A NON-DEFICIT PERSPECTIVE ON HERITAGE LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: THE CASE OF PORTUGUESE
A NON-DEFICIT PERSPECTIVE ON HERITAGE LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: THE CASE OF PORTUGUESE

Summary/Abstract: This paper reviews findings of some studies of heritage Portuguese bilingualism (both European andBrazilian Portuguese), with a focus on morphosyntax, and reflects on some theoretical observationsabout heritage bilingualism. We conclude that there is mostly successful heritage language acquisi-tion among the heritage speakers considered in each study, although one can still observe variabilitydepending on the linguistic phenomenon, similarly to what happens in other speaker communities. Thepicture emerging from these studies indicates that there is no overarching trend towards incompleteacquisition, reduced ‘complexity’ or simplification across linguistic domains. This is particularly rel-evant regarding appeal to incomplete acquisition, given that it is not possible to apply such a conceptformally and epistemologically, because one cannot define deterministically what counts as a completegrammatical system (Pires 2011).

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