Heritage Grammars and Language Change: The Case of Clitic Doubling in Spanish

Some differences between the grammar of heritage and monolingual speakers have been attributed to grammatical innovation, such that heritage behavior may reflect ongoing patterns of diachronic change. We examined this claim by comparing the acceptability of clitic doubling in three different speaker groups: monolingual and heritage speakers of European Spanish, and Rioplatense Spanish monolinguals. Accusative clitic doubling is grammaticalized in Rioplatense but not in European Spanish, consistent with Rioplatense Spanish being a more diachronically innovative variety. If heritage speakers mirror diachronic change, they may perform more similarly to Rioplatense than European monolinguals. The results of an acceptability judgement task showed that heritage speakers had robust knowledge of clitics but did not show evidence of progressive behavior with accusative clitic doubling. We propose that grammatical innovation may crucially depend on the demographic characteristics of heritage speakers, and on the grammatical properties of the phenomenon tested.