This study investigates the effect of code-switching (CS) on the processing and attachment resolution of ambiguous relative clauses (RCs) like "Bill saw the friend of the neighbor that was talking about football" by heritage speakers of Spanish. It checks whether code-switching imposes a prosodic break at the place of language change, and whether this prosodic break affects RC parsing, as predicted by the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis: a high attachment (HA) preference results from a prosodic break at the RC. A prosodic break at the preposition "of" in the complex DP "the friend of the neighbor" entails a low attachment (LA) preference. The design compares RC resolution in unilingual sentences (Spanish, with a default preference for HA in RC, and English, with the default LA) with the RC parsing in sentences with CS. The CS occurs at the places of prosodic breaks considered by the IPH. The results show sensitivity to the place of CS in RC attachment. CS prompting LA causes longer response times. The preference for HA in Spanish unilingual sentences is higher than in English ones. Heritage speakers are sensitive to the prosodic effects of CS. However, there is high variability across speakers.
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