Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T23:54:45.170Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Back to basics: Incomplete knowledge of Differential Object Marking in Spanish heritage speakers*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2009

SILVINA MONTRUL  and
MELISSA BOWLES
SILVINA MONTRUL*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
MELISSA BOWLES
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
*
Address for correspondence: Silvina Montrul, Department of Linguistics and Department of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 4080 Foreign Languages Building, MC-176, 707 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USAmontrul@uiuc.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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; Torrego, 1998; Leonetti, 2004). Recent studies have documented the loss and/or incomplete acquisition of several grammatical features in Spanish heritage speakers (Silva-Corvalán, 1994; Montrul, 2002), including DOM (Montrul, 2004a). This study assesses the extent of incomplete knowledge of DOM in Spanish heritage speakers raised in the United States by comparing it with knowledge of DOM in fully competent native speakers. Experiment 1 examined whether omission of a affected grammatical competence, as measured by the linguistic behavior of 67 heritage speakers and 22 monolingual speakers in an oral production task and in a written acceptability judgment task. Experiment 2 followed up on the results of the acceptability judgment task with 13 monolingual speakers and 69 heritage speakers, and examined whether problems with DOM generalize to other instances of structural and inherent dative case, including ditransitive verbs and gustar-type psychological verbs. Results of the two experiments confirmed that heritage speakers' recognition and production of DOM is probabilistic, even for speakers with advanced proficiency in Spanish. This suggests that many heritage speakers' grammars may not actually instantiate inherent case. We argue that language loss under reduced input conditions in childhood is, in this case, like “going back to basics”: it leads to simplification of the grammar by letting go of the non-core options, while retaining the core functional structure.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 363 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The research presented in this article was conducted under the generous support of a Beckman Award from the University of Illinois Campus Research Board to Silvina Montrul. We are grateful to all the students who participated in the study, as well as to Rebecca Foote, Silvia Perpiñán, Dan Thornhill, Susana Vidal, Ben McMurry, Brad Dennison, Alyssa Martoccio and Lucía Alzaga, who helped with data collection and transcriptions for Experiment 1. We thank Kim Potowski for assisting us with testing in Chicago for Experiment 2. A version of Experiment 2 was presented at the 6th International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB), Hamburg, May 30 – June 2, 2007. We thank the audience at ISB for their invaluable questions and suggestions. We also thank Carmen Silva-Corvalán for her stellar editorial work, four anonymous BLC reviewers and Abbas Benmamoun, Rakesh Bhatt, José Ignacio Hualde, Tania Ionin, Johanne Paradis and Maria Polinsky for their thorough and insightful feedback. All remaining errors are our own.

References

Aissen, J. (2003). Differential Object Marking: Iconicity vs. economy. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 21 (3), 435–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, R. (1999). Noun phrase gender agreement in language attrition: Preliminary results. Bilingual Research Journal, 23, 318–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bley-Vroman, R. (1989). The logical problem of second language learning. In Gass, S. & Schachter, J. (eds.), Linguistic perspectives on second language acquisition, pp. 41–68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, M. & Montrul, S. (2009). Instructed L2 acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Spanish. In Leow, R., Campos, H. & Lardiere, D. (eds.), Little words: Their history, phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and acquisition (Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT) 2007), pp. 199–210. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J., Cueni, A., Nikitina, T. & Baayen, H. (2007). Predicting the dative alternation. In Boume, G., Kraemer, I. & Zwarts, J. (eds.), Cognitive foundations of interpretation, pp. 69–94. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.Google Scholar
Bullock, B. & Toribio, A. J. (2004). Convergence as an emergent property in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 91–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Company, C. (2001). Multiple dative marking grammaticalization: Spanish as a special kind of primary object language. Studies in Language, 25, 1–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Company, C. (2002). El avance diacrónico de la marcación prepositiva en objetos directos inanimados. In Bernabé, A., Berenguer, J. A., Cantarero, M. & de Torres, J. C. (eds.), Presente y futuro de la lingüística en España (vol. II), pp. 146–154. Madrid: SEL.Google Scholar
Cuervo, C. (2003). Datives at large. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Demonte, V. (1995). Dative alternation in Spanish. Probus, 7, 5–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dumitrescu, D. (1997). El parámetro discursivo en la expresión del objeto directo lexical: Español madrileño vs. español porteño. Signo y Seña, 7, 305–354.Google Scholar
Farley, A. P. & McCollam, K. (2004). Learner readiness and L2 production in Spanish: Processability theory on trial. Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada, 22, 47–69.Google Scholar
Guijarro-Fuentes, P. & Marinis, T. (2007). Interpretation of personal -a features by L2 Spanish learners. Presented at the Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition 2007, University of Iowa.Google Scholar
Hulsen, M. (2000). Language loss and language processing: Three generations of Dutch migrants in New Zealand. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Jakobson, R. (1941). Kindersprache, Aphasie, und allgemeine Lautgezetze. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Johnston, M. (1995). Stages of acquisition of Spanish as a second language. Sydney: University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, The National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia, Language Acquisition Research Centre.Google Scholar
Laca, B. (2002). Gramaticalización y variabilidad: propiedades inherentes y factores contextuales en la evolución del acusativo preposicional en español. In Wesch, A., Weidenbusch, W., Kailuweit, R. & Laca, B. (eds.), Sprachgeschichte als Varietätengeschichte, pp. 195–203. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar
Laca, B. (2006). El objeto directo: La marcación preposicional. In Company, C. (ed.), Sintaxis histórica de la lengua española. Primera parte: La frase verbal (vol. 1), pp. 421–475. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica y UNAM.Google Scholar
Leonetti, M. (2004). Specificity and Differential Object Marking in Spanish. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 3, 75–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lidz, J. (2006). The grammar of accusative case in Kannada. Language, 82, 10–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lightfoot, D. (1991). How to set parameters: Arguments from language change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lightfoot, D. (1999). The development of language. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Luján, M. & Parodi, C. (1996). Clitic-doubling and the acquisition of agreement in Spanish. In Gutiérrez-Rexach, J. & Silva Villar, L. (eds.), Perspectives on Spanish linguistics (vol. 1), pp. 119–138. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA, Department of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Lynch, A. (1999). The subjunctive in Miami Cuban Spanish, bilingualism, contact and language variability. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Major, R. C. (1993). Sociolinguistic factors in loss and acquisition of phonology. In Hyltenstam, K. & Viberg, A. (eds.), Progression and regression in language: Sociocultural, neuropsychological and linguistic perspectives, pp. 463–478. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (2002). Incomplete acquisition and attrition of Spanish tense/aspect distinctions in adult bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5, 39–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. (2004)a. Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morpho-syntactic convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 125–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. (2004)b. The acquisition of Spanish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. (2005). Second language acquisition and first language loss in adult early bilinguals: Exploring some differences and similarities. Second Language Research, 21, 199–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. (2006). Incomplete acquisition as a feature of L2 and bilingual grammars. In Slabakova, R., Montrul, S. & Prévost, P. (eds.), Inquiries in language development: Studies in honor of Lydia White, pp. 335–359. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (2007). Interpreting mood distinctions in Spanish as a heritage language. In Potowski, K. & Cameron, R. (eds.), Spanish contact: Policy, social and linguistic inquiries, pp. 23–40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism: Re-examining the age factor (Studies in Bilingualism 39). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. in press. Dominant language transfer in Spanish L2 learners and heritage speakers. Special issue of Second Language Research (2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S., Foote, R. & Perpiñán, S. (2008). Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. Language Learning, 58 (3), 503–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. & Potowski, K. (2007). Command of gender agreement in school-age Spanish–English bilingual children. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 11, 301–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pereltsvaig, A. (2005). Aspect lost, aspect regained. In Slabakova, R. & Kempchinski, P. (eds.), Aspectual inquiries, pp. 369–395. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polinsky, M. (1997). American Russian: Language loss meets language acquisition. Proceedings of the Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics, pp. 370–406. Ann Arbor, MI: Slavic Publications.Google Scholar
Polinsky, M. (2006). Incomplete acquisition: American Russian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 14, 191–262.Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Mondoñedo, M. (2007). The syntax of objects: Agree and Differential Object Marking. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut, Storrs.Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Mondoñedo, M. (2008). The acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Spanish. Probus, 20, 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schachter, J. (1990). On the issue of completeness in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 6, 93–124.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994). Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (2003). Linguistic consequences of reduced input in bilingual first language acquisition. In Montrul, S. & Ordóñez, F. (eds.), Linguistic theory and language development in Hispanic languages, pp. 375–397. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (1993). Incomplete vs. divergent representations of unaccusativity in native and non-native grammars of Italian. Second Language Research, 9, 22–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A. (2000). Differential effects of attrition in the L1 syntax of near-native L2 speakers. Proceedings of the 24th Boston University Conference on Language Development, pp. 719–725. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (2004). Native language attrition and developmental instability at the syntax–discourse interface: Data, interpretation and methods. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 143–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suñer, M. (1988). The role of agreement in dative doubled constructions. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 6, 391–434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toribio, J. & Nye, C. (2006). Restructuring of reverse psychological predicate in bilingual Spanish. In Montreuil, J. & Nishida, C. (eds.), New perspectives in Romance linguistics, pp. 263–277. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torrego, E. (1998). The dependency of objects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ura, H. (1996). Multiple theory checking: A theory of grammatical function splitting. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
VanPatten, B. (2002). From input to output: A teacher's guide to second language acquisition. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
VanPatten, B. & Cadierno, T. (1993). Explicit instruction and input processing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 15, 225–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weissenrieder, M. (1985). Exceptional uses of the accusative A. Hispania, 68, 393–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weissenrieder, M. (1990). Variable uses of the direct-object marker A. Hispania, 73, 223–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weissenrieder, M. (1991). A functional approach to the accusative A. Hispania, 74,146–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, L. (2003). Second language acquisition and universal grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, L., Valenzuela, E., Kozlowska-Macgregor, M. & Leung, Y.-K. I. (2004). Gender agreement in nonnative Spanish: Evidence against failed features. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 105–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zagona, K. (2002). The syntax of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zapata, G., Sánchez, L. & Toribio, A. J. (2005). Contact and contracting Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism, 9, 377–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Montrul Appendices

Montrul Appendices

Download Montrul Appendices(PDF)
PDF 45.7 KB