The status of interrogative subject–verb inversion in Spanish-English bilingual children

•Child heritage Spanish.•Subject–verb inversion.•Crosslinguistic influence effects.

The present cross-sectional study examines the status of interrogative subject–verb inversion in Spanish among twenty-seven (n = 27) Spanish-English bilingual children born and raised in the United States. Results from an oral elicited production task show significant low levels of target inversion in both matrix and embedded wh-questions, compared with monolingual children. Lack of inversion was more significant with embedded questions, and among the youngest children. It is argued that the differences observed stem from syntactic transfer from English, language dominance and the complexity of the structure. This leads to a process of syntactic optionality in child heritage Spanish similar to what is found in Caribbean varieties of Spanish.