Veneto as a Heritage Language: Exploring Aspectual Contrasts in Bilingual Speakers

Abstract

The study investigates the competence of 20 English Heritage Speakers of Venetian in mastering the Imperfetto aspectual form. Participants have been divided in two groups according to their exposure to Venetian Dialect: Shorter Exposure (input of Venetian interrupted during school age) and Longer Exposure (exposure to Venetian not interrupted). Their results have been compared with a group of 5 Venetian native speakers. A background oral questionnaire and three oral tasks have been provided to tests participants’ ability in mastering Imperfetto and Passato Prossimo. It emerged that Shorter Group find difficult to use Imperfetto and tend to use more Passato Prossimo; Longer Group on the other hand, demonstrated good competence in using the two forms investigated. I argue that the overproduction of Passato Prossimo is due to the fact that English past tense (Past Simple) encode both Imperfect and Perfect aspect and because Imperfect aspect in English is not morphologically marked. I also argue that heritage speakers are use lexical aspect to determine the use of the preterit and imperfect