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New Perspectives on the Study of Ser and Estar
Edited by Isabel Pérez-Jiménez, Manuel Leonetti and Silvia Gumiel-Molina
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 5] 2015
► pp. 267–292

Eventive and stative passives and copula selection in Canadian and American Heritage Speaker Spanish

| University of Ottawa
ORCID logo | Macquarie University
| University of Reading
| University of Ottawa
| Texas Tech University
| Utrecht University

Spanish captures the difference between eventive and stative passives via an obligatory choice between two copula; verbal passives take the copula ser and adjectival passives take the copula estar. In this study, we compare and contrast US and Canadian heritage speakers of Spanish on their knowledge of this difference in relation to copula choice in Spanish. The backgrounds of the target groups differ significantly from each other in that only one of them, the Canadian group, has grown up in a societal multilingual environment. We discuss the results as being supportive of two non-mutually exclusive explanation factors: (a) French facilitates (bootstraps) the acquisition of eventive and stative passives and/or (b) the US/Canadian HS differences (e.g. status of bilingualism and the languages at stake) is a reflection of the uniqueness of the language contact situations and the effects this has on the input HSs receive.

Keywords: bilingualism, copula, estar, heritage speakers, passives, ser, syntax
Published online: 28 October 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.5.10val
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