Edited by Naomi Shin and Daniel Erker
[Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics 76] 2018
► pp. 269–290
This chapter presents a multi-pronged argument, from a generative syntactic perspective, against the notion of ‘incomplete acquisition,’ centered on subjunctive usage by Spanish heritage speakers in New York City. Special attention is paid to the distribution of the subjunctive in futurate cuando clauses and in causative and permissive constructions with hacer and dejar. It is argued that the distribution of the subjunctive in second-generation speakers of Spanish in New York City is different from that seen in monolingual Spanish speakers; but it has not been in completely acquired. The paper also contains relevant discussion of English let’s hortatives, and the acquisition of subject–auxiliary inversion in root wh-questions by first- and second-language learners of English.