Co-authored with Francesca Moro and Gina Russo

Preliminary results show that, with respect to word order, second generation speakers do use more frequently two types of verb medial constructions: AVP (with an English verb), as in (1) and AVA_pronP, as in (2) with a resumptive pronoun referring to the agent.

A                          V                     P(obl.)

1. Yung         babae  nag-push         sa        lalaki

that           girl      AV-push         obl      boy

‘The girl pushed the boy.’

A                          V                     A_pron    P

1. Yung         babae  t-in-ulak          niya     yung    lalaki

that           girl      PV-push          3sg      that      boy

‘The girl pushed the boy’.

The voice system also differs as second generation speakers use twice more often actor voice than first generation speakers. The results of this pilot study seem to indicate that the domains of voice and word order are indeed vulnerable to contact effect, as shown by Tanaka et al. (2019), with interesting innovations introduced in the heritage language.

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Bondoc, I. P., W. O'Grady, K. Deen & N. Tanaka. (2018). Agrammatism in Tagalog: voice and relativisation. Aphasiology 32(5), 598-617.

Cooreman, A., Fox, B. A., & Givón, T. (1984). The discourse definition of ergativity. Studies in Language, 8(1), 1-34.

Moro, F., & G. Russo. (2024). Family language policy in multilingual Filipino families in Italy. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1-15.

Tanaka, N, W. O’Grady, K. Deen, & I. P. Bondoc. (2019). Comprehension and production of word order and voice in bilingual Tagalog speakers. Poster presentation at the Second Language Research Forum, held in East Lansing, Michigan, on September 21, 2019