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Article published In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 5:1 (2015) ► pp.62–90

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Differential object marking in Spanish-English early bilinguals

 | Syracuse University
Published online: 1 May 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.5.1.03tic
This paper examines the emergence and acquisition of marked accusative objects (Differential Object Marking, DOM, . (1991). Differential Object Marking in Romance and beyond. In D. Wanner, & D. Kibbee (Eds.), New analyses in Romance linguistics (pp. 143–170). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) in the spontaneous production of seven early Spanish-English simultaneous bilinguals (henceforth, 2L1) with different linguistic environments. The main finding is that the 2L1 group examined did not acquire differentially marked objects in the period studied, up to 3;6, nor did they behave similarly to Spanish monolingual children (L1) acquiring DOM (Guijarro Fuentes, P. (2011). Feature composition in Differential Object Marking. In L. Roberts, G. Pallotti, & C. Bettoni (Eds), EUROSLA Yearbook 11 (pp. 138–164). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; . (2008). The acquisition of differential object marking in Spanish. Probus, 201, 111–145. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). The current results support previous claims that link protracted development and incomplete acquisition (. (2008). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism. Re-examining the age factor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Montrul, S., & Sánchez-Walker, N. (2013) Differential object marking in child and adult Spanish heritage speakers. Language Acquisition, 201, 1–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Tentatively, this study concludes that under reduced input conditions, 2L1 develop core aspects of their language, such as accusative and dative structures, but cannot acquire language-specific properties, such as the acquisition of the [person] feature needed for DOM in Spanish.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Differential Object Marking in Spanish
  • 3.DOM and Language Acquisition
  • 4.Research questions
  • 5.Current study
    • 5.1Current study: Design
    • 5.2Current Study: Coding
    • 5.3Case study results
      • 5.3.1Tina
      • 5.3.2Carla
      • 5.3.3Leo
      • 5.3.4Simon
      • 5.3.5RIC
      • 5.3.6Yasmin
      • 5.3.7M
  • 6.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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