LAUSR

The first is that incomplete acquisition fails to accurately characterize the process or outcome of heritage language acquisition. On this distinction, we are happy to accept Montrul and Silva-Corvalán’s clarification that incomplete acquisition is intended to characterize an outcome, rather than a process. It is our firm view that the process of acquisition of a heritage language is not substantively different from any other process of language acquisition. For example, in monolingual L1 acquisition the grammar is incomplete at all stages of acquisition until the process finishes. This is trivial in this particular context because under consistent input conditions, the expected outcome is a complete grammar. In contrast, heritage language acquisition is characterized by exposure to input that is inconsistent or insufficient before an end-state L1 grammar is attained. For this reason, the completeness of the acquisition process in this context is,