Acquisition Of Differential Object Marking Research Articles

On the Acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Child Heritage Spanish: Bilingual Education, Exposure, and Age Effects (In Memory of Phoebe Search)

Studies on school-aged children have been infrequent in research on Spanish as a heritage language. The present study explored how dual-language immersion education, patterns of heritage language use, proficiency, and age shape child Spanish heritage speakers’ production and selection of differential object marking (DOM). A total of 57 English–Spanish bilingual children and 18 Spanish-dominant adults completed sentence completion and morphology selection tasks. Results revealed that the group of heritage speaker children that produced and selected the differential object marker most frequently was the seventh and eighth grade children (ages 12–14, the oldest in the study) who had completed a dual-language immersion program. Different factors accounted for variability in each task: bilingual education and proficiency affected the production of DOM, while age affected selection. Heritage speakers selected DOM more frequently than they produced this structure. These findings have implications for theories of heritage language acquisition that emphasizes that language experience and exposure account for differences between heritage speakers and argue for the dissociation of production from underlying syntactic knowledge. The data also argue that heritage speakers may possess a bilingual alignment for DOM, whereby underlying receptive knowledge is modulated by cumulative exposure, while production depends more on bilingual education and proficiency in Spanish.

Animacy in the acquisition of differential object marking by Romanian monolingual children

Differential object marking (DOM) has been shown, in an impressive number of production studies, to be acquired by monolingual children at around age 3. The picture which emerges from comprehension data, however, reveals that DOM is an area of vulnerability in L1 acquisition. This study investigates the acquisition of DOM by monolingual Romanian children using a preference judgment task. 80 monolingual Romanian children (aged 4;04-11;04) and a control group of 10 Romanian adults took part in the study. Results show that DOM is vulnerable and trace this vulnerability to the animacy feature. Romanian children incorrectly overgeneralize DOM to inanimate proper names and inanimate descriptive DPs until age 9. The vulnerability of animacy is predicted by its variable behaviour with respect to object marking as well as by the current increase in the use of clitic doubling, a DOM marker less sensitive to animacy. On the learnability side, we account for the findings in terms of Biberauer & Roberts’ (2015, 2017) Maximize Minimal Means model. We suggest that, in accordance with the Feature Economy bias, Romanian children first identify only the role of referential stability (which has more robust cues in the input) and consider the possibility of animacy as a relevant feature later. In line with the Input Generalization bias, children maximize the role of referential stability which results in overgeneralization of DOM to inanimate objects, especially to inanimate proper names.

Sources of variability in the acquisition of Differential Object Marking by Turkish heritage language children in the United States

AbstractDifferential object marking (DOM) is an area of vulnerability in adult heritage speakers. This study traces such vulnerability to childhood by examining Turkish DOM in child Turkish heritage speakers in the U.S and the parental generation, who are the main input providers. Twenty first-generation immigrants, 20 adult and 20 child (aged 7–14) Turkish heritage speakers, and the monolingual group including 20 Turkish-speaking adults, 20 7–14-year-old and 20 3–6-year-old Turkish-speaking children in Turkey completed a story retelling task and a picture selection task. Results showed that the first-generation immigrants patterned with the monolingual adults. However, the heritage speakers (children and adults) omitted DOM in both tasks, showing more variable performance than the monolingual groups. These findings suggest that instability of DOM in heritage grammars is more likely due to insufficient input in the early years of heritage language development than to changes in parental input or attrition in later years.

Bidirectional cross-linguistic influence on DOM in Romanian-Spanish bilinguals

Aims and objectives: This study aims to explore the acquisition of differential object marking (DOM) of Spanish and Romanian in balanced Romanian-speaking L2 speakers of Spanish. The study is motivated by the paucity of studies analyzing bidirectional cross-linguistic influence (BCLI) in DOM. Methodology: Romanian-Spanish bilinguals completed a background language questionnaire, a productive vocabulary test, an elicited production task, and an acceptability judgment task in Romanian and Spanish. Two groups of Spanish and Romanian monolinguals completed the same tasks in their languages for comparison purposes. Findings: The bilinguals show signs of BCLI at their DOM in Spanish and Romanian. They may also be at an incipient stage of L1 attrition. Originality: This is the first study that examines BCLI at DOM and the acquisition of DOM in Spanish by speakers of Romanian in a naturalistic setting. Significance: This project highlights the importance of examining both the L1 and the L2 when examining cross-linguistic influence. Limitations: This study cannot examine proficiency effects or acquisition stages because all the participants are highly proficient in Spanish.

The acquisition of differential object marking in Spanish by Romanian speakers

Abstract The obligatory use of the preposition ‘a’ with animate, specific direct objects in Spanish (Juan conoce a María “Juan knows Maria”) is a well-known instance of Differential Object Marking (dom). This study investigates the acquisition of dom by native speakers of Romanian learning Spanish. Spanish and Romanian have dom lexicalized in the prepositions ‘a’ (Spanish) and in ‘pe’ (Romanian). In the two languages dom is regulated by animacy and specificity. Thirty-two native speakers of Spanish and 36 Romanian-speaking learners of Spanish with advanced proficiency completed a written production, a written comprehension, and an acceptability judgment task. The results show that, in general, and unlike what has been found for English-speaking learners of Spanish, advanced Romanian learners of Spanish are successful at acquiring the feature specification and distribution of dom in Spanish. The findings are discussed with respect to the nature of ultimate attainment as a function of language transfer.

Structure complexity effects in child heritage Spanish: The case of the Spanish personala

Aims and objectives:This study examines the acquisition of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in heritage Spanish children born in the USA and the potential role of structure complexity and chronological age.Design:Bilingual children were compared with monolingual children matched by age and long-term immigrants (children’s parents) via an Elicited Production task. We elicited the distribution of personal a in simple and Clitic Left Dislocated (CLLD) structures.Data and analysis:Results were entered into repeated analyses of variance measure with type of structure and group as dependent variables and chronological age as a covariate.Conclusions:Results show decreased production of personal a among the bilingual children, especially in CLLD contexts. We also found strong correlations between target use and type of structure, but no correlations with developmental age among the bilingual children. Parents and monolingual children behaved at ceiling with matrix questions but showed variable behavior with CLLD structures. We argue for incomplete specification of the animacy and specificity features constraining DOM and structure complexity effects affecting child bilingual grammars.Originality:This study highlights that heritage speakers do not necessarily become less native-like with age and increased exposure to English. The comparison of the bilingual children to both monolingual children and their parents was essential to mitigate the effects of dialect and cognitive development.Implications:Given that age was not the determining factor in bilingual children’s production of DOM in Spanish, it would seem that exposure to and use of the heritage language play a larger role. Additionally, for theories of language acquisition, these findings suggest that an early age of onset of acquisition is not a sufficient condition for native-like attainment, especially when input is lacking.

Does Typological Proximity Really Matter? Evidence from Mandarin and Brazilian Portuguese-Speaking Learners of Spanish

The present study examines the role of typological proximity in the acquisition of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish among eighteen (n = 18) Mandarin-speaking second language (L2) learners and sixteen (n = 16) Spanish heritage speakers (HSs) with Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as their dominant language. Specifically, we investigate the extent to which language proximity (languages are members of the same family) plays a role in the complete specification of the relevant features constraining DOM marking in Spanish. Results from an elicited production task and an acceptability judgment task (AJT) showed no support for the typological proximity model (Rothman 2010). There were also no age of onset of acquisition effects, in contrast to what was expected. The post-puberty Mandarin L2 learners outperformed the BP HSs in most of the conditions examined, suggesting a role for language instruction. Results are discussed along the lines of Liceras and Alba de la Fuente’s (2015) proposal whereby the locus of transfer is more related to the typological similarity between the languages at the microparametric level than to language proximity itself.

The acquisition of differential object marking in Hindi as a foreign language

This article explores a grammatical structure — differential object marking (DOM) — that is particularly difficult for L2 learners to acquire. DOM is a phenomenon in which some direct objects are morphologically marked and others are not. In Hindi, animate direct objects are always marked with the objective case marker ko, whereas specific direct objects are only optionally marked with ko. Inanimate and non-specific direct objects are never marked with ko and take the unmarked nominative form. DOM in Hindi has been found to pose a problem to heritage speakers of Hindi. The present study investigates whether similar difficulties exist for foreign language learners. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 30 foreign language learners of Hindi completing an oral production task. The results suggest that the learners do not have difficulties with the concept of DOM in itself — they know that not every direct object needs to be marked —, but rather with the variable conditions under which DOM occurs. The study defines five developmental profiles, which reflect a gradual accumulation of contexts appropriately marked with the objective case.

Delay in the acquisition of Differential Object Marking by Spanish monolingual and bilingual teenagers

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions:This study investigated the acquisition of Spanish Differential Object Marking (DOM) by bilingual and monolingual Spanish teenagers, evaluating to which extent their knowledge of DOM can be explained by different theories of acquisition.Design/Methodology/Approach:Two experiments with bilingual and monolingual Spanish teenagers (ages 10 to 15) were conducted. The experiments included an Elicited Production Completion Task, in which a space was to either be filled with an object marker or left blank, and a Context-Matching Acceptability Judgment Task.Data and Analysis:54 subjects (44 bilinguals and 10 monolinguals) were tested. For both tasks, there were 6 conditions testing different syntactic–semantic features that trigger DOM (test items n = 42 in each task). The data were analysed with linear regressions and repeated measures analyses of variance.Findings/Conclusions:This study’s results show that bilingual teenagers do not demonstrate significant differences from age-matched monolinguals in their competence regarding the syntactic–semantic properties of DOM. Both groups are below ceiling in showing evidence of knowledge about all the syntactic–semantic features involved in DOM, indicating the possibility of a significant delay beyond childhood in their acquisition.Originality:There are few previous studies on the acquisition of DOM, and none which consider the full range of features and specific population considered here. Work by Montrul focuses on the animacy feature, while Guijarro-Fuentes considers the full range of features, but for adult L2 learners of Spanish.Significance/Implications:This study shows that the Interface Vulnerability Hypothesis, the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, the Full Access/Full Transfer Hypothesis and the Interpretability Hypothesis have limitations in explaining its results. Instead, a feature-based approach is proposed in which the specification of features beyond animacy raises difficulties for the acquisition of DOM until late childhood.

Is Grammar Instruction Beneficial for Heritage Language Learners? Dative Case Marking in Spanish

Spanish heritage speakers have been shown to have incomplete knowledge of dative case marking with both animate direct objects (also known as differential object marking (DOM) or a-personal) and dative experiencers with gustar-psych verbs in oral and written modes (Montrul, 2004; Montrul & Bowles, in press). In general, Spanish objects that are animate and specific are obligatorily marked with the preposition a (Juan conoce a tu hermana “Juan knows your sister”). Inanimate objects are unmarked (Juan compró un perro “Juan bought a dog”, Juan escuchó la radio “Juan listened to the radio”). Gustar-type psych verbs take dative experiencers obligatorily marked with the dative preposition a and a dative clitic (A Juan le gusta el rugby “Juan likes rugby”). This study investigated the effects of instruction on the acquisition of DOM and gustarverbs for heritage language learners. A total of 45 2nd generation Spanish heritage speakers participated in the study, completing a pre-test, instructional treatment, and a post-test. The instructional treatment consisted of an explicit grammatical explanation of the uses of a followed by three practice exercises, for which participants received immediate, explicit feedback, including negative evidence. Results of the heritage learners' pre-test confirmed that their recognition and production of a with animate direct objects and dative experiencers is probabilistic, compared with a baseline group of 12 native speakers of Spanish. Post-test results revealed highly significant gains by heritage learners in both intuitions and production, suggesting that instruction, including both positive and negative evidence, facilitates classroom heritage language acquisition, at least in the short term.

The acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Spanish

In this paper, I show that a constraint-based approach to DOM, such as the OT system proposed by Aissen (2003), leads to the conclusion that the child will entertain a number of grammars different from the target grammar, before acquiring the final ranking of constraints, even under the learnability assumptions of the OT framework (such as those made by Tesar and Smolensky (1998, 2000). The data examined here, from Spanish-speaking children in the CHILDES database, clearly shows that children master Spanish DOM with a performance virtually errorless. This raises doubts regarding the capacity of the OT framework to explain a key aspect of human language, namely, the process of acquisition.