The Acquisition of Inalienable Possession in L2 and Heritage Spanish

Abstract

Abstract The present study examines the production and interpretation of inalienable possession in dative constructions with body-part nouns in Spanish by 25 English-speaking L2 learners and 25 heritage speakers of Spanish born and raised in the United States. Twenty Spanish-dominant speakers served as baseline group. The results showed significant divergencies with inalienable NPs among the L2 learners compared to the heritage speakers and Spanish-dominant speakers. The L2 learners produced few instances of clitic se and a definite determiner and favored the use of a possessive determiner with or without a clitic instead. The heritage speakers and baseline group behaved similarly in their use of a clitic and a definite determiner. We argue for age of onset of acquisition and crosslinguistic influence effects in the acquisition of inalienable possession in Spanish.