Chapter 9. The processing of Differential Object Marking by heritage speakers of Spanish

Abstract

This study examines the online processing of Differential Object Marking by heritage speakers of Spanish living in the U.S. Previous research has found that even heritage speakers with high proficiency in Spanish omit DOM with animate objects in oral production and find omitted DOM acceptable in judgment tasks. Therefore, this study investigated whether heritage speakers’ acceptability of DOM omission is reflected in their language processing. Twenty monolingual-raised native speakers and 20 heritage speakers participated in an eye-tracking reading experiment. Sentences varied in DOM marking (use vs. omission) and word order (SVO vs. VSO). Overall, reading time data indicated that heritage speakers behaved more similarly to monolingual-raised native speakers than predicted. The potential effects of language variation and language attrition are discussed.