Object pronouns in Catalan as a heritage language in Germany and in the Netherlands

Abstract

In the study of heritage languages, significant attention has been given to the areas of grammar vulnerable to attrition and change. Among them, the acquisition and mastery of object pronouns has been an area of extensive research, but the findings regarding their vulnerability remain contradictory. This thesis investigates the morphosyntactic mastery of object pronouns by Catalan heritage speakers in Germany and the Netherlands, comparing them to first-generation and mainland speakers. The central question is whether object pronouns are vulnerable to change in heritage Catalan and, if so, whether such changes affect their morphology, syntax, or both, and whether the patterns result from transfer or endogenous change. The role of input quality is also examined. Results from an oral production task and an elicited imitation task revealed that object pronouns are vulnerable to change. However, the extent and direction of such changes differ across grammatical domains. Except for case, morphology appears to be largely resilient to language change, whereas syntax is found to be a vulnerable area. The source of the changes also differs between domains: while the few observed morphological changes in case result from transfer, syntactic changes are attributed to endogenous change. Finally, the role of input quality further captures this divergence: while it influences the syntactic distribution of object clitics in heritage speakers, in that their patterns are consistent with those of first-generation speakers, it does not account for the morphological changes observed.