Processing syntactic dependencies in Slovene heritage speakers

Abstract

This study investigates how Slovene heritage speakers comprehend syntactic dependencies. 30 heritage speakers were tested on (i) A’-movement, (ii) referential dependencies and (iii) the configurational dependency. Heritage speakers performed comparably to monolingual controls on canonical SVO and coordinated clauses but showed reduced accuracy on non-canonical OVS order, object relative clauses and cataphora while manifesting greater latencies on these types. Overall, the findings suggest that Slovene heritage speakers rely more on surface structure and default parsing strategies when morphosyntactic cues are in conflict with word order and that they operate under greater processing demands than monolingual speakers, supporting models of heritage grammar that frame it as a re-weighted yet resource-intensive system.