This eye tracking study examined the role of lexical frequency in the processing of non-local verbal number agreement by heritage speakers of Spanish. Few prior studies of heritage bilingualism have investigated the role of word frequency in the comprehension or production of morphosyntax, and none have employed a real-time measure of sentence processing, despite the well-known sensitivity of such methods to word frequency and the proposal of some scholars that such online methodologies could be particularly useful in research on heritage speakers. Fifty heritage speakers of Spanish read stimulus sentences containing non-local verbal number agreement that depended on a verb that was either high or low frequency, based on published corpus data. The results suggest that the online integration of verbal agreement was both more immediate and more robust with high frequency verbs than with low frequency verbs. Moreover, an analysis of individual language background variables indicates that faster reading was associated with greater sensitivity to verbal agreement with low frequency verbs. These findings are consistent with theoretical claims that lexical frequency can play an important role in the morphosyntax of heritage speakers, due to reduced exposure to the home language and, particularly, low frequency words.
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