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 Advances in Spanish
as a Heritage
Language
S TUD IES IN BI L INGUAL ISM

edited by
Diego Pascual y Cabo

49

john benjamins
publishing company
Advances in Spanish as a Heritage Language
Studies in Bilingualism (SiBil)
issn 0928-1533
The focus of this series is on psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of
bilingualism. This entails topics such as childhood bilingualism, psychological
models of bilingual language users, language contact and bilingualism, maintenance
and shift of minority languages, and socio-political aspects of bilingualism.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/sibil

Editors
Jason Rothman Ludovica Serratrice
University of Reading & Universty of Reading
UiT, the Artic University of Norway

Advisory Editorial Board

Sarah Bernolet Aafke Hulk Monika S. Schmid
Ghent University University of Amsterdam University of Essex
Ellen Bialystok Judith F. Kroll Darren Tanner
York University Pennsylvania State University University of Illinois Urbana
Elma Blom Tanja Kupisch Champaign
Utrecht University University of Konstanz Enlli Thomas
Kees de Bot Terje Lohndal Bangor University
University of Groningen Norwegian University of Ianthi Maria Tsimpli
Marc Brysbaert Science and Technology Cambridge University
Ghent University Gigi Luk Sharon Unsworth
Cécile De Cat Harvard University Radboud University Nijmegen
University of Leeds Viorica Marian Marilyn Vihman
Annick De Houwer Northwestern University University of York
University of Erfurt Loraine K. Obler Li Wei
Cheryl Frenck-Mestre CUNY University College London
Aix-Marseille Université Johanne Paradis Marit Westergaard
Belma Haznedar University of British Columbia UiT, the Artic University of
Bogaziçi University Michael T. Putnam Norway
Erika Hoff Pennsylvania State University Stefanie Wulff
Florida Atlantic University Ute Römer University of Florida
Georgia State University

Volume 49
Advances in Spanish as a Heritage Language
Edited by Diego Pascual y Cabo
Advances in Spanish
as a Heritage Language

Edited by

Diego Pascual y Cabo

Texas Tech University

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Amsterdam / Philadelphia
 TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8

the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence

of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

doi 10.1075/sibil.49
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2016014931 (print) / 2016024988 (e-book)
isbn 978 90 272 4191 7 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6687 3 (e-book)

© 2016 – John Benjamins B.V.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com
To Teo and Pau, my favorite heritage speakers
 Table of contents

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction
Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research 1
Diego Pascual y Cabo

Unit I: Formal approaches to Spanish as a Heritage Language

Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition:
Bridges for pedagogically oriented research 13
Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo
A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 27
Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock
On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 51
Rajiv Rao
Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late
Spanish-English bilinguals 81
Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating
Losing your case? Dative experiencers in Mexican Spanish and heritage
speakers in the United States 99
Silvina Montrul

Unit II: Educational approaches to Spanish as a heritage language

Current issues in Spanish heritage language education 127
Kim Potowski
Advances in Spanish heritage language assessment:
Research and instructional considerations 143
Sara M. Beaudrie
A general framework and supporting strategies for teaching mixed classes 159
Maria M. Carreira
 Advances in Spanish as a heritage language

Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners:

An interdisciplinary endeavor 177
María Luisa Parra
Heritage language healing? Learners’ attitudes and damage control in a
heritage language classroom 205
Ana Sánchez-Muñoz

Unit III: Future lines of development in heritage language education

Emerging trends with heritage language instructional practices:
Advances and challenges 221
Marta Fairclough
New directions in heritage language pedagogy: Community service-learning
for Spanish heritage speakers 237
Kelly Lowther Pereira
Heritage language learning in study abroad: Motivations, identity work,
and language development 259
Rachel L. Shively
Online courses for heritage learners: Best practices and lessons learned 281
Florencia Giglio Henshaw
Flipping the classroom: A pedagogical model for promoting
heritage language writing skills 299
Julio Torres

Afterword
Looking ahead 325
Maria Polinsky
Author Index 347
Subject Index 351
 Acknowledgements

The final product that you see here today is nothing, if not the result of a team effort.
Contributions have been many and varied: be it with a chapter, with a review, with
mentoring, with editorial support, or even with time to help me brainstorm solu-
tions for various challenges. Among many others, I am indebted to Dalila Ayoun, Sara
Beaudrie, Melissa Bowles, Barbara Bullock, Jennifer Cabrelli Amaro, José C ­ amacho,
María Carreira, Cecilia Colombi, Maite Correa, Alex Cuza, Ana de Prada Pérez,
Laura Domínguez, Idoia Elola, Anna María Escobar, Marta Fairclough, Josh Frank,
Kim Geeslin, David Giancaspro, Florencia Giglio Henshaw, Inmaculada Gómez Soler,
Susan Hendriks, Claudia Holguín, Mike Iverson, Jill Jegerski, Olga Kagan, Gregory
Keating, Tanja Kupisch, Jennifer Leeman, Juana Liceras, Amalia Llombart, Gillian
Lord, Kelly Lowther Pereira, Andrew Lynch, Silvina Montrul, Julia Oliver Rajan, María
Luisa Parra, Masha Polinsky, Kim Potowski, Rajiv Rao, Leah Roberts, Ana Roca, Jason
Rothman, Liliana Sánchez, Ana Sánchez Muñoz, Ludovica Serratrice, Rachel Shively,
Carmen Silva-Corvalán, Marta Tecedor, Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, Julio Torres,
Ianthi Maria Tsimpli, Kees Vaes, Guadalupe Valdés, Elena Valenzuela, Bill VanPatten,
Damián Vergara Wilson, and Eve Zyzik.
I am also grateful to my students and colleagues at Texas Tech University. Particu-
larly, I am thankful for the assistance provided by Josh de la Rosa Prada and Cheryl
Maqueda during the laborious editing process. Most notably, I’d like to thank Erin
Collopy, chair of the Department, for her continuous support on this and on many
other projects. I feel mostly indebted to Lloyd Allred, James Lemon, Theresa Madrid,
and Stephanie Santos whose help and patience towards me these last few years have
been comforting and unfailing.
Finally, I wish to thank Laurie, my beloved wife, whose companionship, support,
and advice I most cherish and value.
 Charting the past, present, and future of
Spanish heritage language research

Diego Pascual y Cabo

Texas Tech University

In September of 2014, coinciding with the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month,

the United States Census Bureau published a news release reporting that the Hispanic1
population had reached the 54 million people mark. By mid-2016, that number had
already increased to over 55 million people. And this growing trend is not expected
to slow down anytime soon since large numbers of Hispanics continue to relocate in
US territory. Considerably faster than what had been previously estimated, this figure
establishes the US as the second largest Hispanic community in the world (only after
Mexico with approximately 122 million people).
Unsurprisingly, such demographic changes have had (and will continue to have
in the years to come) a significant and direct repercussion on many spheres of US
society. From economy to politics, from the media to the arts, the Hispanic presence
cannot be denied. Testimony to this is the large number of US Spanish-language
television networks, radio-stations, newspapers, and magazines that have surfaced
to meet the ever-growing demand. Given this backdrop, and in recognizing its
increasing value and universality, Spanish has unquestionably become the US “for-
eign language” of choice across secondary and postsecondary education. For quite
some time now, most students have been choosing to study Spanish over French or
German not just as a way to fulfill their foreign language requirements, but as a prac-
tical investment that will translate into gains in tomorrow’s job market (see e.g., Gar-
cía, 2009). Regrettably, a somewhat different scenario – one of language loss across
generations – is observed among large numbers of Hispanic immigrants and their
offspring. In addition to the natural shift that generally takes place around the 3rd
generation (e.g., Klee & Lynch, 2009), many newcomers choose to abandon impor-
tant aspects of their heritage, including their traditions, their lifestyle, and their lan-
guage to speed up the process of acculturation (e.g., Niño-Murcia & Rothman, 2008;

. Herein, the terms Hispanic or Latino are used interchangeably, with no distinction and
without any negative connotation.

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.01pas
© 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company
 Diego Pascual y Cabo

Potowski, 2010). ­Furthermore, other reasons accounting for such language loss
include, but are not limited to the barrage of political discourses that delegitimize
immigrant languages/cultures and the internalization of prejudiced assimilative-
ideologies in the face of the prevalent ­American monolingualism/monoculturalism
(e.g., Pavlenko, 2002). For example, cases such as the English Only Movement dur-
ing the 1980s or the more recent Arizona ­anti-immigrant law have only worsened
the already rather negative feelings and the stigma associated to this language and
its users (e.g., Potowski, 2010).
That said, as early as the 1970s but especially in the 1980s, scholars such as
Roca, Valdés, Zentella and colleagues were instrumental in articulating convincing
arguments regarding the overall positive value of (Spanish-English) bilingualism,
biculturalism, and biliteracy in the US. Since then, there has been an exponen-
tial increase in the number of studies and publications focusing on this important
­topic.2 As a whole, this still-developing line of inquiry has raised questions regarding
social, linguistic, and educational inclusion, which in turn have allowed for the field
to significantly move forward. While still gaining insights into what bilingualism
and biculturalism really mean (e.g., Crawford, 1992; Piller, 2001), we are now more
familiar with what future directions to take and what the challenges that we need
to overcome are. For example, in addition to the purely linguistic concerns, it is of
crucial need that we become more attuned with linguistic attitudes and ideologies
(e.g., Rivera Mills, 2012), linguistic identity (e.g., Leeman, 2012), social inclusion
(e.g., Fairclough, 2005) as well as with language policy and planning (e.g., Martinez,
2012). Creating, developing and fomenting awareness of these issues can translate
into increased access to and opportunities for maintaining home/minority dialects
(e.g., Rivera Mills, 2012).
Supported and fortified by this enriched understanding, growing numbers of
higher-ed institutions as well as high schools across the nation are pushing towards the
inclusion of Spanish courses for native/bilingual/heritage speakers in their curricula.
Recent changes in this respect have been nothing short of exceptional.3 For example,
it should be noted that while in the 1990’s only approximately 18% of higher-ed insti-
tutions in the US offered courses this particular population, this percentage rose to

. For an overview of scholarship on Spanish in the US, we refer the reader to Roca (2000),
Colombi & Roca (2003), Lipski (2008) and Beaudrie & Fairclough (2012).
. In fact, the Hispanic youth, as the largest and youngest minority ethnic group in the US, is
being particularly targeted on many fronts, not just linguistically (Carreira & Beeman, 2014),
since by force of numbers alone, the kinds of adults these young Latinos become will help
shape the kind of society America becomes in the 21st century (Taylor, 2009).
 Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research 

almost 40% by 2011 (Beaudrie, 2011, 2012). More recent reports continue to foresee
a bright future for this sort of courses as they continue to grow exponentially all over
the country (Tecedor & Mejia, 2015). Fortunately, these programs are not growing
just in quantity, but also in quality. Little by little, as we become more cognizant of the
issues discussed earlier, we are better able to reach a wider net of Spanish-speaking
­students in many meaningful ways. For example, the expansion rather than replace-
ment approach and the incorporation of seminal principles of linguistic instruction
such as language maintenance, bilingual range expansion, transferring of literacy skills
or engagement with the community are now commonplace in most if not all courses
for native/bilingual speakers (e.g., Valdés, 1997).
Unfortunately, even in this context of (apparent) linguistic headway, not every-
one shares this view. For example, the changing conditions of the current linguistic
panorama pose an important challenge to more traditional understandings of what
language is and/or what it should be. Take for instance Piña-Rosales, Covarrubias,
Segura, and Fernández (2010) guide to speaking Spanish “correctly.” In this publica-
tion, from a dogmatic and normative perspective that permeates from beginning to
end, Piña-Rosales et al. present a number of solutions and strategies to “help” speak-
ers use the Spanish language decorously in the context of the US. As noted by Lynch
and Potowski (2014), such a stand on language is misleading as it reveals not only
indifference to many of the issues involved in language contact situation, but also a
complete disregard to the millions of speakers that are found in such a context. Our
goal herein, and the purpose of this edited volume in general, is a different one: we
aim to provide an objective and linguistically informed view of Spanish in the US,
generally referred to as Spanish as a heritage language, a term on which we expand
below.

1. Spanish as a Heritage Language

The term heritage language is currently used to identify a minority/immigrant language

that differs from the dominant/societal language for any given context (e.g., Fishman,
2006). Justifiably then, those who speak a heritage language are generally referred to as
heritage speakers4 (HS) but have also been called semi-speakers, pseudo-bilinguals, or
incomplete acquirers (Dorian, 1981; Baker & Jones, 1998; Montrul, 2008).

. For a detailed overview of the different features that characterize heritage speakers, and
how these differ from traditional second language learners, we refer the reader to Potowski
and Lynch (2014) as well as to Beaudrie, Ducar and Potowski (2014).
 Diego Pascual y Cabo

As is usually the case for most immigrants, learning the majority language is
­central to a full social integration and professional functioning. Nevertheless, despite
the supremacy of a prevailing societal language, the heritage language continues to be
used to different degrees in the household. Given this, their offspring generally acquire
the heritage language naturally, in the family environment, and from early on. That
said, and despite generalizations, HSs do not represent a homogeneous group. While
it is true that most HSs end up being proficient speakers of the societal language, their
command of the heritage language is generally characterized by a great deal of vari-
ability. That is, while some HSs can use the heritage language fluently and effortlessly,
others struggle when performing basic language functions. Even more drastic is the
case of individuals who have maintained strong cultural ties to the heritage language
but that have no linguistic competence beyond some knowledge of culturally signifi-
cant lexical items. The HS linguistic differences observed are generally accounted for
in Polinsky and Kagan’s (2007) broad and narrow definitions of HS. According to the
broad definition, linguistic competence is not regarded as an essential exclusion crite-
rion and thus, an individual is considered a HS provided that she/he has been able to
maintain strong cultural connections with the heritage culture. The narrow definition
suggests that, in addition to the cultural ties, a HS must have at least minimal commu-
nicative capacity in the heritage language. Given the wide-ranging nature of the work
included in this volume, either definition is adopted according to the specifics goal(s)
of each chapter.
Crucially, the societal imbalance of the languages involved combined with the
age of exposure to the societal language have been shown to be deterministic in
an individual’s linguistic development (e.g., Valdés, 1997; Montrul, 2008). That is,
placement in the abovementioned linguistic continuum depends not only on the
exposure to the heritage language (and to the heritage culture) but also on the tim-
ing of such exposure. In this sense, the term simultaneous bilingual is used to refer
to someone who acquired both languages from birth. Sequential bilinguals, on the
other hand, differ from simultaneous bilinguals in that they first grew up as mono-
lingual speakers of the heritage language. Consistent exposure to the societal lan-
guage does not generally start until around the age of 4/5 years old, coinciding with
the beginning of their formal education. From that moment on, opportunities to use
the heritage language are mostly restricted to the home environment and a gradual
shift in linguistic dominance is generally observed. Except in some very exceptional
cases, eventually blending (both culturally and linguistically) into mainstream
­society is the natural outcome.
From a strictly formal linguistic point of view, the field of Spanish HS bilingualism
has been mainly concerned with examining the nature of HSs’ linguistic k­ nowledge
as their heritage language develops under reduced input conditions (See the work
of Cuza, Montrul, Rothman, Valenzuela among many others). This is of interest to
 Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research 

the linguistic community since, despite the noticeable similarities in the processes
of acquisition (i.e., acquisition takes place from birth and naturalistically), the con-
sensus is that HSs often exhibit differences in their knowledge and use of the heri-
tage language when compared to age-matched monolingual speakers. Although such
­differences have been documented in different domains (e.g., phonetics, phonology,
syntax), the area of morphosyntax seems to be especially vulnerable to c­ rosslinguistic
influence (e.g., Rothman, 2009; Montrul, 2008, 2010, 2016; Pascual y Cabo, 2015). This
particular outcome of language acquisition has been generally referred to under the
umbrella term incomplete acquisition (e.g., Montrul, 2008), but can also be explained
in terms of language attrition or complete acquisition of contact varieties (e.g., Putnam
& Sánchez, 2013; P ­ ascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012).
As noted earlier, the last decades of research have yielded key advances in all
areas of research on Spanish HS bilingualism including, but not limited to, applied
and formal linguistics, sociolinguistics, and educational linguistics. As a result of these
advances, we now have a fundamental knowledge of the main issues involved in the
acquisition, development, and maintenance of Spanish as a heritage language. But, as
the number of Spanish HSs continues to grow, so does our need (as well as our respon-
sibility) for a better understanding of these issues. We hope that this volume, which we
introduce next, is able to capture current debates in the field so as to lead the way to
other questions that future research will need to address.

2. This volume

The present volume focuses on recent developments of Spanish as a heritage language

in the context of the United States, a topic that is approached from two intercon-
nected points of view. First, although in this particular setting, Spanish is a prima facie
­example of a heritage language, it is definitely not the only one (see e.g., Potowski,
2010). In other words, Spanish is but one example of the heritage language phenome-
non and thus, the general contributions included in this volume can also be applicable
to other heritage languages in different contexts such as Turkish in Sweden, or Arabic
in France. Second, while the role of the Spanish-speaking immigrant community in
the US is consistently becoming more noticeable, no one can deny that this minority
group (broadly speaking), and its language as an extension, also suffer from strong
prejudice and stigma (e.g., Parodi, 2008). Interestingly, such strong sentiments are not
repeated, at least not to the same degree, in places such as the United Kingdom or
Australia, even if the majority/minority language combination is held constant. As
is true of all cases of bilingualism, Spanish heritage language development cannot be
fully described or explained without first understanding and then bringing together
all the linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects involved in all of these contexts. However,
 Diego Pascual y Cabo

before such enterprise can be meaningfully undertaken, it is worthwhile to address

these issues separately and exhaustively. Thus, the study of Spanish in this specific
sociolinguistic environment renders this, a topic in dire need of special attention.
Additionally, despite there being a fair amount of scholarship on Spanish as a
­heritage language (e.g., Colombi & Roca, 2003; Roca, 2000; Beaudrie & Fairclough,
2012; Beaudrie, Ducar, & Potowski, 2014; Potowski & Lynch, 2014; Potowski &
Carreira, 2004, 2014; Potowski, 2005; Valdés, 2001), resources that appropriately
combine formal theoretical and experimental studies, classroom oriented research,
and pedagogically oriented insights are not only very limited, but also do not meet
the soaring demands of the field. By bringing together the most recent develop-
ments from all of the abovementioned angles of orientation, we aim to lessen this
gap in the literature.
A central feature of this volume is our commitment to provide state-of-the-art
research on Spanish HS bilingual development from a variety of perspectives and
theoretical backgrounds. With this, we aim not only to inform those readers inter-
ested in Spanish as a heritage language, but also to serve as a reference tool upon
which other scholars and practitioners can advance the field further. To achieve
this goal, we have specially commissioned all chapters presented herein, bringing
together therefore the work of a total of 21 HS specialists. To ensure the quality
of the volume, a total of 42 reviews were solicited. We are indebted to the follow-
ing reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions: Ann Abbott (Univer-
sity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Evelyn Duran (Lehman College), Vanessa
Elias (Indiana University), Idoia Elola (Texas Tech University), Maria Fionda
(University of M ­ ississippi), Josh Frank (University of Texas, Austin), Isabel Gib-
ert Escofet (Universitat Rovira I Virgili), Florencia Giglio Henshaw (University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Inmaculada Gómez Soler (University of Memphis),
­Nicholas Henriksen (University of Michigan), Mike Iverson (Indiana University,
­Bloomington), Jill Jegerski (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Alejandro
Lee (Central Washington University), Verónica Loureiro Rodríguez (University of
Manitoba), Kelly Lowther Pereira (University of North Carolina, Greensboro), Dalia
Magaña (University of California, Merced), Joanne Markle LaMontagne (University
of Toronto), Trudie McEvoy (University of Arizona), Kim Potowski (University of
Illinois, Chicago), Ana de Prada Pérez (University of Florida), Rajiv Rao (University
of Wisconsin, Madison), Alegría Ribanedeira (Colorado State University, Pueblo),
Josh de la Rosa Prada (Texas Tech University), Rebeca Ronquest (North ­Carolina
State University), Francisco Salgado (CUNY, College of Staten Island), María
Spicer-Escalante (Utah State University), Cathy Stafford (University of Wisconsin,
­Madison), Michael Tallon (University of the Incarnate Word), Greg Thompson
(Brigham Young University), Julio Torres (University of California, Irvine), Damian
 Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research 

Vergara Wilson (University of New Mexico), Daniel Villa (New Mexico State Uni-
versity), and Alvaro Villegas (University of Central Florida).
As previously discussed, the 16 chapters included in the remainder of this
­volume address several lines of research, all pertaining to the overarching theme
of Spanish as a heritage language. These chapters are organized into 3 thematic
units, with each one introduced by top scholars in their respective subfields of
study. The first unit, “Formal Approaches to the Study of Spanish Heritage Speaker
­Bilingualism” is introduced by Jason Rothman, Ianthi Tsimpli, and Diego Pascual
y Cabo (­Chapter 2). Included in this section are empirical and theoretical explora-
tions of the incorporation of corpus data as a new form of observation for character-
izing the ­Spanish of heritage speakers in the United States (Chapter 3 by ­Jacqueline
Almeida Toribio & Barbara Bullock); nuclear tonal configurations based on utter-
ance type and pragmatic meaning (Chapter 4 by Rajiv Rao); relative clause attach-
ment preferences (Chapter 5 by Jill Jegerski, Gregory Keating, & Bill VanPatten);
and structural simplification and case erosion with respect to dative experiencer
verbs (­Chapter 6 by Silvina Montrul). Kim Potowski introduces the second unit of
the volume entitled “Educational Approaches to Spanish as a Heritage Language”
(Chapter 7). Some of the discussions included within this unit relate to academic
placement of heritage language learners (Chapter 8 by Sara Beaudrie); attending to
the needs of heritage language learners in mixed classrooms (­Chapter 9 by María
Carreira); the relationship between Spanish heritage language education and iden-
tity (­Chapter 10 by María Luisa Parra); and linguistic attitudes towards the heri-
tage language (­Chapter 11 by Ana Sánchez Muñoz). Marta Fairclough (­Chapter 12)
is responsible for the i­ntroduction of the third and last unit of the volume. The
main goal of this unit is to provide the reader with a sense of what future lines of
development within heritage language instruction are likely to be as well as what
the advantages and/or challenges of these practices might look like. The discus-
sions included within this unit are the incorporation of community engagement/
service learning in the heritage language curriculum (Chapter 13 by Kelly Lowther
Pereira); heritage language learners and the study abroad experience (Chapter 14 by
Rachel Shively); the use of 100% online courses to teach heritage language learners
(­Chapter 15 by ­Florencia Giglio H ­ enshaw), and the implementation of the flipped-
classroom approach (Chapter 16 by Julio Torres).
To conclude the volume, an afterword by Maria Polinsky presents an integrated
summary of the main ideas discussed within these units and addresses the future
development of the field both in terms of research and instructional practices.
It is our hope that the diversity of approaches included herein as well as the ideas
presented provide a valuable resource for researchers, students, and professionals
working in diverse areas of Spanish as a heritage language.
 Diego Pascual y Cabo

References

Baker, C., & Jones, S. P. (1998). Encyclopedia of bilingualism and bilingual education. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Beaudrie, S. (2011). Spanish heritage language programs: A snapshot of current programs in the
Southwestern United States. Foreign Language Annals, 44(2), 321–337.
doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2011.01137.x
Beaudrie, S. (2012). Research on university-based Spanish heritage language programs in the
United States: The current state of affairs. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish
as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 203–221). Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press.
Beaudrie S. M., & Fairclough, M. (2012). Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The
state of the field. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Beaudrie, S. M., Ducar, C., & Potowski, K. (2014). Heritage language teaching: Research and
practice. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
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unit i

Formal approaches to Spanish as a

Heritage Language
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage
language acquisition
Bridges for pedagogically oriented research

Jason Rothman1,2, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli3 &

Diego Pascual y Cabo4
1University of Reading / 2UiT, The Arctic University of Norway /
3University of Cambridge / 4Texas Tech University

The goal of this chapter is to lay out the central themes of heritage language
acquisition research adopting a formal/theoretical linguistic perspective.
Specifically, we aim to provide a detailed discussion of the nature of heritage
language grammars. In doing so, we will address the debates on how to explain
heritage speaker competence differences from monolingual baselines and more.
This chapter will not be limited to discussions of Spanish as a heritage language,
but rather will highlight the important role that Spanish has played and will
continue to play in the development of heritage language acquisition studies.
Finally, we will offer some comments/insights on how the information covered
regarding the formal linguistic properties of heritage speaker knowledge should
be considered for and implemented in heritage language pedagogies and thus
dealing with heritage speakers in the classroom setting.

1. Introduction

As is true of all cases of language acquisition, Heritage Language (HL) acquisition can
be studied from multiple traditions. The questions that motivate research programs
from different perspectives are therefore necessarily destined to be only partially
overlapping. The fields of study to which this book makes a significant contribution
illuminate this statement. Although there is a justifiable need for some level of inde-
pendence between (abstract) theory and practice, strict independence in HL studies
runs antithetical to everyone’s goals. It is fair to say that researchers interested in HL
pedagogy would achieve better results if their endeavours built on knowledge obtained
from HL acquisition in naturalistic contexts. Equally, heritage language development
in the classroom setting provides an indispensable testing laboratory for questions and
hypotheses formulated by formal linguistic HL theorists. The connections that the two

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.02rot
© 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

sides should have cannot be overstated. However, at present, there is little ­connection
between formal linguistic and pedagogically oriented HL researchers, despite compel-
ling reasons to the contrary. Within this context, the purpose of this chapter is three-
fold: (i) to provide the reader with a brief introduction to formal linguistic studies of
heritage language acquisition; (ii) to serve as a bridge between the two subfields of
study so as to invite greater collaboration as we have laid out the need for above; and
(iii) to introduce the chapters included in this unit.
Formal linguistic studies examining HL acquisition in the “wild” have mostly
focused on describing the grammatical competence of adult heritage speakers, and
on theorizing about how/why these grammars developed in the ways they did.
That is, formal linguistic studies look at the (mostly adult) outcomes of ­naturalistic
­language acquisition in a very specific sociolinguistic situation that defines the
parameters of HL bilingualism. In the past decade or so, there has been a prolifera-
tion of research of this type. On the whole, this research has consistently shown
that HL bilinguals – especially under favourable conditions of access to ample input
of high quality – have sophisticated HL grammars; however, they are to various
degrees and in various domains significantly different from age-matched mono-
linguals (see e.g., Montrul, 2008, this volume; Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky,
2013 for review). Details aside for now, such a consistent result is very appealing to
formal linguists for the conundrum it presents. After all, HL bilinguals are native
speakers of the HL since, like monolinguals, they acquired the HL naturalistically
in early childhood (see Rothman & ­Treffers-Daller, 2014). So, why should they be
significantly different from monolingual controls? There are obvious variables that
will at least partially factor into any reasonable ultimate answer to this question. For
example, the fallacy of comparing bilinguals and monolinguals (e.g., Bley-Vroman,
1983), the role of formal education and literacy in monolingual knowledge, the
comparability of the quantities and qualities of the inputs each group receives are
all factors which could contribute to differences of HL speakers from monolingual
controls (see Pascual y Cabo & R ­ othman, 2012 for discussion). Equally clear, how-
ever, is that none of the aforementioned variables alone or even in combination
would explain the range of differences seen in HL competences. For the theoretical
linguist then, HL bilinguals in the “wild” provide a naturally occurring laboratory
to test important questions of considerable debate. For example: (i) Under reduced
input, what parts of grammar seem particularly robust and what parts of grammar
are more affected? (ii) What does this reveal about the nature of language and its
mental constitution? (iii) What do HL bilingual outcomes tell us about the nature
vs. nurture debates in linguistics?
More pedagogically focused studies of HL acquisition necessarily focus on
other questions, precisely because they deal with similar sets of bilinguals outside
of the “wild.” In a way, HL bilinguals in the classroom are a proper subset of all HL
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

­ ilinguals since they necessarily include only those that seek formal training and
b
literacy of the HL. By definition, assuming the focus is on the traditional ques-
tions, formal linguistic researchers have tended not to be primarily interested in
what happens in the classroom context since the classroom itself constitutes an
additional, specific variable (but see, e.g., Montrul & Bowles, 2010). Such a mind-
set, however, has largely resulted in a missed opportunity for the typical formal
linguist. Studies in the classroom setting, when carefully constructed, could be very
productive towards adjudicating between various proposals of how and why heri-
tage grammars differ from monolingual ones, a point to which we will return in
greater detail. Classroom HL studies must deal with a different reality than formal
linguistic studies do. As is true of all language classrooms, the HL classroom brings
together a heterogeneous population. Even though all students are HL bilinguals,
it is very unlikely that any given cohort will be of the same linguistic proficiency
level. This heterogeneity produces linguistic challenges similar to those of the L2
classroom. Pedagogically oriented HL studies often seek to examine what particular
interventions do for HL bilinguals, what their specific needs are, and the like. In
this respect, HL pedagogy can shed light on the areas of HL grammar which are
more vulnerable, benefit more or less from intervention, and, perhaps, belong more
to the periphery than to the core.
Ideally, a mutually beneficial relationship could exist between pedagogically
oriented treatments of HL acquisition and formal descriptions from the HL. For
example, specific classroom interventions designed on the basis of what formal
­linguistic studies reveal about HL competence can test theoretical questions within
language pedagogy. A very good example of such good practice can be seen in
Potowski, Jegerski and Morgan Short’s (2009) study of the development of past sub-
junctive in Heritage bilingual Spanish, using testing between two teaching meth-
odologies. Our point here is not to suggest that there are no connections between
formal linguistic and pedagogical oriented approaches to HL bilingualism, but
rather that there is room for more profitable and more pervasive connections. For
such connections to be maximally beneficial, an open dialogue of understand-
ing must be established. This means that formal linguistic discussions need to be
accessible to HL pedagogy by presenting the research itself and the debates within
their sub-field in an appropriate and theory-neutral way. The main purpose of this
­chapter, then, is a concise first attempt at building this bridge. Beyond briefly cover-
ing the basics of what formal linguistic studies have described related to HL bilin-
gual grammars as well as the theoretical positions within formal linguistic theory
on how and why HL grammars take the shape they do, we will inject our views
in terms of what is at stake from a formal linguistic perspective related to these
positions. Specifically, we will discuss the consequences of the terminology that
derives from such perspective for pedagogically oriented researchers and teachers.
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

We see this discussion as the first building block of the bridge between formal HL
approaches and HL pedagogy in view of the possible far-reaching i­ mplications that
clarity and specificity in theoretical approaches can bring to the implementation
of research in teaching practice. In particular, misunderstanding findings which
reveal HS differences from monolingual norms can promote a pedagogical point
of departure that is unintended by formal linguists as it is linguistically inaccurate.
Similarly, the view of “fixing” heritage grammars from a broken state to an unbro-
ken one via pedagogical intervention in no way derives from formal linguistic con-
cepts or ­empirical data sets.

2. F
 ormal linguistic approaches to HL bilingualism: The data trends
and the debates

2.1 Who qualifies as a HL bilingual?

As pointed out in the introductory chapter of this volume, it is perhaps prudent to
start this section by defining what a HL bilingual is taken to be in the context of
(most) formal linguistic studies. It might seem evident that all researchers would
agree on and thus use the same profile characteristics when determining which indi-
viduals qualify as HL bilinguals. However, this is not immediately clear in practice.
Indeed, for certain purposes and research questions, a broad, inclusive definition
might be useful. For example, a HL learner – note that learner is used ­purposefully –
might be anyone who has (strong) familial ties to a particular language and/or
­culture, for example, a second or third generation Korean-American. This person
might not speak Korean, but has been somewhat exposed to the language indirectly
all her life and very much brought up in the traditional culture. Under a situation
where this individual matriculates in a Korean class at University-level, understand-
ing that this individual brings motivations and some linguistic/cultural knowledge
that the non-Korean-descendant learner has is useful and might justify treating this
person as a HL learner for teaching and pedagogically-oriented research purposes.
However, given the questions that formal linguistic studies focus on, such an indi-
vidual is not a HL bilingual, at least not in the sense we typically understand for
heritage speakers. A heritage speaker (HS) – emphasis on the speaker – usually refers
to HL bilinguals that have – to various degrees – naturally acquired communicative
competence in the HL.
Within the framework of formal linguistics which seeks to describe and explain
the grammar of HSs, some grammatical competence in the HL is presupposed.
Thus, despite the fact that different formal linguistic studies examine various levels
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

of HS ­proficiency – usually assessed in comparison to age-matched monolinguals

(see P­ ascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012; Putnam & Sanchez, 2013; Bullock & Toribio,
this volume for issues with this practice) all these studies investigate speakers of a
HL acquired naturalistically in a home setting. Although various formal linguistic
­definitions of HS and HL exist (see e.g., Montrul, 2008; Benmamoun et al., 2013), we
offer the one below taken from Rothman (2009) as the one we follow herein, noting
that all available definitions accord with the basic characterizing descriptors.
A language qualifies as a heritage language if it is a language spoken at home
or otherwise readily available to young children, and crucially this language is
not a dominant language of the larger (national) society…. the heritage language
is acquired on the basis of an interaction with naturalistic input and whatever
in-born linguistic mechanisms are at play in any instance of child language
acquisition. Differently [from monolingual acquisition], there is the possibility
that quantitative and qualitative differences in heritage language input, influence
of the societal majority language and differences in literacy and formal education
can result in what on the surface seems to be arrested development of the heritage
language or attrition in adult bilingual knowledge. (Rothman, 2009: 156)

In light of the above, we can summarize a HS as a bilingual speaker of the HL who

developed knowledge of the HL naturalistically. A HS is either a simultaneous bilin-
gual (2L1) of both the HL and the societal language or initially a monolingual of the
HL who became an early child L2 learner of the societal language. More often than
not, the HS becomes dominant in the societal language, which often corresponds to
the sole language of her formal education throughout her lifespan and the language
in which she primarily socializes outside the home, starting in early childhood. As
obvious as it should be that eventual dominance in the societal language does not
change the fact that the HSs are L1 acquirers of the HL (uniquely or the HL is one of
two L1s), it is not always clear that HSs are treated, as they should be, as a sub-type of
native speakers of the L1 (see Leal Mendez, Rothman & Slabakova, 2015; Rothman &
Treffers-Daller, 2014).

2.2 What do formal linguistic studies reveal?

Rather than delve into too many details with respect to individual data sets, we will
endeavour to concisely explain the general trends that formal linguistic research has
revealed with respect to HS competence. Inevitably, this means we will oversimplify
complex issues. We refer the reader to two sources that comprise in-depth and accessi-
ble state-of-the-science reviews of much of the empirical work on formal linguistic HS
studies that are very exhaustive to the date of their publications, (a) Montrul (2015),
and (b) Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky (2013).
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

A survey of HS studies overwhelmingly shows that HS competence tends to differ

from matched monolinguals in the following ways:

1. HL grammatical competence and performance differ from monolingual norms to

various degrees in various domains.
2. HSs often show partial knowledge as opposed to an utter lack of knowledge.
3. Heritage language competences can differ significantly from one another whereby
some are much more “proficient” holistically (and in various domains) than
others.

Observation (1) refers to the fact that HSs often perform on a continuum across dif-
ferent domains of grammar. For example, generally speaking HSs tend to show better
conformity in the phonological domain than in some areas of morphology and syntax
(but see Rao, this volume). We could further divide trends within a single domain.
Within morpho-syntax, for example, it has been observed that HSs are more likely
to parallel monolingual native speaker knowledge in core syntactic properties as
opposed to interface-conditioned properties (e.g., Sorace, 2011). Take for example,
gender assignment and agreement. In Spanish, assignment/agreement of gender is
both a lexical and syntactic property. Gender assignment on the noun itself is a lexical
process that specifies the gender value (masculine or feminine for Spanish) as part of
the entry of the word. Gender agreement within the D(eterminer) P(hrase) involves
the matching process of the lexical gender feature of the noun with the gender features
of articles, demonstratives quantifiers and adjectives that co-occur with that noun.
This matching process is a syntactic operation with morphological and phonological
implications on the form of all the agreeing items (e.g., ‘el’ vs. ‘la’ etc). HSs are accurate
with gender agreement, meaning the syntax of gender is in place, whereas they have
some issues with lexical gender assignment (see Montrul, Foote & Perpiñán, 2008).
Observation (2) seemingly overlaps with the final example offered for observa-
tion (1). That is, HSs often show partial knowledge of particular properties of gram-
mar as opposed to utter lack of knowledge. Consider subjunctive mood in Spanish.
Unlike English, Spanish has a complex system of mood encoded in specific mor-
phology on the verb. HSs of Spanish exhibit differences from monolingual Spanish
speakers with use of subjunctive mood morphology (e.g., Montrul, 2009; Montrul &
Perpiñán, 2011). However, some uses of the subjunctive are much more variable than
others. In fact, HSs at high levels of proficiency are quite accurate with the subjunc-
tive when it is syntactically obligatory, as is the case with volitional contexts intro-
duced with the verb querer ‘to want’ (e.g., Pascual y Cabo, Lingwall, & Rothman
2012). In other contexts where the subjunctive is possible but not obligatory and in
which the choice of indicative vs. subjunctive depends on semantic-pragmatic prop-
erties, HSs tend to differ more significantly from monolingual controls. In a study
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

comparing subjunctive mood in purpose clauses (i.e. after para que ‘in order to’) with
relative clauses where the use of subjunctive depends on the absence of presupposi-
tion, Giancaspro (2014) shows that HSs perform just like native monolinguals in the
former but not in the latter context. This study indicates that at least partial knowl-
edge of subjunctive is available to HSs since in certain (semantic) contexts they too,
like monolingual controls, are sensitive to mood distinctions, while in other contexts
their knowledge differs from that of controls.
Observation (3) refers to the fact that HSs’ knowledge of the HL is not as con-
sistent across individuals as one expects of other sets of native speakers, particularly
monolinguals. This fact is not at all surprising when one considers the continuum of
exposure type (quantity and quality), their individual patterns of use of the HL, the level
of literacy they have in the HL, the status of the HL in the society in which they live,
or their access to other speakers of the HL. These differences do not normally pertain
to native monolinguals, at least not in the same way. While we typically do not use
terms like intermediate and advanced levels to describe monolinguals, these terms are
used in HS studies to equate their relative level as compared to matched monolingual
norms. It is worth pointing out that one could, using the same rubric of an idealized
standard comparison, observe such differences across monolinguals (see Dąbrowska,
2012), although this is beyond the scope of this chapter. Suffice it to say, that HSs even
when seemingly under very comparable input conditions do not always show the same
level of conformity that one expects in monolingual contexts. Although variables must
conspire to explain this, it is possible in a HS context to have members of the same fam-
ily differ significantly from one another despite the fact that key indicators such as Socio
Economic Status (SES) that normally explain differences in monolinguals are controlled
for. Proficiency tendencies for particular HL groups, at least in the US where HSs have
been studied most prolifically, have been noted. Whereas Spanish and ­Portuguese HSs
in the US tend to be at the intermediate to advanced proficiency levels, HSs of Russian
and Korean tend to achieve lower levels of proficiency. This observational fact is likely
a by-product of the sociolinguistic realities of particular languages in a particular envi-
ronment. One can imagine that Russian HSs, for example, in another context such as
the Ukraine will differ in this regard to those studied in the US.

2.3 How and why: The debates on sourcing different outcomes

As alluded to above, it is not the case that HSs’ knowledge of the HL is entirely
different from that of monolinguals. Indeed, for some domains of grammar HSs
perform indistinguishably from some monolinguals (e.g., Leal Méndez et al., 2015).
Much of the focus of the field, however, has been on the differences HS grammars
often present. The reason for this is two-fold: (a) differences are abundant enough
to be considered representative and (b) differences are theoretically relevant on
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

v­ arious planes. By abundant, we are referring to the fact that it is not at all difficult to
uncover some degree of difference between native monolinguals and even the most
proficient of HSs at various grammatical points. By significant and theoretically rel-
evant, we are referring to one of the core questions of HS studies from a formal
linguistic perspective: How and why does early naturalistic acquisition of a native
language result in differences between native monolinguals and HS populations in
adulthood? Answers to this question promise to have far-reaching implications for
linguistic and acquisition theories. To name just a few, uncovering the variables that
conspire to explain these differences will shed light on the role input has (e.g., quan-
tity and quality) for acquisition more generally and specifically for the acquisition
of particular properties, on the selectively vulnerable domains of grammar in bilin-
gualism, and on the role of age of acquisition on grammatical outcomes (see Tsimpli,
2014 for a critical overview).
A major focus of formal linguistic HS studies – probably the main source of
debate as well – regards various proposals that attempt to answer the question above
regarding the source of differences between the end-state grammars of monolingual
vs. HS bilingual early native acquisition. Although it is clear that bilingualism itself is
a factor and influence from the societal language – typically the dominant language
of HSs – can explain some of the differences, it is equally apparent that these two
considerations alone or together could not explain the gamut observed. There are
four hypotheses that are formalized in the literature. To our mind, none of them are
mutually exclusive to the others. In other words, it is possible – likely in our view –
that each of these proposals explains in part a subset of the differences and that all
contribute to HS end-state differences.
The first proposal is that arrested development is a main contributor (see
­Montrul, 2008). Arrested development refers to a point in the developmental
sequence of HL acquisition where development ceases, that is, at a point in child
language acquisition short on convergence on the adult variety of the HL. Presum-
ably, arrested development correlates with reductions in input and the start of shifts
in dominance towards the societal language at which point further development in
the HL does not occur. This view is often referred to by the label incomplete acqui-
sition. The general idea of incomplete acquisition is that HSs, for a myriad of rea-
sons, do not fully acquire the HL. The second proposal is that of HL attrition, the
non-pathological loss or erosion of previously acquired linguistic representations
(Polinsky, 2011). The idea is that HSs have acquired a HL grammar not qualitatively
different from monolinguals but with certain properties lost or eroded as the HS
shift in dominance towards the societal language.
Note that both of these proposals, in our view, make some presuppositions about
the input available to HSs. Something can only be incompletely acquired or acquired
and lost – the case of attrition – if the exposure to the HL that the HSs receive
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

­ rovided the cue within the input that could lead to convergence on the monolin-
p
gual variety in the first place. The third proposal, alternatively, focuses more on the
qualitative nature of the input to which HSs are exposed, offering the possibility that
some of the differences in HSs might be traced back to qualitative differences in the
input provided to them by speakers of the HL who themselves might be undergo-
ing attrition or as a result of not having been exposed to certain structures given a
lack of formal education in a standard monolingual variety (Sorace, 2004; Rothman,
2007; Pires & Rothman, 2009; Montrul & Sanchez-Walker, 2013). This approach is
known as input delimited differences in the literature. Under such a view, systematic
differences between HS and monolingual varieties are viewed as dialectal differences.
As such HSs can be said to fully acquire the HL, just a different variety than the one
monolinguals acquire. The fourth proposal is that HSs differences reflect a differ-
ent path of acquisition than monolinguals (Putnam & Sanchez, 2013). Like proposal
three, such a view sidesteps the issue of labelling HS as incomplete. Instead, the idea
is that HS grammars are complete grammars of a different kind than monolinguals.
­Differently from arrested development or attrition, there is no stopping of develop-
ment or reversal. Instead, there is a change in path, which is a point at which HS chil-
dren diverge from monolingual children as they both continue to develop towards a
steady state grammar.
Of these four proposals, the most influential to date has been incomplete acquisi-
tion. The term incomplete acquisition to describe the state of HS grammars is almost
a ubiquitous term. Disentangled from any evaluative meaning that one might assign
to the term, to which we return in the next section, it is clear why this view is the
most accepted. In the first place, provided one accepts the monolingual comparison
against which incompleteness is benchmarked, it is descriptively accurate. Secondly,
if it is used, as it often is, as an umbrella term referring to differences as opposed to
being linked exclusively to arrested development then the other three proposals could
be subsumed under it as contributing factors that give rise to incomplete acquisition.
Although no linguists who have used this term – ourselves included historically – have
intended to convey any evaluative innuendo, it is not clear that this term is either
descriptively accurate or especially useful for non-linguists (see Pascual y Cabo &
Rothman, 2012 for discussion). In the next section, we will develop this further, spe-
cifically linked to how it relates to HL classrooms.

3. The classroom is not a locus of completion

As stated from the outset, our goals herein are to summarize the research that formal
linguists have carried out and link this research to scholarship and practice in HL
pedagogy. We now turn to our second goal.
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

Formal linguistic studies can contribute to HL pedagogy if there is properly con-

textualized dissemination and translation of findings, specifically for pedagogically
oriented purposes. Formal linguistic studies provide descriptions of loci of differences
between monolinguals and HSs. For pedagogical purposes, explaining how and why
differences obtain is of little use (unless the source of said differences may be metalan-
guage or literacy development), but knowing what those differences are can be very
useful. Formal linguistic research also endeavours to correlate variables that might
explain why some HSs are relatively less divergent from monolinguals than others.
Knowing how HSs differ from the monolingual standard and which variables reliably
correlate to intragroup differences across HSs of the same HL can facilitate the cre-
ation of empirically-informed pedagogies for HSs of any given HL and also for specific
subsets of HSs of that particular profile.
As just described, one might get the wrong impression that HL education is
meant to complete an incomplete process. In other words, formal linguistic studies
can inform where the “holes” in knowledge are, so that specific interventions can be
designed to fill in the gaps. As always, context is extremely important. In the situa-
tion of a HL classroom, HSs are generally being taught a particular standard variety.
For many, this will also be their first exposure to literacy in the HL. As we see it, HSs
need instruction on ­literacy, the standard grammar, and cultural knowledge. Thus,
HL teaching ought to be viewed as akin to language arts education in monolingual
settings, geared at age and context appropriate levels of maturity, meta-linguistic and
meta-cognitive knowledge. In many places, to be sure, this is happening. A key piece
to the success of educating HSs in their HL is to understand that HSs are not linguisti-
cally broken simply because they are different from monolinguals, and so the goal of
HL education is not to fix them but to consolidate developed or developing knowledge
of the HL. Communicatively competent HSs are native speakers of a dialect of the
HL, however different from a monolingual standard. Seen this way, adult HSs who
take classes in the standard variety of the HL might be better viewed as a specific type
of third-language learners, as suggested by Polinsky (2015). In any case, just like the
goal of teaching standard American English across the United States in language arts
classes is not intended to replace dialectal variation, but rather to provide educated
pupils with another variety/register that in certain contexts might be expected and
more appropriate, so too is the case of teaching standardized varieties to HSs.
Formal linguistic studies that repeatedly show differences between HSs and
monolingual norms are simply documenting in real time a naturally occurring pro-
cess of emerging dialect formation. HL speakers are thus speakers of a variety whose
characteristics are primarily defined by bilingualism itself, namely by external factors
(input quality and quantity) that have been repeatedly shown to affect language devel-
opment in bilinguals, and developmental patterns which affect the timing of emer-
gence and mastery of specific phenomena in monolingual and bilingual children alike
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

(­Tsimpli, 2014). As we mentioned, it is because HSs provide a unique glimpse into

processes that are integral to many questions of importance to language and cognitive
sciences that so many formal linguists and psycholinguists have studied them in the
past two decades in particular. In our choice of labels, such as incomplete acquisi-
tion, we might have given the impression that the job of HS teaching is to complete a
stunted (incomplete) acquisition process. We challenge this approach by suggesting
that a promising relationship between formal linguistics and HL pedagogy is one of
informing what the specific needs are of HSs who already speak a closely related vari-
ety to the new standard one the classroom seeks to provide.
Up to this point, we have addressed two of the three goals we posited at the ­outset
of this chapter: we have provided an introduction to the formal/theoretical study of
heritage speaker bilingual development and we have underscored the importance
of building bridges between theory and practice. Next, to address our final aim, we
­present an integrated summary of the four chapters included in this unit.

4. Reviewing the chapters in this section

Our earlier claim that heritage languages are not incomplete is not meant to deny the
seemingly ever-present differences observed with regards to HS knowledge and use
of the HL (e.g., Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012). Such differences have been docu-
mented in a variety of properties and domains, with those found in the area of mor-
phosyntax being singled out as most vulnerable (e.g., Montrul, 2008, 2010; ­Rothman,
2009; Pascual y Cabo, 2015). Although to date many developments have been made
and have allowed the field to move forward in our understanding of HS bilingual
development, there remain open theoretical and empirical issues which require addi-
tional research. Thus, to further advancements in the field, the four chapters included
in this section analyse new data on a variety of properties and provide different view-
points on current debates.
Additionally, in line with the general spirit of advancement and development that
this v­ olume aims to convey, is the effort to build bridges between different method-
ological approaches, perspectives and even (sub)disciplines. In this sense, Jacqueline
Toribio and Barbara Bullock’s proposal (Chapter 3) aims to close in on the distance
between HL formal/theoretical research and language variation studies by presenting
a corpus-based approach as a new form of observation for characterizing Spanish as
a HL. The integration of this novel approach into the general HL research program
allows for new analyses, which, in turn, can make new and meaningful connections
between the HL, its speakers, and the HL input they are exposed to.
As discussed, while most previous research on HSs has examined knowledge
and use of ­morphosyntactic properties, the areas of phonetics and phonology remain
 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

largely understudied (but see e.g., Amengual, 2012; Au, Knightly, Jun & Oh, 2002, Rao,
2014). Filling an important gap in the literature is, therefore, Rajiv Rao’s experimental
study on Spanish HS nuclear tonal configurations (Chapter 4). Rao’s data indicate that
utterance type (statements and questions) and pragmatic meaning influence nuclear
intonation differently for HSs than for native speakers. According to Rao, the differen-
tial nature of the (intonational) input to which HSs are exposed seems to be respon-
sible for the outcomes observed.
In Chapter 5, Jegerski, VanPatten, and Keating examine ambiguous relative clause
attachment preferences among HSs and adult L2 learners. Employing a computerized
off-line sentence interpretation task, they found that while late bilinguals favored a
single attachment strategy in both of their languages, as in Dussias and Sagarra (2007),
heritage bilingual participants exhibited distinct attachment preferences in each of
their languages. Jegerski et al. take this to indicate that early bilinguals may be more
likely to use language-specific sentence comprehension strategies, which is more in
line with a two-processor model of bilingual sentence comprehension.
In an examination of structural simplification and case erosion of Spanish indi-
rect objects and dative experiencer verbs (gustar-like), Silvina Montrul (Chapter 6)
observes that not only HSs, but also first generation immigrants, and (to some extent)
native speakers from the same linguistic background show a tendency to accept
ungrammatical sentences without the required preposition “a.” Consistent with previ-
ous research (e.g., Silva Corvalán, 1994; Pascual y Cabo, 2013; Pires & Rothman, 2009)
she contends that in addition to limited exposure to input during late childhood, the
structural changes observed can also be related to the individual grammars of some of
the HSs’ input providers (i.e., first generation immigrants), who may have undergone
attrition.

5. Some concluding remarks

In an effort to provide a broad base for the discussions that will follow in this the-
matic section, we started our contribution by laying out the central topics and main
research trends in the field of HS acquisition from a formal/theoretical linguistic
perspective. Some of the issues included in this discussion were (i) the definition of
HS, (ii) the differential nature of HS linguistic outcomes, and (iii) the source of the
HS differences. Additionally, we have provided a rationale for linking formal lin-
guistics to HL pedagogical approaches. Specifically, our goal was to raise awareness
about the inadequacy of the label incomplete acquisition to describe the documented
HS competence differences from monolingual baselines on the basis that its use may
encourage unwarranted misinterpretations and misgeneralizations.
Lastly, we have summarized the four chapters included in this section. As we see
it, the w
­ ide-reaching discussions included therein are good examples of the kind of
 Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

research needed to yield a more fine-grained understanding of the issues of interest to

the field of HS acquisition/bilingual development. To be sure, such an understanding
is needed to continue to gain insights which will shape (and constrain) future research
and practice in the field.

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 A new look at heritage Spanish and
its speakers

Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

The University of Texas

In this chapter we advocate for the value of new forms of observation for
characterizing the Spanish of heritage speakers in the United States. As is widely
recognized, Spanish acquired in bilingual contexts is different from Spanish
acquired in monolingual settings; and, yet, the nature of bilingual U.S. Spanish
has not been adequately documented, even as the field of heritage language
studies advances. Here, we motivate the need to more accurately describe
heritage Spanish and to quantify variation in heritage Spanish speech. More
importantly, we propose a means of doing so; specifically, we endorse a corpus-
based approach, which allows for baselines that are vital in informing heritage
Spanish research.

1. Introduction

In this chapter, we advocate for the value of new forms of observation for character-
izing the Spanish of heritage speakers in the United States. It is largely assumed that
­Spanish acquired in bilingual contexts is different from Spanish acquired in monolin-
gual settings; and, yet, the nature of bilingual U.S. Spanish has not been adequately
­documented. Here, we motivate the need to more accurately describe heritage U.S.
Spanish, and we propose a means of doing so. Specifically, we endorse a corpus-based
approach to the study of heritage Spanish, one that adopts an emic practice in data col-
lection, and introduce the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project (Bullock & Toribio, 2013),
our first step towards involving heritage speakers in recording the continuity and inno-
vations that are manifested in their communities.
A parallel incentive for adopting a corpus-based methodology to heritage Spanish
is to bring heritage language studies in line with other studies of language variation.
As will be demonstrated with reference to Spanish in Texas, the scenario of Spanish in
the U.S. invites us to contemplate questions that remain central in language variation,
particularly the role of language contact, and the Spanish in Texas Corpus permits

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.03tor
© 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company
 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

us to begin to address them. Consider, in this respect, the following examples, which
illustrate what appears to be an innovative extension of the verb agarrar.1
(1) Agarrar + NP
a. Yo me esforcé para agarrar becas. [MF017]
‘I exerted myself to get scholarships.’
b. Agarré mi certificado, y con eso ya empecé. [AF130]
‘I got my certificate, and with that I started.’
c. 
Ellos agarraron esa tradición allá en México y aquí lo hacen todavía
cada año. [AM064]
‘They got that tradition there in México and here they still do it every
year.’
d. ¿Cómo agarraste el trabajo aquí? [AF004]
‘How did you get this job here?’

Is this innovative use of agarrar attributable to contact with English, i.e., is the
­construction calqued on the productive English collocation ‘get + NP’? Does the inno-
vation have consequences elsewhere the grammar, e.g., in the reduction in frequency
or displacement of Spanish-language alternatives? Questions such as these remain
unresolved because of the dearth of data on this variety and on the oral vernacular
from which it developed.
Scholars of U.S. Spanish often base their analyses on observations that are
­sporadic, and as a consequence, they potentially misapprehend the presence of par-
ticular features or constructions. For instance, the semantic extension of agarrar in
(1) may be perceived as an innovation in Texas or U.S. Spanish, when in fact it may
be diffused even among Spanish-speaking monolinguals in Mexico. Conversely, an
especially salient feature, such as the hacer +V sequences in (2), might be imputed as a
wide-spread property of Texas varieties, when it might instead be restricted to a small
network of speakers.
(2) Hacer + VEnglish
a. Mi familia también estaba contenta de mí, cause no hice drop out.
[AF004]
‘My family was also happy with me because I didn’t drop out.’
b. Nos podían hacer discipline más que ahora. [AF006]
‘They could discipine us more than now.’

. The data discussed throughout this paper is drawn from the Spanish in Texas Corpus
(Bullock & Toribio, 2013), one component resource of the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project.
Each example is identified by a unique speaker code, indicating speaker’s place of birth
(Mexico/U.S.A/Other), gender (M/F), and participant number.
 A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

c. Había un niño que me hacía mucho bully porque mi pelo estaba muy
largo. [MF066]
‘There was a boy who bullied me because my hair was very long.’
d. … para que hagamos translate. [AF006]
‘So that we can translate.’

In presenting an accurate portrait of heritage Spanish and rendering heritage Spanish

data relevant to studies of language variation, what is needed are large, representative
corpora with extensive metadata about the speakers and communities.
The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. Section 2, ‘Heritage
­Spanish and its speakers,’ situates our work within sociolinguistics and discuss the
benefits of corpus-based inquiry in the study of heritage lects. Section 3, ‘Documen-
tation,’ ­presents our efforts to document heritage Spanish, beginning with Spanish
speakers in Texas: §3.1 describes heritage speakers’ role in gathering language data
in their communities, §3.2 details the processing and current web presence of the
corpus data, and §3.3 delineates some of the many benefits accrued by the collec-
tion and inspection of authentic language samples. Section 4, ‘Variation,’ discusses
the two above-mentioned collocations – agarrar + NP (§4.1) and hacer + VEnglish
(§4.2) – and demonstrates that a corpus-based approach to investigating these inno-
vations in heritage U.S. Spanish can illuminate enduring questions about language
in the context of language contact. The discussion in §4.3 elaborates on the implica-
tions of our endeavors in this area for how we study and describe heritage language
forms. Section 5 concludes the chapter by summarizing the benefits yielded by cor-
pus-based studies for heritage learner classrooms and communities, for our chosen
­disciplines, and for society more generally.

2. Heritage Spanish and its speakers

Commenting on the multiple dimensions of the study of language in the early ­twentieth
century, Ferdinand de Saussure (1916 [1986: 7]) writes, “In the lives of individuals and
of society, language is a factor of greater importance than any other. For the study
of language to remain solely the business of a handful of specialists would be a quite
unacceptable state of affairs.” Over the past decades, scholars across sub-disciplines of
linguistics have adopted Saussure’s position and sought out ways to open up discus-
sions of language, inspiring all speakers – learners, parents, practitioners, and layper-
sons alike – to an appreciation of the importance of the study of social and ethnic
lects. As one example, Walt Wolfram’s pioneering efforts on sociolinguistic variation in
North Carolina have prompted popular conversations on historical and cultural legacy
and laid the foundation for lasting impact with innovations in K-16 curricula. And in
 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

California, Guadalupe Valdés has made significant strides in engaging with elective
and circumstantial second-language learners and their parents and teachers to design
pedagogical practices that support and supplement the learners’ multiple repertoires
as well as advance the development of standards that adequately reflect the richness of
the lects that learners possess.
Outside of sociolinguistics (Wolfram) and educational linguistics (Valdés), the
fields of Heritage Language Studies and Hispanic Linguistics continue to struggle
with documentation and evaluation of heritage Spanish. With some exceptions –
among them, Ana Celia Zentella, María Carreira, and Kimberly Potowski – linguists
have done little to promote public discussion or to provide advocacy on behalf of her-
itage Spanish learners or opportunities for learners to speak for themselves. Instead,
much energy has been devoted to what Valdés has called the challenges of ‘curricu-
larizing’ heritage language in line with foreign language studies. The there lies in the
need to identify a prescribed Spanish language norm (typically the elevated norma
culta) and to correct deviations from it. This approach neglects the resource that is
precisely the linguistic variation that heritage learners bring into the classroom, and
it wholly disregards the learners’ need to understand and deploy diverse, often non-
sanctioned language forms in managing their everyday interactions in the communi-
ties they inhabit.
Alternatively, heritage speakers’ linguistic systems have been the object of con-
trolled on-line or off-line experimental tasks, where their speech patterns, judgments,
repetitions, reaction times, eye-movements, summarizing etc. are compared to those
of monolingual native speakers and advanced second-language learners. In these stud-
ies, heritage speakers consistently demonstrate between-group behaviors that distin-
guish them from each of the other Spanish-speaking study populations, a finding that
is most commonly attributed to their language status – ‘heritage speaker’, understood
as a macro-variable. Of equal interest, however, is how these heritage speakers differ
from each other, and how they differ from one speech context to the next. If we are
to understand the language of heritage speakers as a variety of Spanish that presents
socially-structured variation, as all varieties of Spanish do, we need to complement
existing strands of research with corpus-based perspectives that will allow us to prop-
erly analyze the range of factors that contribute to variation.
In the following section, we present our first attempt toward capturing the
­Spanish of heritage speakers in the U.S. The model that we propose in pursuing this
aim enlists learners in documenting Spanish language speech in their communities
and enjoins educators and scholars to curate and share collections of local Spanish
speech for pedagogical and research purposes. Such a data-driven approach to Spanish
heritage language studies not only affords an agentive role for learners and educators,
but also makes available corpora that are vital in informing heritage Spanish research,
­dispelling myths about heritage Spanish and its speakers.
 A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

3. Documentation

At present, the picture of U.S. Spanish is clouded by a lack of accessible, ­comprehensive

data, and debates about the nature of the variation attested in heritage bilingual Span-
ish remain unresolved. Decontextualized examples of archaisms, non-canonical mor-
phological and syntactic usage, and English language insertions, as in the samples
of oral vernacular speech in (3), may be perceived as a striking divergence from the
norma culta, but overstating their presence obscures the fact that they are embed-
ded in a larger linguistic context that provides evidence of a robust Spanish-language
grammar.

(3) Oral vernacular

a. Yo creía que todos los mexicanos y latinos eran asina como yo aquí,
pero no, es diferente. [AF083]
‘I thought that all Mexicans and Latinos were like that like me here, but
no, it’s different.’
b. Mi papá fue nacido en San Luis Potosí, y se vino para los Estados
­Unidos a los quince años. [AF130]
‘My father was born in San Luis Potosí, and he moved to the United
States at age fifteen.’
c. Me gusta … juntarme con mis amigos a jugar bowling o ir a parties,
umm, juntarme con mi boyfriend, ir a las movies. [AF004]
‘I like to get together with my friends to play bowling or go to parties,
ummm, get together with my boyfriend to go to the movies.’

And, further scrutiny of extended speech shows that the speakers have access to com-
peting Spanish-language forms, and that they may be observed to alternate between
them, as shown in (4).

(4) Variation in usage

a. La verdad me molesta un poco que se me haiga olvidado … se me
hayan olvidado ciertas palabras, cierto vocabulario. [MM043]
‘The truth is that it bothers me a bit that I’ve forgotten … that I’ve
­forgotten some words, some vocabulary.’
b. 
Mistía mucho de escuela por ir a jugar a otros lugares con otros
teams. …Los días que faltaba podía jugar. [MF066]
‘I would miss a lot of school in order to go play in other places with
other teams. The days I missed, I could play …’

Whether collected in the field, in the classroom, or in the laboratory, such examples
cannot be properly understood without reference to their frequency and distribu-
tion in the speech of the individuals who produce them and in the communities in
 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

which they are found. In countering the mischaracterization of heritage Spanish and
its speakers, we need accountable and ecologically valid data.
The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project (Bullock & Toribio, 2013) was under-
taken as a first step towards providing a public resource of spoken U.S. Spanish.2
Funded through the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning
(COERLL), the purpose of the project is to profile Spanish as it is spoken through-
out Texas today and to provide open learning tools that allow learners, educators,
researchers, and the general public to explore Spanish language variation via authen-
tic language samples.

3.1 D
 ata collection
The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project provides a sampling of Spanish throughout the
vast territory of Texas. Though the majority of Spanish heritage speakers in the state
have historical roots in Mexico, there is a growing population of Spanish speakers with
origins in Central America, and there are many Texas residents with no ancestral links
to Mexico or Central America who speak Spanish on a regular basis. Accordingly,
in creating the corpus, we surveyed how Spanish is spoken by persons who reside in
Texas, rather than restrict our sample to those speakers of Mexican heritage or to those
born in Texas. This is one motivation for naming the corpus ‘Spanish in Texas’ rather
than ‘Texas Spanish’. More importantly, we selected the name to emphasize the fact
that the corpus reproduces Spanish as spoken in Texas, and not an emerging or unique
lect that is so specific to Texas that it deserves the state name as an attributive adjective.
For the purpose of gathering the data for creating the corpus, heritage Spanish
speakers (and several non-heritage students educated in dual-language programs)
were recruited as interns to collect language samples via semi-structured interviews
in their home communities.3 The interview protocol included a set of questions culled
from Historias, the National Public Radio StoryCorps Spanish-language segment. In
the Historias oral history project, pairs of Latino Americans record an exchange about
their life experiences in a mobile studio that travels around the U.S.; a list of questions
serves as prompts for the couples. For the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project, interns
selected from approximately 70 questions in Spanish that surrounded themes that
would be comfortably discussed between friends or family members, e.g., childhood

. The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project can be accessed online at 〈spanishintexas.org〉.

. All of the interns completed the university-mandated course for researchers working with
human subjects and participated in professional workshops in interviewing techniques and
video and audio recording. The interns were trained in two locations: in centrally-located
Austin, the capital of Texas, and in the Edinburgh/McAllen region of Texas, which borders
Reynosa, Mexico, some 500 kilometers to the south of the capital.
 A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

memories, family heritage, marriage and partnerships, vocational paths, (im)migra-

tion histories, aspirations for the future, identity and language; sample questions are
listed in (5).4

(5) Sample interview protocol questions

a. ¿Me puedes contar historias sobre las tradiciones culturales que
­celebras en tu familia? ¿Por qué son importantes?
‘Can you tell me stories about the cultural traditions that you celebrate
in your family? Why are they important?’
b. ¿Cómo te recordarían tus compañeros de escuela?
‘How would your schoolmates remember you?’
c. ¿Cómo crees que la vida de los latinos es diferente ahora en
­comparación con la época en la que crecieron tus padres? ¿En qué
forma crees que no ha cambiado?
‘How do you think the life of Latinos is different now as with the
era when your parents grew up? In what way do you think it has not
changed?’
d. ¿Cómo conociste a tu esposo/esposa, novio/novia, etc.?
‘How did you meet your husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend?’
e. ¿Qué lecciones te ha enseñado la vida laboral?
‘What lessons have you learned from your work life?’
f. Cuando conoces a una persona latina/hispana por primera vez, ¿cómo
sabes si hablar en inglés o en español?
‘When you meet a Latino/Hispanic person for the first time, how do
you know whether to speak in English or in Spanish?’
g. ¿En qué resultó diferente tu vida de lo que habías imaginado?
‘In way has your life turned out differently from what you had
i­ magined?’

The protocol also included a set of questions through which interns collected metadata
for each participant, capturing biographical information: sex, date and place of birth,
parents’ place of birth, language(s) of education, language(s) used in childhood with
parents and siblings, language(s) currently used with family, friends, and c­ o-workers,
and a rating of self-perceived Spanish proficiency in speaking, listening, reading,
­writing, and the importance placed on each. This information, which the interview-
ers entered directly into a Google Survey document in the field, can be informative in
analyzing and interpreting how linguistic forms vary as a function of individual and
social factors.

. 〈http://storycorps.org/historias/preguntas-sugeridas-de-historias/〉
 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

The student interns returned to their home communities and selected prospec-
tive participants from within their familial and social networks, yielding a sampling of
speakers with diverse profiles.5 At the time of this writing, 17 interns had conducted
134 interviews; of these, 96 interviews have been processed for the spanishintexas.org
site.6 The 96 participants present the following characteristics: There are 60 females
and 36 males, they span in age from 18 to 86, they reside across diverse regions of Texas
(El Paso in the far west, Lower Rio Grande Valley in the south, San Antonio, and the
central region that includes Austin, Houston, and the Dallas/Fort Worth region), and
they are predominantly U.S.-born (n = 54) or Mexican-born (n = 30).7 The interviews
ranged from approximately ten minutes to over an hour in length, and the ­primary
language used was Spanish, with occasional English insertions.

3.2 Processing and products

The Spanish data collected by the student interns was processed to produce online open
educational resources.8 Professional transcribers converted the oral interview data to
text files, and students subsequently hand-checked these for accuracy. The resultant
corpus from the 96 interviews is approximately 550,000 words in size. Each token in
the corpus has been annotated for language, part of speech (POS), and lemma, using
an automatic algorithm. The verbs were further classified according to person, mood,
and tense, and the nouns were marked for gender and number.
Under the umbrella of the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project, and with significant
student assistance, three resources and accompanying tools were created for end-users:
(i) the Spanish in Texas Corpus, (ii) the SpinTX Video Archive, and (iii) the Spanish
Grammar in Context. The Spanish in Texas Corpus, designed primarily for research-
ers, provides the complete set of full transcripts, with accompanying linguistic annota-
tions and speaker metadata. The corpus is open and available for download in several
formats in order to facilitate access to data and to accelerate research. In ­addition, there

. The interns explained the purpose of the study and participants’ rights to each inter-
viewee, and obtained informed consent for participation and, separately, for permission for
permanently archiving the video recordings for future research and educational purposes.
. The remaining interviews have not been included in the project materials largely because
of problems with sound quality, and two interviews have not been entered into the published
corpus because the speakers gave consent only for participation in the study but not for
­permission to archive their recordings.
. The other countries of birth represented were Colombia, El Salvador, Uruguay, Venezuela,
Argentina, Peru, Spain, and South Korea.
. “Open Educational Resources”, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation 〈www.hewlett.
org〉 (1 June, 2015).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
[Contents]
 17. House in the Air. [Note]

[Contents]

a. Tracking Anansi.

Simeon Falconer, Santa Cruz Mountains.

Anansi live into a tree with wife and children, then go about and robber
the others and they can’t find where he live. So Tiger and Bredder
Tacoomah dog him and see when he send down the rope and swing
up whatever he provide for the family. So Bredder Tiger go to a tin-
smith to give him a fine v’ice and went to the tree and him sing,

“Mama, mama, sen’ down rope,

Sen’ down rope, Brer Nansi deh groun’ a!”

Then the mother find out it was not Bredder Nansi from the coarseness
of the v’ice. So he go to a gold-smith now, and he come back again
and sing again. Now he get a v’ice same as Bredder Nansi.

“Mama, mama, sen’ down rope,

Sen’ down rope, Brer Nansi deh groun’ a!”

Then the mother let the rope down to receive him. Brer Nansi coming
from a distance see the mother swinging him up in the tree now and
say,

“Mama, cut de rope! mama, cut de rope!”

And she cut the rope and Bredder Tiger fell and broke his neck.
Bredder Nansi tak him and have him now for him dinner. They couldn’t
eat Bredder Nansi at all; him was the smartest one of all.
[Contents]

b. Rabbit and Children going up to Heaven.

William Saunders, Mandeville.

Once de Rabbit an’ chil’ren was going up to Heaven. Dey was singin’
dat dey goin’ up to Heaven t’-day, an’ Brar Anansi want to go along wid
dem to have a feed. Having got in de merit dey sing,

“Mammy an’ Harry,

Pull up de merit, pull up de merit!”

An’ when Anansi quite away on de journey was goin’ up to heaven, he

was singin’,

“Pull up de merit, pull up de merit!”

an’ de Rabbits say, “What is dat? Dat is Anansi voice!” De chil’ren say,
“Yes, dat is Anansi voice.” Rabbits say,

“Mammy an’ Harry,

Cut down de merit, cut down de merit!”

an’ de merit cut down an’ from dat day poor Anansi’s waist was cut off,
leave a little bit! [21]

[Contents]

c. Duppy’s House in the Air.

Harold Tulloch, Queen Anne’s Bay.

Once Brer Duppy 1 make his house in de air. So he have a sling to sling
down himself every morning, an’ as soon as he’ come down he say to
de sling, “Go up, me chin-chin, go up!” So Bredder Nansi come to find
out Duppy house, an’ he was wondering how to get up in dis house, so
he dodge one side in de evening. An’ when Bredder Duppy come he
said, “Come down, me chin-chin, come down!” an’ it came right down.
He get in an’ said, “Go up, me chin-chin, go up!” an’ it go right up. By
dis time Anansi was listening. Nex’ morning, as soon as Bredder
Duppy move off about a mile, Bredder Nansi went right up an’ said,
“Come down, me chin-chin, come down!” an’ it came down. Den
Bredder Nansi get in it and said, “Go up, me chin-chin, go up!”

After he went up, he search de house an’ eat off all what he found in
de house. He want to come down now, but he couldn’t remember de
name. So he lay off dere until de duppy come catch him in de house.
Brer Duppy said to him, “Lawd! Brer Anansi, what you doin’ up heah?”
He said, “Brer Duppy, was jus’ goin’ up a-top heah to look fe me family,
win’ ketch me on de way an I’ stop heah.” An’ Bredder Duppy tak some
boiling water an’ t’row on him an’ he was dead.

[Contents]

d. Carencro’s 2 House with a Key.

Richard Morgan, Santa Cruz Mountains.

Kyan-crow got a house. De libber de key to de house. When him gwine

out den ca’ out, “Libber me yum yum!” Ev’ry door shut up. Hanansi
stan’ aside saw; when him gone, him go up said, “Libber me yum
yum!” de door open. An’ get inside. As him go in he say, “Libber me
yum yum!” de door shet. De fust t’ing him do, him eat de libber so den
when Brar Kyan-crow come an’ ca’ out, “Libber me yum yum!” do’
kyan’t open. An’ say, “Somet’ing de matter a me house t’-day!” When
den get little crebbice a de windah gwine in at de house, den didn’t see
de key at all. Well, Hanansi run out, an’ him ketch Hanansi.

Hanansi say, “Brar Kyan-crow, you know you do? You no lob dance? I
wi’ play fe you!” Kyan-crow say all right. Hanansi say, “But me banjo
kyan’ play widout hot water.” When dey goin’ along hall, when de banjo
playin’ “Ba cimba cimba,” Hanansi say, [22]“All right, Brar Kyan-crow,
turn back-way come.” He tak de packey, he dippy up full of de hot
water an’ say, “All right, Brar Kyan-crow, dance come now!” As Kyan-
crow come, he meet him wid de packey hot water. Kyan-crow tumble
down. So from dat day every Kyan-crow got peel-head.

1 A duppy is a ghost, spirit, or any supernatural apparition, but here probably refers
to the Devil. ↑
2 Crow’s name in French stories. ↑

[Contents]
 18. Goat on the Hill-side. [Note]

Julia Gentle, Santa Cruz Mountains.

The time hard. Anansi said to Tacoomah, “How going to manage wid
de hard time?” So Tacoomah said, “You know we do? I will get me
machete 1 an’ I go half shut de door, den I will say, ‘Police, I sick!’ ” Den,
when people come, Tacoomah take de machete an’ chop dem, put
dem in de barrel for de hungry time. Anansi say, “Brar Tacoomah,
barrel nearly full?”—“No, Brar.” He cry out again how Tacoomah poorly;
an’ de people come an’ as dey come, he kill dem put in barrel to serve
in hungry time.

Den Goat up on de hill-side say he see everybody goin’ in, nobody

come out; de house so little, how is it gwine to hold all doze people?
So Goat come down now off de hill-side to see how Tacoomah. He
peep in. Tacoomah say, “Come in!” an’ Goat run right back up hill-side.
An’ from dat day, Goat stay up on hill-side.

1 A machete is a broad heavy knife used to clear brush, cut cane, etc. ↑

[Contents]
 19. Dog and Dog-head. [Note]

Richard Morgan, Santa Cruz Mountains.

Hanansi an’ Tacoomah dey goin’ out huntin’ to steal cow. De two of
dem have der dog. Dey walk. Hanansi, hungry tak him; he eat de dog
body an’ tak de dog-head put into his side-bag. Me’while dey gwine in
de bush, Tacoomah dog tackle a cow. Hanansi run drive away
Tacoomah dog an’ tak fe him dog-head fasten on de cow an’ call out to
Tacoomah, “I tackle one fellah!”

Tacoomah know dat was fe him dog ketch de cow. Tacoomah lef’ him
went away get one whip an’ go to clear place. He fire de whip an’ say,
“A no me, sah! a pupa, sah!” Hanansi holla, “Brar, wha’ dat?”
Tacoomah fire de whip again, say, “Don’ my dog ketch buckra cow,
sah! a pupa dog ketch it!” Hanansi call out to Tacoomah, “Tacoomah,
you fool! you ever hear so-so 1 dog-head kyan ketch cow?” So Hanansi
run leave de cow; Tacoomah go an’ clean it up. [23]

1 So-so means “only.” ↑

[Contents]
 20. Tacoomah’s Corn-piece. [Note]

Adolphus Iron, Claremont, St. Ann.

Tacoomah plant a piece of corn. When it commence to dry, den begin

to t’ief it. Tacoomah charge Hanansi. Hanansi say, “Brar, no me!” By
dis time Hanansi was a fiddler. Hanansi tell Tacoomah say, “Brar, you
say me broke you’ corn, you mek one dance an’ get me fe play.”
Tacoomah say yes. De night of de dance, Hanansi get one gang tell
dem say, “As you hear me begin play, you start a-brekkin’.” De tune
Hanansi play was dis fe de whole night:

“Two two grain, broke dem go ’long,

Eb’rybody broke, broke dem go ’long,
Green an’ dry, broke dem go ’long.”

In de morning when de dance finish, Tacoomah go down a him

cornpiece. Him holla out, “Lawd! Brar Nansi, come heah! not one lef’.”
Hanansi turn ’roun’ say, “T’ink you say a me a t’ief you corn. Las’ night
you no get me fe play a you dance? den if dem broke out you corn,
how you say a me?” Tacoomah tak it to heart an’ drop down dead.

[Contents]
 21. Anansi and the Tar-baby. [Note]

[Contents]

a. The Escape from Tiger.

Richard Morgan, Santa Cruz Mountains.

Tiger got a groun’ plant some peas an’ get Hanansi to watch it.
Me’while Hanansi are de watchman, himself stealin’ de peas. Tiger tar
a ’tump, put on broad hat on de ’tump. Hanansi come an’ say, “Who
are you in de groun’?” Him don hear no answer. He hol’ him. His han’
fasten. He hol’ him wid de odder han’. Dat han’ fasten. He said, “Aw
right! you hol’ me two han’, I bet you I buck you!” He head fasten. Said,
“I bet you, I kick you!” Him two feet fasten. Den he say, “Poor me bwoy!
you a watchman an’ me a watchman!” So begin to sing,

“Mediany dead an’ gone.”

Nex’ mawnin’ Tiger come an’ say, “Why Brar Hanansi, a you been
mashin’ me up?” 1 Tiger tak him out. Tiger said wha’ fe him do wid him
now? Hanansi say, “What you fe do? Mak a fire, bu’n me.” Tiger go
’way, mak up him fire, ketch Hanansi go fe t’row him in de fire. Hanansi
say, “Brer Tiger, you don’ know to burn somebody yet? You mus’ jump
ober de fire t’ree time, den [24]me a count.” Tiger jump one, an’ jump
again, two, an’ jump again, t’ree, an’ go fe jump again. Hanansi kick
down Tiger into de fire, den go back now go finish off de peas.

[Contents]
 b. The Substitute.

George Parkes, Mandeville.

Tacoomah is Anansi friend an’ neighbor, live very near in one house
but different apartment, so whenever one talk the other can hear.
Anansi an’ Tacoomah both of them work groun’ together at one place.
Anansi don’t wait upon his food till it is ripe, but dig out an’ eat it.
Tacoomah wait until it fit to eat it. After Anansi eat off his own, he turn
to Tacoomah an’ begin to t’ief it. Every morning Tacoomah go, he find
his groun’ mashed up. He said, “Brar Nansi, tak care a no you deh
mash up me groun’ a night-time!” Anansi said, “No-o, Brar, but if you
t’ink dat a me deh t’ief a yo’ groun’ a night-time, you call me t’-night see
if me no ’peak to you.”

Tacoomah went to his groun’ and get some tar an’ tar a ’tump an’ lef’ it
in de center of de groun’. Now night come, Anansi get a gourd, fill it
wid water, bore a hole underneat’ de gourd jus’ as much as de water
can drop tip, tip, tip. He cut a banana-leaf an’ put it underneat’ de
gourd so de water could drop on it. After dey bot’ went to bed, every
now and again Tacoomah called out and Anansi say, “Eh!” Afterward
Anansi say, “Me tired fe say ‘eh’, me wi’ say ‘tip’.” So Anansi put de
gourd of water up on a stand wid de banana-leaf underneat’, so when
Tacoomah say, “Anansi?” de water drop “tip.” An’ at dis time Anansi
gone to de groun’.

He saw de black ’tump which Tacoomah tar an’ lef’ in de groun’. So

Anansi open his right han’ an’ box de ’tump. His right han’ fasten. He
said to de ’tump, “If you no let me go I box you wid de lef’ han’!” He box
him wid de lef’, so bot’ han’ fasten now. He say now, “Den you hol’ me
two han’? If you not le’ me go I kick you!” He then kick the ’tump an’
the right foot fasten first. He kick it with the lef’ foot an’ the lef’ foot
fasten too. He say, “Now you hol’ me two han’ an’ me two foot! I gwine
to buck you if you don’ le’ go me han’ an’ foot!” He den buck de ’tump
an’ his whole body now fasten on de ’tump. He was deh for some
minutes. He see Goat was passing. He said, “Brar Goat, you come
heah see if you kyan’t more ’an we t’-day.” So Goat come. Anansi say,
“Brar Goat, you buck him!” Goat buck de ’tump; Anansi head come off
an’ Goat head fasten. He said, “Brar Goat, you kick him wid you two
foot!” An’ Goat kick him an’ Anansi two [25]han’ come off an’ Goat two
foot fasten. He said, “Brar Goat, now you push him!” Goat push him,
an’ Anansi two foot come off an’ Anansi free an’ Goat fasten. So
Anansi go back home an’ say to Tacoomah, “Me tired fe say ‘tip’, now;
me wi’ say ‘eh’.”

In de morning, bot’ of dem went to groun’. Anansi say, “Brar

Tacoomah, look de fellah deh t’ief yo’ groun’, dat fe’ a Goat!” Goat say,
“No, Brar Tacoomah, Anansi firs’ fasten on de ’tump heah an’ he ask
me fe buck him off!” Anansi say, “A yaie, 2 sah!” an’ say, “Brar
Tacoomah, no me an’ you sleep fe de whole night an’ ev’ry time yo’ call
me, me ’peak to you?” Tacoomah say yes. He say Tacoomah, “Mak we
ki’ de fallah Goat!” So dey kill Goat an’ carry him home go an’ eat him.

[Contents]

c. The Grave.

Stanley Jones, Claremont, St. Ann.

Once Mrs. Anansi had a large feed. She planted it with peas. Anansi
was so lazy he would never do any work. He was afraid that they
would give him none of the peas, so he pretended to be sick. After
about nine days, he called his wife an’ children an’ bid them farewell,
tell them that he was about to die, an’ he ask them this last request,
that they bury him in the mids’ of the peas-walk, but firs’ they mus’
make a hole thru the head of the coffin an’ also in the grave so that he
could watch the peas for them while he was lying there. An’ one thing
more, he said, he would like them to put a pot and a little water there at
the head of the grave to scare the thieves away. So he died and was
buried.

All this time he was only pretending to be dead, an’ every night at
twelve o’clock he creep out of the grave, pick a bundle of peas, boil it,
and after having a good meal, go back in the grave to rest. Mistress
Anansi was surprised to see all her peas being stolen. She could catch
the thief no-how. One day her eldest son said to her, “Mother, I bet you
it’s my father stealing those peas!” At that Mrs. Anansi got into a
temper, said, “How could you expect your dead father to rob the peas!”
Said, “Well, mother, I soon prove it to you.” He got some tar an’ he
painted a stump at the head of the grave an’ he put a hat on it.

When Anansi came out to have his feast as usual, he saw this thing
standing in the groun’. He said, “Good-evening, sir!” got no reply. Again
he said, “Good-evening, sir!” an’ still no reply. “If you don’ speak to me
I’ll kick you!” He raise his foot an’ kick the stump an’ the tar held it there
like glue. “Let me go, let me go, [26]sir, or I’ll knock you down with my
right hand!” That hand stuck fast all the same. “If you don’ let me go, I’ll
hit you with my lef’ hand!” That hand stick fas’ all the same. An’ he
raise his lef’ foot an’ gave the stump a terrible blow. That foot stuck.
Anansi was suspended in air an’ had to remain there till morning.
Anansi was so ashamed that he climb up beneath the rafters an’ there
he is to this day.

1 Colloquial for “getting me into trouble.” ↑

2 “A lie, sir!” ↑
[Contents]
 22. Inside the Cow. [Note]

George Parkes, Mandeville.

Anansi an’ Tacoomah while they were frien’s they had a quarrel, so it
was an envy between both of them an’ they never speak. One day
Anansi sen’ one of his chil’ over to Tacoomah’s yard fe some fire.
Tacoomah give him the fire an’ some beef-fat. Anansi see the fat in the
chil’ han’, said, “Whe’ yo’ get dat nasty t’ing from?” So the chil’ said,
“Brar Tacoomah give it to me.”—“Mak a t’row it away, nasty t’ing!” The
chil’ give it to him. He turn away from the chil’ an’ do so (like him fling it
away), an’ put it in his mouth; he then out the fire an’ send back
another chil’ fe more fire. She come with the fire an’ some more fat that
Tacoomah give to her. Anansi said, “You carry back that nasty thing
come here again? you give it to me here!” He turn his back an’ did
same as he did on first occasion. He himself now go to Tacoomah
yard, said, “Mawning, Brar Tacoomah.” Tacoomah said, “Mawning,
Brar Nansi.” Anansi said, “A wha’ you get all the fat heah from, an’ yo’
won’t tell me mak me go get some too?” Tacoomah say, “I would tell
you, but yo’ so craving you will go deh an’ go mak trouble.” Anansi
said, “Oh, no, Brar! you t’ink if you tell me wha’ such good t’ings is, me
wen’ deh go mak trouble?” Tacoomah say, “All right. Tomorrow four
o’clock, when you hear cow-boy deh drive up cow a ribber-side, you
come wake me an’ you an’ me go.”

Anansi scarcely sleep fo’ the night, only listening out fo’ cow-boy. While
on the way Tacoomah said to Anansi, “When you go to de cow, you fe
say, ‘Open, sesema, open’, an’ cow will open de belly; an’ when you go
in you fe say, ‘Shet, sesema, shet’, an’ then you mus’ cut de fat out of
de belly. But you mustn’t cut de back-string, fo’ if you cut it de cow will
dead an you can’t get fe come out again. So after you done cut de fat,
you mus say, ’Open, sesema, open’, an cow will open an’ you come
out. You say, ‘Shet, sesema, shet’, an’ de cow will shet.”

So both of them go down. Anansi go to one cow, an’ Tacoomah go to

one use the same word, “Open, sesema, open!” Anansi go [27]in, say,
“Shet, sesema, shet!” an’ the cow shet; an’ then he cut a whole basket
of fat an, after the basket fill he said, “Open, sesema, open!” an’ cow
open. He come out, say, “Shet, sesema, shet!” an’ cow shet. An’ both
of them went home.

The nex’ morning, Anansi, as he hear the cow-boy, never call to

Tacoomah at all. He run down to the river-side an’ go to a fat cow an’
said, “Open, sesema, open!” The cow open. He go in an’ said, “Shet,
sesema, shet!” The cow shet. He begun to cut. Whilst cutting he cut
the back-string. The cow now drop down dead.

The cow-boy went an’ tell the master an’ he order them to have it
cleaned up. Anansi hide in the ma. The master give his darter the belly
to go an’ wash at the river. She carry it in a bowl, dash it down in the
water. Anansi then jump out an’ say to the girl, “Look! I in the river
having a bathe an’ yo’ carry that nasty t’ing come an’ t’row on me!” The
girl begun to fret an’ cry. Anansi say, “You got to carry me to your father
mak him pay me for it!” She then tak Anansi to the father an’ Anansi
say will tak a cow in payment.

Anansi said he not going to carry the cow come home so to give any of
his family any, so he went into a t’ick wood, kill the cow, mak up a large
fire an’ put it in to roast. He then started to look for ol’ yams in the
bush. He saw two eyes in the earth. He said, “Lawd, from me bwoy
bo’n is de firs’ me know say dirtee can hab yeye!” So now he start to
dig out dese yeye, 1 dig up Bredder Dry-head. 2 He go fe put him down
back in de eart’. Dry-head say, “No, jus’ carry me go where dat big
smoke is yonder!” Anansi refuse to carry him. Dry-head said to him, “If
yo’ don’ carry me, de whole of you’ body will catch fire!” Anansi start to
run. His whole body begin to blaze, have to run back an’ tak up Dry-
head. On reaching the fire, Dry-head order Anansi to bring the cow to
him. Anansi with a sulky heart got to comply with Dry-head’, order. Dry-
head start eating the cow an’ eat off every bit,—Anansi never taste it!

1 Yeye is Jamaican for “eyes”. ↑

2 “Dry-head is one of the same species, but he is a different man from them.” “Dry-
head is a man always hide himself in the bush to eat up what Anansi or Tacoomah
have,” Parkes says.—He figures as a kind of old man of the sea in the Anansi
stories. ↑

[Contents]
 23. Cunnie-More-Than-Father. [Note]

George Parkes, Mandeville.

Anansi has seven children. He ask them how they would like to name.
Six of them like different name, but one boy say he would [28]like to
name “Cunnie-mo’-than father.” So for every tack 1 Anansi put up,
Cunnie-mo’n-father break it down. One time he work a groun’ very far
away into the bush, an’ in going to that bush he pass a very broad flat
rock. So one day a man give him a yam-plant; that yam name “yam
foofoo.” 2 The same day plant the yam, it been bear a very big one
same day. So nobody in the yard know the name of that yam save him,
Anansi, alone. So when he go home, he cook the yam an’ call the wife
an’ chil’ren aroun’ to eat, an’ say, “Who know name, nyam; who no
know name, don’ nyam!” So as no one know the name, they didn’t get
none of it; Anansi alone eat off that yam that night. The nex’ day go
back to the groun’ and the yam bear a larger one. He bring it home an’
bile it again, call the wife an’ chil’ren an’ say, “Who know name, nyam;
who no know name, don’ nyam!” The nex’ day he went back an’ the
yam bear a larger one than the previous day. He cut it an’ carry it
home, cook it, call up the wife an chil’ren; he alone eat it.

Cunnie-mo’n-father say, “Look here! I mus’ fin’ out the name of that
yam!” He got some okra an’ went to the place where the broad rock is
an’ mash up the okra an’ have the place quite slippery, an’ hide himself
away in the bush near by. Anansi now coming with a larger yam this
time. As he reach to the rock, he make a slide, fa’ down, an’ the yam
smash. He said, “Lawd! all me yam foofoo mash up!” Cunnie-mo’-n-
father now catch the name, an’ he ran home now an’ tell mother an’
other chil’ren, “Remember! yam foofoo!” Anansi then take up the
pieces, put them together and carry home. He cook it an’ ca’ all of
them roun’ to eat. He say, “Who know name, nyam; who no know
name, no nyam.” They began to guess all sort of name; after that,
whole of them say, “Yam foofoo! yam foofoo!” Anansi get vex, say,
“Huh! eat! nobody fin’ it out but Cunnie-mo’n-father!”

Anansi then get to hate Cunnie-mo’n-father, want to make an end of

him, but he didn’t know what way was to do it. So one night Brar Tiger
came to pay a visit to Anansi at his house. While both of them sittin’ an’
talkin’, at that time Cunnie-mo’n-father was lying down underneath the
table fawning sleep. 3 Anansi said to Tiger, “Look heah! ev’ry tack dat I
put up, Cunnie-mo’-n-father break it down. I wan’ to mak an end of
him, but I don’ know what way to do it.” That time, Cunnie-mo’-n-father
listen. Tiger [29]said, “I wi’ kill him fo’ you.” Anansi say, “How you will
manage it?” So Tiger said to Anansi, “You mus’ put up a tack, an’ I wi’
ketch him.” Anansi said, “Look heah! Tomorrow night jus’ at dinner-time
you come here hide yo’self in the pepper-tree; behin’ that fattest limb,
you hide yo’self there, an’ I will sen’ him to pick some pepper an’ as he
put his han’ on the pepper-tree, you mus’ hol’ him.” So the nex’ night at
dinner-time Tiger went to hide himself there. Anansi call Cunnie-mo’n-
father, say, “Go get pepper from the pepper-tree.” Cunnie-mo’n-father
start for de pepper-tree. On his way going he call in the kitchen an’
take a fire-stick, an’ as he went to the pepper-tree, he shove the fire-
stick right in Tiger face. Tiger cry out, “W’y-ee!” an’ gallop away.
Cunnie-mo’n-father return to Anansi an’ say he hear something in the
pepper-tree cry, so he don’ pick any. Anansi eat his dinner that night
without pepper.

A few minutes after, Tiger come back in the house an’ tol’ Anansi what
have taken place. Anansi say, “Well, the boy have tack! but we mus’
ketch him.” At that time the boy go under the table lay down an’ study
for them again. Tiger say, “How mus’ we ketch him?” Anansi said, “You
come here tomorrow twelve o’clock an’ I’ll sen’ him up on a cocoanut
tree an’ while he in the tree, you wait underneath; when he come down
you ketch him.” The nex’ morning, Cunnie-mo’n-father get two bags, fill
it with red ants go up same cocoanut tree an’ hide it, preparing for
Tiger. At twelve o’clock Tiger come to Anansi yard. Anansi call for
Cunnie-mo’n-father an’ said, “Go an’ get me some cocoanuts off’n that
tree.” He went, an’ Tiger lay wait under the tree for him. He shout to
Tiger he mus’ look up an’ show him the bes’ cocoanut he want, an’
while Tiger do that, he open one of the bag an’ throw it down in Tiger
face. Ant begun to bite him an’ he has to run away. Cunnie-mo’n-father
slip right down off the cocoanut tree, so he didn’t get any cocoanut.

In the evening, Tiger went back to Anansi to tell him how Cunnie-mo’n-
father do him again. While the two of them was talking an’ setting up
another tack, Cunnie-mo’n-father was underneath table listening to
them again. Anansi said, “The boy smart! but I goin’ to put you up a
tack fo’ ketch him! Look heah! Tomorrow at twelve o’clock, you fin’
yo’self at me groun’ an’ you will see a fat root of yam near to a tree.
You mus’ hide yo’self in the bush an’ I will sen’ him there to come cut
yam, an’ as he come there, hol’ him.” Tiger then went an’ fix himself in
the yam bush. At twelve o’clock Anansi call Cunnie-mo’n-father an’
sen’ him to groun’ to cut yam an’ tell him that very spot whe’ he is to
dig them. [30]Cunnie-mo’n-father went to the groun’ an’ shout out “Yam-
o-e-e! yam-o-ee! yam-o-ee!” t’ree times. Nobody answer. Cunnie-mo’n-
father say, “I t’ink father tell me say that when I come to groun’ call fo’
yam, yam wi’ speak, an’ de yam don’ speak!” Call again, “Yam-o-ee!”
So Tiger answer him, “O-ee-e!” So Cunnie-mo’n-father say, “From me
bwoy born, the firs’ I hear that yam can talk!” So run home back lef’
Tiger.

So Tiger leave the groun’ an’ come home an’ tell Anansi what happen.
Anansi said, “Well, ’cunnie mo’ than me’ fe trew, but we goin’ to ketch
him!” At that time Cunnie-mo’n-father underneath the table fe listen, an’
unfortunately he fell fas’ asleep. So Anansi an’ Tiger ketch him an’
make a coffin an’ put him in. Anansi tell Tiger he mus’ take him t’row
him far away in the sea where he kyan’t come back again. Tiger lif’ up
the coffin, put it on his head an’ start on the journey. On reaching to a
bush he help down the coffin an’, as the sun was so hot, went
underneath a tree an’ fall asleep. Now there was a little hole in the
coffin, an’ looking thru that hole, Cunnie-mo’n-father saw an ol’ man
comin’ along drivin’ a flock of sheep. He began to cry, sayin’ they want
him to go to heaven an’ he don’ ready to go yet. The ol’ man said,
“Bwoy, you too foolish! Heaven’s a good place an’ you don’ ready to go
there yet? You open the coffin put me in!” The ol’ man open the coffin,
Cunnie-mo’n-father come out, put in the ol’ man an’ nail up the coffin
back with him in it. He then drove the sheep a little way up inside the
bush. Tiger now wake out of his sleep, lif’ up the coffin an’ away he
went to the sea with it, an’ go as far he could an’ t’row the coffin down
in the sea drown the ol’ man, fe’ a heaven he want to go! He then go
back to Anansi yard an’ tell him that he has finish with the fellow,—no
more of him, fe’ he has drown’ him in the deepest part of the sea.

Later in the evening, while Anansi an’ Tiger was sitting down an’ talking
about the badness of Cunnie-mo’n-father, Anansi look an’ see a flock
of sheep was coming up to his house an’ some one driving it. The
driver was Cunnie-mo’n-father. Anansi says to Tiger, “But now look at
the bwoy what you drown’ to-day, look at him driving a flock of sheep
coming up!” Tiger said, “No! ’cause I t’row him in the farthest part of the
sea!” They waited until he drove them up to the yard. Tiger said to him,
“Boy, don’t it was you I t’row into the sea to-day?” Cunnie-mo’n-father
said, “Yes, the place whe’ you t’row me I get these sheep, an’ if you did
t’row me a little further, I would get double more than this!” Anansi,
hearing that, said that he would like to get some himself [31]an’ Cunnie-
mo’n-father mus’ carry him an’ t’row him at the part where he can get
the sheep. Cunnie-mo’n-father then get a coffin make an’ put Anansi in
it carry him to the sea-side, hire a boat, an’ carry him far far away in
the sea an’ drown him. An’ that was the las’ of poor Anansi in that
story.

1 Tack means a “trick”. ↑

2 A yellow yam, the favorite vegetable food of the negro is called “afoo yam”. ↑
3 Fawning means “feigning”. ↑