that all
these communications have been forged in his name. Her delusions
constitute the only serious feature of the case. These are the facts, if
Henry will condescend to accept them as such for the benefit of his
readers; and I may further inform him that —— Court has been shut
up.’
 CHAPTER XXV.
ANOTHER PARTING.

I dropped the paper, and lay staring at the wall, with aching
eyeballs, till long past dawn. What my thoughts were, need not be
told. They were hardly thoughts; they were only pangs of remorse.
Then, suddenly, I rose, dressed in all haste, saved my paper from
the leafy litter of the night, and went out to find the girl.
I met her, almost on the threshold, fresh from her morning dip in
the sea; and, without greeting, put the paper in her hand—‘Victoria,
what must I do?’
I watched her face as she read, and saw all its glow of youth and
health die suddenly to an ashen cast. There was something so awful
in the change that, without another word, I walked away.
When I returned to the house, the Ancient and the Skipper were
alone, with the remains of their breakfast before them. Victoria, to
all appearance, had served the meal as conscientiously as though
nothing had happened. The old man pressed me to eat, and I broke
bread.
‘No one seems to have any appetite this morning but you and me,
Captain,’ he said. ‘I wonder what’s the matter with my girl?’
There was dead silence. I would not answer, and the Captain
could not. He seemed to have an instinctive aversion to situations of
that sort, and he began to resume the conversation which my
entrance had interrupted.
‘Yes, sir, off to-morrow morning; repairs or no repairs. Time’s up.
I’ve betted a hat on this voyage. It’s a go-as-you-please match
against time, for the circumnavigation of the globe. Don’t try to keep
me; I shall lose my hat!’
Victoria entered. If the red had not come back to her cheek, the
sickening white had left. She seemed quite calm.
 ‘Our guest is going away to-morrow, girl, said the old man. ‘Tell
him how we hate to say good-bye.’
‘Both our guests are going away, my father,’ was Victoria’s reply.
Her stern serenity seemed to preclude debate. I could only look at
her. The old man, speechless, too, for the moment, glanced from
one to the other of us. Even the Captain seemed roused to a
perception of something out of the common.
‘Both going away,’ repeated the Ancient, after a pause. ‘Surely
you, sir——’
‘My father,’ said Victoria gently, ‘I know what I am saying; and our
friend knows it too. He must go. Let us try to thank God that we
have kept him so long.’
‘What’s amiss?’ inquired the old man. ‘What have we done? I’ve
always wanted him to think that he is master here.’
‘Dearest friend!’ I said, taking his honest hand—I could say no
more.
‘This is it, my father,’ said the girl, coming to where we sat, and
kissing the old man. ‘Our friend’s life is not our life. He has his own
people, and his people call him. They have been calling to him ever
since he came to us, and last night their voice reached him half way
round the world. The time has come for another parting, that is all.
Sooner or later, all things end that way with us. Our little Island is
the house of parting, and God has made us to live alone.’
‘If I only knew what we had done amiss!’ repeated the foolish old
man.
‘Oh, father, won’t you try to understand?’ she said, kissing him
tenderly, again. ‘See what is written here,’ and she gave him the
paper. ‘But you cannot know all it means. I will tell you, if only our
friends will leave us together for a little while.’
We went out. The Captain, feeling the situation beyond him, had
fallen into a watchful silence. I satisfied his natural curiosity in a few
words, as soon as we were outside. I was glad of that relief of
speech, such as it was. There was no relief possible, in utterance, for
my deeper thoughts. I wanted something to rouse me from what
seemed a creeping torpor of death.
 It came, as we made our way through the settlement. The child
that had been the herald of my coming was now the herald of my
going. She was Victoria’s favourite, and she had perhaps received a
hint when the girl’s resolution was formed. At any rate, the sprite
was running from house to house, as briskly as on the day of that
first message:—‘Mother, mother! here’s a lord.’ It was that scene
again with a difference—the people trooping out of their cottages,
the women crying, the men pressing forward to wring my hand, and
all asking questions at once in the third person, though they seemed
to be addressed to me; ‘Why is he going? What has happened? How
did he get the message? Oh, his poor mother! Will she ever forgive
us? Thirteen thousand miles away! Make him promise to come back.
What will Victoria do?’ As they talked, others could be seen running
towards us from the distant fields, leaving their work as they got
wind of the dire report. ‘Business was suspended’ for the day.
Then the Ancient left his house, and joined the group. He held up
his hand, and they gathered about him in full plebiscitary meeting of
the settlement. ‘Friends,’ he said, ‘we are going to lose a brother. I
hoped to keep him for ever, but Victoria says he must go. I hoped he
would forget the way back, and the home he left behind; but
something has come to remind him of it. Even now I do not well
know what it is, but something has come. The women, I think, will
understand it better than we do. I hoped he would stay with us, and
be our guide and teacher, and let me take my rest. We want a helper
to show us how they do things out in the great world. Some say we
are happier without it—who can tell? We are as children that have
never known a mother’s knee. He could have shown us the way. I
must not ask him to stay: Victoria says he ought to go, and Victoria
knows’ (voices, ‘Yes, Victoria knows’). ‘If I might ask him, I would
say, “Take all you want here—all it is in our power to give—my place,
my bit of land——”’
‘Give him the long field under the Ridge!’ cried the voices again;
‘Build a house for him! Make him magistrate next year! Have two
magistrates!’
All turned towards me. I shook my head. The children clustered
about me, crying, and soon, with their treble, was mingled a deeper
note of woe. How shall words paint the misery of that scene? As I
had felt before, so I felt now—a rage of pity for the sorrow that
seems to be our lot in life.
A word or act of power and control was wanting; and it came.
Victoria, tearless, and with the set look on her face that I had caught
for an instant on the day she saved my life at the Cave, stepped into
our midst, and drew the old man aside. After that, not a word was
spoken, and the assembly seemed to melt away.
Victoria had become the leader of the settlement; no one seemed
to question her commands. They were not commands so much as
imperious wishes which all divined. It was understood that the
Captain was to give me passage to Europe; he was never asked to
do it. Still less, was I asked if I would take the passage. Victoria
pushed forward my departure with an energy, controlling and
controlled, worthy of a crisis of battle. She stood on the beach while
the whale boat laboured to and fro betwixt ship and shore to
complete our exchange of stores with the American. The presents of
the Islanders to me made the better part of an entire load. I had
brought nothing to the Island but the clothes in which I stood
upright, and a roll of paper money which the Ancient had always
refused to diminish by the substance of a single note. The money
had not been useless, for all that. It had enabled me to make some
purchases, to repair my outfit, on the coming of the Queen’s ship,
and now it procured from the crew of the trader a few presents for
my generous hosts.
The excitement of these preparations helped to suspend the
anguish of parting. But, at nightfall, this returned with cruel force,
when the people gathered on the moonlit green, to sing me their
simple songs of farewell. It was the whole settlement, save one:
Victoria was not to be found. They came with cheerful faces: the
sorrow of the morning, I knew, would be renewed in due season,
but their natures lived ever in the moment as it passed. The children
prattled and played; and, in the murmur of talk among their elders,
there was no note of woe. Under the shining sun, it might have been
a scene of joy; and, if the moonlight touched it into sadness, this
was but a spiritual association of ideas. They sang all that they
thought would please me, all that I had ever liked—the joyous
songs, of course, in preference. All were sad songs to me. At last,
with slow and measured cadence, their perfect voices rising in the
perfect night, they began the one I had always loved most. It was a
song of parting and of death, with the burden, ‘When I am gone—
when I am gone.’
Before the second stanza was over, I had stolen from my place in
the shadow, with such a passion of sorrow stirring to the very
depths of my being, as I had never known in all my life.
 CHAPTER XXVI.
AN EXPLANATION.

I walked away in unutterable despondency, relieved only by one

purpose, one hope—to find Victoria. I had not far to go to seek her:
her statuesque form was outlined against the clear sky above the
Peak.
She turned to greet me with a grave smile.
‘You came away before it was over; I was wiser than you, I came
away before it began. I suppose it is because we are wild people
that we make such a ceremony of saying “Good-bye.” Before they
taught us to be Christians, you know, we used to make just the
same fuss about death.’
‘Is it good-bye, Victoria? I hardly know what it is. It looks like
dismissal, without a word of leave-taking. You seem to have sent me
away.’
‘I have sent you away,’ she said, her voice trembling a little, and
then instantly recovering its tone. ‘Yes, I want always to be able to
feel that I told you, when the time had come, to go.’
A pang shot through my heart that was not regret, but a sort of
jealous rage.
‘You are a great observer of times and seasons, Victoria. Perhaps,
even now, I have lingered too long.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, with the note deeper, richer than before, but
no less firm. Then she added, as though to make her meaning more
clear:
‘If there were all the reasons in the world for keeping you, dearest
friend, you must still go, to save your mother’s life. You feel the
force of that reason as much as I do. Why seek for more?’
‘That reason, from myself to myself, Victoria, may be enough. It is
not enough from you to me.’
 ‘From me to you then,’ she said; ‘will this do? All things leave us,
as we stand here in this Isle; all things pass us by. Whatever comes
to us, as surely goes. Why should we hope to keep it, when that
must be the end? God has marked us out for solitude: let us bow to
God’s will. Nothing could keep you here: it is written. Nothing has
kept others.’
The pang that had almost ceased darted through me again with
its full force, at these last words. ‘Cold, cruel heart!’ I said in a fury
of pain, ‘you have never cared to keep me. Why had you not pity
enough to let me die, when the waves tossed me here?’
She gave me one glance, of which I could not catch the full
expression in the uncertain light, straightened herself, folded her
hands behind her, and turned her face towards the sea.
The wrathful agony of my feelings endured even under this
rebuke, much as I felt I deserved it. I was distinctly aware that I was
playing a pitiful part before her, and distinctly unable to help playing
it. The torment of losing her, of being nothing to her, overpowered
every finer feeling: and the more I felt the degradation of my
violence, the more desperate the violence seemed to become. I felt
only the goading of the pain of loss, and, forgetting all my fine
resolves to treat her with the disdain with which I thought she was
treating me, I caught her in my arms and covered her lips, her eyes,
her brow, with passionate kisses, till she sank for support upon a
jutting stone. It was no timid first kiss of pastoral flirtation, but
twenty, following as quick on one another as a rain of angry blows.
There was a sort of anger in them, as well as love. I seemed to feel
that I had been made the sport of her innocence. What had I not
lost by trying to outdo her in tenderness, in generosity, and reserve?
So I interpret my feelings now: at the moment, nothing could have
been more devoid of conscious motive than the madness of this act.
The brute that is in each of us, and that is only half held in check by
laws, observances, and uses, seemed suddenly to have slipped his
chain.
Yet, if the act was a surprise to me, in itself, it was a greater
surprise in its effect upon Victoria. The girl seemed to sink down,
from sheer want of the power of resistance. The lips parted, without
word or sound, but the eyes met the fierce gaze of mine with infinite
tenderness; and, when she did speak, this was what I heard:
‘Oh, I love you, I love you—better than my own life: and I will
never have you love me: and to-morrow you shall go away from me
for ever.’
The thing had been said, and there was no unsaying it. In vain,
Victoria, resuming her self-control almost as quickly as she had lost
it, disengaged herself from my arms, which had sought her beautiful
shape.
She sat silent, in what I could not but feel was a silence of shame.
For the moment, I was silent too. We were both, in a manner,
stunned by the shock of that avowal. Victoria had said what she
meant never to say: I had heard what I never hoped to hear. If I
had expectation of anything—though, indeed, I think I had none—it
was rather of anger and fierce repulse.
I was the first to recover speech, if not self-possession. I took her
hand: thank Heaven I had enough sense and feeling left not to claim
her lips on the strength of what had just passed. I tried to tell her
something of what I had wanted to tell her all this weary time—how
my love for her had come, first, through the divine suggestion of her
shape, and voice, and ways, and how her soul had completed what
they had begun, and turned enchantment into one of the laws of
being.
She listened, and soon, as I could see, no longer with shame. The
hand I held returned the pressure of my own, and I felt the thrilling
touch of the other on my brow and hair.
She spoke at last. ‘Listen, dear friend: now all must be said. It is
too late to blame you for what has happened, or even to blame
myself for letting it happen. It was to be. No human soul could be
angry that knew how I tried, not even——’
I would not let her utter the name. ‘Never speak of him. What can
he be to you? What fate does he deserve?’ but she laid her finger on
my lips.
‘I know; my heart is yours, but only he shall release my hand.’
‘Victoria!’
 ‘Oh! listen, listen, and be still! I know all that must be said, and all
that must be done.
‘When you first came, my heart was his, or I thought it was. I
thought it had gone out with him into the world—your world, or the
next one, they are both just as far away from us. I don’t know what
I felt about you, except that I felt what was good and true and right.
Was it wrong to like you? How can anyone help liking you that
knows you? You spoke to me as no one had spoken to me before.
You seemed to know all things. I only wanted to listen to you, and
still be true to him. All my hope of myself was in being true. Our
people do not always know what that sort of truth is. There are the
two strains in our blood; we are English, and something else. It has
shocked me, from my girlhood up, to see how we sometimes forget.
We feel so quickly; and all our feeling is in each terrible moment as
it flies. I set myself above our people; I shuddered to think I should
ever be like that. My love was part of my respect for myself. Half our
women have had their love tokens taken away in Queen’s ships, and
have still lived on to be wives and mothers in the Isle. I could not, I
would not be like that.
‘I did not blame then; I pitied! It is all so splendid when the
Queen’s ships come. The young men in them seem to have dropped
from the sky. It is like the book of the Heathen mythology, with the
gods coming down.
‘When I saw you, I did not know it was to be like that. I felt sure
of myself, and, if I had doubted, still I should have felt sure of you.
Then slowly, slowly, slowly, came the dreadful change, though, if you
had not spoken that day, I might never have known that it had
come. When I did know, still it did not seem to be too late. My pride
was strong: I did not know the strength of my weakness. I went
there every day—to the thicket, and prayed to have him sent back to
me. I tried to shut you quite out from my heart, but still to keep you
in my soul. You were so good; you made me think I had done it. You
tried to make me think so; I knew you tried; and your very goodness
only made it worse and worse.
‘Then, I felt I was no longer sure of myself. I tried to keep away
from you; but, to have you near me, and not to see you, not to
speak to you, made all the world seem dead and cold. So, I always
came back to find you again, of my own accord, wanting to keep all
my happiness, when I ought to have chosen which part of it I should
give up.’
‘Victoria, if only I had known; if only I had understood!’
‘Oh, how dreadful, if you thought me light-minded, playing you off
and on. All that I wanted was to like you as much as I dared,
without having you like me more than you ought. I should have
done, what I see now I must do—send you away, for both our sakes.
If I did not see it at once, pity, dear friend, pity, and forgive!
‘Then, I prayed again for help; and see how the help has come!
We might both of us have been too weak for that sacrifice, but now
it is laid upon us without our wills. You must go.’
‘I will come back, come to claim you, my Victoria, to bring you
your word of release, to take you, whether you will or no.’
‘You will never come back,’ she said in a tone that seemed to be
beyond both hope and despair, and she held my face up to the light
and looked down into it with tender yet tearless eyes. ‘You ought not
to come back: your place is in the great world—poor little great
world! Try to think there is something nobler than love for one—pity
for all. Go; and live for those poor people you have talked about to
me.’
‘I am not equal to it: I could only die for them, at best.’
‘Still—I know what I am saying—others must claim you: your
station——’
‘O Victoria, is your opinion of me so low? Do you send me back to
resume the “English gentleman”; and to hide my shame in being
nothing in the smug proprieties of that poor creature’s lot?’
‘I do not know, dear friend, but this I feel—we must lose you for
ever: no one returns here.’
‘Then let me never go away,’ I cried, rising, and clasping her again
to my heart. ‘Let me love you, and be with you for ever, and forget
all the world beside.’
Once more I saw a beginning of that exquisite languor which had
almost made her mine. The lips of the beautiful creature parted, but
only in sighs; the eyes closed. Once more, too, my own lips
approached them, when the girl roused herself, by some mysterious
exertion of will, tore herself from my embrace, and ran to the very
edge of the cliff.
‘Deep into the deep sea, beloved one, for ever beloved of my
heart, if you come one step more! Go now, go from me, and leave
me to say my prayers. I love you; take that last word from Victoria;
you will never hear her voice again.’
‘She shall hear mine. After such a last word, my Victoria, there
must be more. If you could have told me I was nothing to you, I
would have gone for ever; now, Death alone shall part you and me.
Go, I must, for a season, but your blessed promise, for promise it is,
makes it almost easy to say farewell. Be sure of this, I will come
back to claim you, from the other side of the world. I will leave you
now, since my presence troubles you; I will even set sail without
trying to speak to you again. But, before I go, you shall give me a
sign or a token—a token of submission, my Victoria, I claim no less,
a sign that you have conquered your foolish superstition of fidelity,
and your cruel pride.’
 CHAPTER XXVII.
THE PROMISE OF THE SKIES.

I had no room-fellow that night. The Captain had gone on board, to

sleep, leaving word that he would fire his signal-gun very early in the
morning. I should have been ready for it, if it had come at dawn.
The day was but just breaking, when I heard someone stirring in
the next room. I ran in, with I know not what wild hope, but only to
find the old man.
He was standing near the recess that formed her bed-chamber,
with the sliding panel in his hand, and staring helplessly at the
empty bed. It had not been used that night.
The glance he turned on me was enough; I did not wait for his
words, but rushed out of the house.
That horror, thank God, was a false alarm. The child who was her
favourite was running towards our cottage with a message that
should have been delivered the night before. She had passed the
night under a neighbour’s roof.
As I hurried back with the news to the old man, I heard the signal
gun.
A week has passed, yet I cannot clearly recall what followed. I am
dimly aware of a last look at the cottage and the settlement, of a
crowd of weeping villagers, of the grasp of the Ancient’s hand. There
is an almost absolute void of perception between the boat at the
landing-stage, and the ship, with her solitary passenger, flying at full
speed from the shore. Active consciousness seems to have been
suspended between these two decisive facts. Memory is resumed,
with one ineffaceable impression that it must hold for life—Victoria
stretching her arms towards the ship, from the summit of the Peak.
As she stood there, with her background of fleecy cloud, she seemed
rather of heaven than of earth, and her gesture was a promise of
the skies. Then, I knew that it was well with me; and I turned my
face from the Island with a joyful heart.

Spottiswoode & Co. Printers, New-street Square, London.

 Transcriber’s Notes
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after
careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of
external sources. Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the
text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

The following corrections have been applied to the text:

Page Source Correction

6 ... and to night’s snug Company ... ... and to-night’s snug Company ...
63 ... down Bond Srteet, and ... ... down Bond Street, and ...
64 ... its spiritual charm, ... its spiritual charm.
100 ... forth in mod st pride ... ... forth in modest pride ...
156 ... with al the deep liquid ... ... with all the deep liquid ...
164 ... of the farmyard, or after ... ... of the farm-yard, or after ...
188 ... had subse quently removed ... ... had subsequently removed ...
197 ... in the same way?’ ... in the same way?”
214 ... at the school-house, followed ... ... at the schoolhouse, followed ...
251 ... few hours,until I ... ... few hours, until I ...
257 ... just heartbreaking, if you ... ... just heart-breaking, if you ...
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ISLAND ***

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