The acquisition of Hindi split-ergativity and differential object marking by Dutch L1 speakers: systematicity and variation

Abstract

ABSTRACT We investigated the acquisition of Hindi split ergativity (zero or -ne marking) and Hindi differential object marking (DOM; zero or -ko marking) by L1 speakers of Dutch. Both grammatical phenomena are conditioned by multiple syntactic and semantic features. On a descriptive level, the study aims to examine when and how Dutch-speaking learners acquire and apply the conditional features associated with -ne and -ko marking in Hindi as a foreign language (HFL). A specific learner corpus was created based on a picture description task that elicited semi-spontaneous oral production data from 15 Dutch-speaking learners of Hindi, from four cross-sectional stages of the Hindi course trajectory. We annotated the corpus data for multiple features associated with -ne and -ko marking. Using a mixed-effects logistic regression analysis, we found an increase in the use and accuracy of each case marker over the different years of study, but individual learner profile analyses revealed considerable intersubject differences in learner behavior. We argue that the developmental stages for the emergence of -ne and -ko marking are in line with predictions based on Processability Theory. We additionally include mastery level analysis to account for a combined perspective on language development. Our findings reveal that HFL learners reach higher mastery levels for split ergativity than for DOM, even though DOM (-ko marking) emerges before split ergativity (-ne marking). We conclude that developmental stages and between-learner variation are not mutually exclusive.