Applied Linguistics 2012: 33/4: 450–455 ß Oxford University Press 2012

doi:10.1093/applin/ams037 Advance Access published on 12 September 2012

FORUM

The (Il)Logical Problem of Heritage Speaker

Bilingualism and Incomplete Acquisition

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DIEGO PASCUAL Y. CABO
University of Florida

JASON ROTHMAN
University of Florida and University of Ottawa

This Forum challenges and problematizes the term incomplete acquisition, which
has been widely used to describe the state of competence of heritage speaker
(HS) bilinguals for well over a decade (see, e.g., Montrul, 2008). It is suggested
and defended that HS competence, while often different from monolingual
peers, is in fact not incomplete (given any reasonable definition by the word
incomplete), but simply distinct for reasons related to the realities of their
environment.

INTRODUCTION
A heritage speaker (HS) is a bilingual who has acquired a family (the heritage
language, HL) and a majority societal language naturalistically in early child-
hood. To qualify as HS bilingualism, acquisition crucially must take place in a
situation where the home language is decisively not the language of the
greater society. In the many cases in which HSs are not true simultaneous
bilinguals, the exclusive first language (L1) is the HL. In such cases, whether
young child immigrants or born-citizens to the majority society, first significant
exposure to the majority language often happens at the time of entering formal
schooling. Irrespective of whether both languages were seemingly significantly
present from birth or the majority language was an L2, HSs almost always
wind up being dominant speakers of the majority language in adulthood.
HSs of high proficiency often do, on the one hand, demonstrate very robust
knowledge of the HL, in some domains indistinguishably from age and socio-
economically matched monolingual peers, whereas, on the other hand, they
may show significant differences in some domains of grammar. The fact that
HSs are typically not formally educated in the HL1 can explain some of the
differences they display. For example, this might explain some HSs’ production
that is socio-pragmatically different in discourse as compared with what is
expected of their monolingual counterparts. However, at the level of gram-
matical knowledge (when clearly independent of education) such differences
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alone could not possibly be explanatory. To give a tangible example, Montrul’s

work on HS Spanish in the USA (see Montrul 2008 for summary) has convin-
cingly shown differences for some properties related to tense, aspect and mo-
dality, differential object marking, and grammatical gender, to name just a few
properties. We know however, from the child Spanish L1 literature that these
same properties are acquired early, in some cases as early as 2–3 years of age,
well before children go to school. So, keeping in mind that acquisition of the

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HL, like acquisition in the case of monolingualism, happens naturalistically in
early childhood, the question of how and why HS grammatical competence is
selectively distinct is interesting, if not somewhat puzzling. We label this con-
undrum the logical problem of HS bilingualism.
Arguably, the most influential proposal to answer this question, summarized
under the label of incomplete acquisition, maintains that HSs fail to fully acquire
the HL, either as a result of arrested development and/or as a result of attrition
influenced by a shift toward the majority language (see Montrul 2008). In this
Forum, we offer some argumentation suggesting that the term incomplete ac-
quisition is problematic for several reasons. We point out that the term incom-
plete can only make sense under the assumption that comparing HS bilinguals
to monolinguals is an inherently justifiable comparison, which, we will argue
it is not and present evidence to defend why. Alternatively, we will argue that
HS competence is simply different, not incomplete. We contend that several
variables inherent to the environment under which HSs acquire their HL leave
no other recourse. Focusing on the cognitive side of things, we will also argue
that studying HS bilingualism asks us to reconsider several questions of signifi-
cant importance to linguistic inquiry more generally.

WHAT ABOUT THE INPUT THEY RECEIVE?

Although HS ultimate attainment is observably different from monolinguals,
we believe such outcomes cannot and should not be described as incomplete
since this label overlooks or idealizes, among other things, a crucial component
of the acquisition process itself: the input. Under any approach to language
acquisition input is fundamental and drives the process. We submit that
input available to HS is inherently different from what monolinguals receive.
Differently from monolinguals, HSs are exposed to input that has inevitably
been affected to some degree by previous cross-generational attrition and/or
other language contact consequences. Modifications in available input must
contribute to HS competence differences. This, in turn, makes the complete/
incomplete distinction rather weak if not unfounded. Instead, we argue that
HS competence is complete, yet simply different.
Evidence in favor of such a view is rather strong. For example, Pires and
Rothman (2009), building on Rothman (2007), tested knowledge and use of
inflected infinitives among two groups of Portuguese HSs residing in the USA,
namely European (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Crucially, while this
property is commonly found in all dialects of EP, speakers of BP are only
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exposed to it through the standard dialect available through formal education

(precisely the dialect HSs do not normally receive). It naturally follows from
this that while HSs of EP are exposed to inflected infinitives on a regular basis,
HSs of BP are not. Given this, under an incomplete acquisition perspective, if
inflected infinitives are considered to be vulnerable and fragile under variable
input conditions, then they should be equally absent or vulnerable for both
groups. Not surprisingly, however, their findings demonstrated that while EP

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HSs had robust knowledge of inflected infinitives, this was not the case for BP
HSs. This was taken as an indication that the source of variability in HS BP
cannot be explained in terms of true incomplete acquisition. A more recent
example examined by de Prada Pérez and Pascual y Cabo (2011) analyzed US
Spanish HSs’ preferences regarding subject–verb agreement with reverse psy-
chological predicates (gustar-type predicates), which have a unique word order
given the non-canonical theta mappings of these predicates. In their study, the
authors observed that, in spite of this property’s high frequency, HSs revealed a
target-divergent preference toward an invariable singular form irrespective of
actual subject–verb agreement. However, in testing Spanish natives-L2 lear-
ners of English, who provide HSs their primary input, it was noted that the HS
preferences were comparable with innovations in the control group’s perform-
ance. They concluded that what can appear as incomplete acquisition if com-
pared with monolinguals can be complete acquisition of the type of input HSs
receive. That is, the variability found in the first generation immigrant control
data seems to be, at least partially, responsible for some HS linguistic outcomes.
This would be an example of cross-generational attrition, as suggested by
Sorace (2004) and others.
Under this scenario of HS input differences, the term incomplete is not only
imprecise, it is misleading. Since incompleteness is often interpreted as a de-
ficiency, the term is not appropriate when comparative differences can be
traced back to contact-induced changes in first generation immigrant input
providers to subsequent generations of HSs. In light of this, we believe it cru-
cial for reasons of general scientific prudence that future studies seeking to
describe and explain HS competence include a first generation immigrant
group as a more appropriate comparison group.

BEYOND THE INPUT

It is highly unlikely that differences in input alone would explain all HS dis-
tinctions documented in the literature. In fact, the proponents of that position
have never suggested it could. HSs who receive input primarily from a group of
natives who are likely undergoing attrition themselves can and do show dif-
ferences in domains of grammar whose source cannot be unambiguously tied
uniquely to HS input factors. So, if it can be shown that HS speaker input was
not qualitatively different for some properties,2 is it fair to call differences in
these domains of grammar incomplete acquisition? We still believe not for two
reasons.
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The first is that it is virtually impossible to determine a posteriori, and recall

that HSs are tested in a mature state of knowledge as adults, the course of
development. That is, there is no way to know for sure working backwards if
something did not develop or if it was acquired and then eroded, the former
being actual incomplete acquisition and the latter being attrition. In Montrul’s
2008 book, she subsumes arrested development and attrition under the term
incomplete acquisition. However, they are and should be considered different

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things. Any reasonable definition of the word incomplete not only entails the
possibility of completion (so the input should provide the cues), but logically
by extension, that acquisition at some point did not obtain. So, if some prop-
erty was indeed acquired and then eroded, irrespective of what the variables
are to explain the loss, then the property in question was in fact completely
acquired at some point of development. Polinksy (2011) shows very convin-
cingly via a methodology that compares the rarely studied case of HS children
with the case of HS adults that attrition is likely the cause of some attested
differences, given knowledge HS children demonstrate that the adult HSs do
not. If we cannot reliably distinguish so-called incomplete acquisition from
attrition, idealizing a situation where input differences are truly controlled
for, then it is not clear why the more polarizing term would be the one
opted for as a default.
The second reason has to do with the assumption of arrested development in
the first place. Arrested, of course, means stunted or halted. For example, the
idea would be that the HS was in the process of acquiring property X, but at a
given point in the path of acquisition that was on track something occurred,
perhaps increased exposure to the majority language, stunting further devel-
opment for property X. Presumably, if on the right track, this would be some-
thing that could be documented in a longitudinal study with childhood HSs.
We would expect to see that, prior to the significant exposure to the majority
language, the HS child’s path would reasonably mirror the path of monolin-
gual children. Then, after a crucial point of exposure to the majority language,
a stunted development path progressively or even sharply converges toward
the majority language. To our knowledge, no such longitudinal studies exist.
But even if this were to be shown, we ponder why the only explanation of this
would be arrested development. Others have pointed out that this does not
have to be stunted development at all, but, alternatively should be viewed as
simply an alternative path of complete development (Sánchez 2012), delimited
to difference in a natural course for bilingualism. Such positions and argumen-
tation, which we find very convincing, further highlight the comparative fal-
lacy of comparing any set of bilinguals to monolinguals.

FINAL THOUGHTS
We have submitted here that HS bilingual outcome differences do not have to
be viewed as deficits of any kind. Rather, we can and should embrace docu-
mented HS differences for what they are, unique outcomes of different
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realities. The monolingual and bilingual realities are distinctive, and so the
default expectation, should be that HSs would demonstrate discrete paths
and ultimate attainments. Viewing this through such a lens adds independent
credence to the proposal that studying bilingualism can and in fact should
inform our understanding of linguistic representation, the architecture of the
human mind and the language faculty in unique ways. Immediately, the fact
that HS bilinguals in some ways show competence outcomes like adult L2

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learners (see Montrul 2008), both different from monolinguals, despite
having acquired the HL naturalistically in early childhood, unlike the adult
L2 learner, suggests that age cannot be the only or perhaps even the most
deterministic factor in explaining adult L2 acquisition outcomes. This means
that one cannot simply dismiss adult L2 grammars as being wild grammars—
unconstrained by UG from our view or whatever underlying linguistic/cogni-
tive mechanisms one subscribes to—simply because they diverge from the
arbitrarily chosen monolingual benchmark. What adult L2 learners and HSs
share in common, especially when the two languages are held constant, is at
least twofold. First, they both have another grammar represented in their mind
from which various degrees of influence at the level of underlying represen-
tation can be attested. Secondly, any consequence of this at the level of pro-
cessing, allocation of attention resources, stress on memory systems and
inhibition to name a few (see, e.g., Sorace 2011 for review), can be attested
in both populations. That HSs are on average ‘better’ than adult L2 learners,
whatever that means, might stem from the fact that they are more practiced in
being bilingual. Bialystok’s work (2009) showing advantages for bilinguals in
other cognitive domains adds credence to this position. Simply put, HSs have
had more temporal experience at being bilingual.
Under the argumentation put forth, it seems fair to take the knowledge of
HS bilinguals as native grammars, however, distinct from monolingual ones.
Such a position entails that HS grammars must be accounted for as well by the
language faculty. If on the right track, formal linguistic theory must take ser-
iously the grammatical knowledge that HS bilinguals evidence and seek to
explain how the language faculty, under a scenario of bilingual linguistic
inputs, can explain the grammatical outcomes. We believe that, in turn, this
demonstrates a greater role for general cognition in the language acquisition
process. If having to deal with competing inputs at the same time alters gram-
matical representation as it seemingly does, then, by extension, linguistic rep-
resentation is vulnerable to factors greater than what is assumed to be
articulated in the linguistic endowment. Of course, this cannot be seen in
monolinguals who have less to do as compared with bilinguals, but what is
true of the bilingual brain must be true of all brains even if circumstances
conspire in the case of monolinguals such that we are unable to witness
such effects. This argument does not question any of the tenets of linguistic
nativism, it simply asks us to consider, in our shared pursuit toward explana-
tory adequacy, to take seriously what bilingual grammars tell us.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Authors’ names appear in alphabetical order. The authors wish to thank Joyce Bruhn de Garavito,
Alejandro Cuza, Laura Domı́nguez, Mike Iverson, Silvina Montrul, Masha Polinsky, Ana de Prada
Pérez, Liliana Sánchez, Antonella Sorace, Elena Valenzuela, Bill VanPatten and many
others whose work on Heritage Speakers and/or discussions with us have contributed in no
small part to shaping the ideas herein, whether or not we agree or agree to disagree. Any and
all oversights or errors are entirely our own.

NOTES
1 By formally educated we are referring
to the process of education that hap-
pens from kindergarten through high
school in which all subjects are taught
in the majority language, including lan-
guage arts in the majority language
itself.
2 This is a call that we hope is taken ser-
iously since there are almost no studies
that have seriously attempted to docu-
ment directly the linguistic quality of the
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input that HSs are exposed to. This is
true equally for studies arguing against
the use of the term incomplete acquisi-
tion as well as those defending the
label. This is not without reason, to do
so would be very labor intensive and
even if attempted there would be no
way to guarantee that all HSs are actu-
ally exposed to whatever can be deter-
mined for a corpora, irrespective of the
size of the sampling.

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