Syntactic Optionality in Heritage Language Use: Clause Type Preferences of German Heritage Speakers in a Majority English Context

Abstract

Abstract This study focuses on the syntactic and pragmatic resources heritage speakers (HS s) use to structure their discourse according to register. Drawing on a corpus of narratives produced by German HS s living in the United States, as well as by monolingually-raised speakers (MS s) of English and German, we investigated HS s’ syntactic resources by analyzing how they approached clause type optionality across registers. Concerning overall clause type frequencies, HS s performed similarly to MS s in their majority English, but showed differences in their heritage German compared to German MS s. This can be attributed to the majority language dominance and different complexity of clause types in the heritage language. However, regarding the pattern of clause types across registers, HS s’ productions are similar to those of German MS s, and across HS s’ two languages. This suggests an underlying register awareness that HS s can draw upon in their heritage language.