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In:Variation in Second and Heritage Languages: Crosslinguistic perspectives
Edited by Robert Bayley, Dennis R. Preston and Xiaoshi Li
[Studies in Language Variation 28] 2022
► pp. 311–336

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Chapter 12
Differential object marking in heritage and homeland Italian

ORCiD logo with link | Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
ORCiD logo with link | University of Toronto
Published online: 14 July 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.28.12dis
Abstract
We examine variable patterns of use of differential object marking (DOM) in conversational Italian recorded in Toronto, Canada, and Calabria, Italy. An exhaustive sample of 366 direct objects, produced by Homeland and three generations of Heritage speakers, shows retention of the DOM system. Successive generations have lower rates of DOM, but this is because they don’t produce enough tokens of certain syntactic and semantic types (e.g., left-dislocated or indefinite pronouns). Thus, they have less opportunity to use DOM: token distributions account for their lower rates. In contexts with sufficient tokens, significant contrasts emerge, indicating that all generations retain the conditioning of relevant factors (Definiteness, Referent of Object, Verb Type, Dislocation). No effects of social network or linguistic practices emerged.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The status of DOM in Romance languages
  • Methods
  • Results
    • Modeling DOM where it is expected
    • Non-canonical use of DOM
    • (Non)-effects of ethnic orientation
  • Summary of findings
  • Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
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2025. Toward explaining variability in heritage varieties: Systematic patterns of differential object marking in adult heritage speakers of Spanish. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 28:2 ► pp. 357 ff. DOI logo

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