professional development \
institutes \
2017 institute
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Spanish as a heritage language in Sweden
by Rakel Osterberg (Stockholm University), Silvina Montrul and Tania Ionin (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and Klara Skogmyr-Marian (University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland)
Most research on Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) to date has been carried out in North America and less in the European context. Studies on SHL speakers’ grammatical competence in the U.S. give proof of highly wide-ranging proficiency levels, varying from low to high native-like (Montrul, 2008; 2013). The SHL speakers in Sweden constitute an important community in comparison to other Scandinavian and European countries and the Chilean variety represents the most important one. Mother tongue instruction is offered to HL speakers and Spanish has high status (King y Ganuza, 2005). The purpose of the present study is to compare the Swedish SHL speakers’ grammatical competence regarding gender, and the differential object marker, with corresponding data from the U.S. (Montrul & Ionin, 2010; 2012) in order to enlighten the effect of factors like status and mother tongue instruction. The study is an ongoing collaboration with Montrul and Ionin and the test materials were built and adapted to the Swedish context. The processes of SHL acquisition in two different societies will be compared, and under the influence of different society languages (English vs. Swedish). Some preliminary results will be presented at the conference together with a contextual background.