Cross-Linguistic Influences on the Morphosyntax of Heritage Italian in Buenos Aires

While Buenos Aires-Spanish exhibits many contact-induced features as a result of immigration in the past, less is known about the potential “Spanish” traces in contemporary Italian that is spoken as a heritage language in the Argentinean capital. The present research investigates the differences between Argentinean Italian and homeland Italian via an exploration of morphosyntactic phenomena and their vulnerability to variation and change. The online acceptability judgement task, which was conducted using a Likert scale, revealed significant differences between heritage speakers and Italian speakers in all the areas that were tested. On average, the most salient discrepancies were found in the use of articles, followed by the use of the clitics and, finally, in the word order in wh-questions. The findings shed light on the language dynamics, contribute to the documentation of Italian HL, address methodological challenges, and present the distinctive linguistic scenario that is shaped by immigration and cultural intertwining.