Abstract The present study examines the production of the Spanish copula verbs ser and estar among child and adult heritage speakers of Spanish born and raised in the United States. We investigate copula use in estar-favored and ser-favored adjectival predicates and in event locatives in which ser is required. We predicted overextension of estar with adjectives and with event locatives, following previous work. We also expected a relationship between language experience and target performance. Results showed ungrammatical use of copula estar in ser-favored adjectival contexts among the child heritage speakers. The adult heritage speakers, however, appear to overcome these divergences. Regarding event locatives, both experimental groups overextended estar significantly compared to child and monolingual baseline groups. We argue for protracted development in child and adult heritage Spanish stemming from input conditions, maturational development, and low patterns of language activation and use.

中文翻译：

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Copulas ser 和 estar 生产在西班牙的儿童和成人遗产使用者中

摘要 本研究调查了在美国出生和长大的西班牙裔儿童和成人的西班牙语系动词 ser 和 estar 的产生。我们研究了在 estar 偏爱和 ser 偏爱的形容词谓词以及需要 ser 的事件处所中的 copula 使用。根据之前的工作，我们用形容词和事件处所预测了 estar 的过度扩展。我们还预计语言体验与目标表现之间存在关系。结果表明，在儿童遗产演讲者中，在偏爱的形容词上下文中使用 copula estar 是不合语法的。然而，成人传统演讲者似乎克服了这些分歧。关于事件定位，与儿童和单语基线组相比，两个实验组都显着过度扩展了 estar。