Differential Object Marking in Spanish, Hindi and Romanian Heritage Speakers

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。传统演讲者是那些在英语之外的语言中长大的成年人，但他们现在更习惯于英语。最近的研究遗产发言人记录不完全收购方面的曲折形态和句法。该项目研究作为语言系统的传统语言本身及其伴随的不完全习得模式。研究问题是：1）母语者完整语法的哪些具体方面在不完全习得下受到系统性影响; 2）哪些语言内部和语言外部因素导致特定语法特征的脆弱性？该项目调查这些问题的领域的差异对象标记（DOM）：一些直接对象的显式形态标记。先前的研究结果表明，DOM和与格标记在西班牙遗产的发言者的脆弱性。这项研究将研究DOM在西班牙语，印地语和罗马尼亚遗产的发言者。选择这三种语言是因为DOM标记的显著性不同：它在西班牙语中是元音介词（a），在罗马尼亚语中是音节介词（pe），在印地语中是音节后置词（-ko）。该项目将测试这样一个假设，即物体标记的声学突出性有助于其在这些遗产语言中的侵蚀或保留。实验数据将从完全掌握该语言的母语者以及在童年时期出生或移民到美国的每种语言的传统使用者那里收集。广泛的语言背景调查问卷和口头/书面生产，理解和语法判断任务将被使用。这项研究是第一个理论上知情的DOM收购在不同的遗产语言的大规模调查之一，并对印地语和罗马尼亚遗产扬声器的第一个研究。由于实验设计包括相当数量的流利的母语为西班牙语，印地语和罗马尼亚语，结果也将添加到现有的研究DOM。这项研究将影响西班牙语，印地语和罗马尼亚语言学，和语言理论一般。更重要的是，它将对双语环境中的第一语言习得和语言保持/丧失产生理论影响。它将揭示早期双语习得的范围作为年龄和语言环境的函数。它将提供关于第二语言习得年龄如何影响传统语言使用者语言能力的信息。最重要的是，通过确定遗产语言使用者从童年起就保留了什么，哪些传记因素有助于语言的保持，以及他们知识中潜在的语言差距，结果将为遗产语言的教学提供信息。传统语言教学是一个新的领域，迫切需要坚实的基础研究成果，从中建立健全的教材。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Heritage speakers are adults who grew up hearing and even speaking a language other English but who are now more comfortable in English. Recent studies of heritage speakers have documented incomplete acquisition of aspects of inflectional morphology and syntax. This project investigates heritage languages as linguistic systems in their own right and their accompanying patterns of incomplete acquisition. The research questions addressed are 1) Which specific aspects of a native speaker's full grammar are systematically affected under incomplete acquisition and 2) What language-internal and language-external factors contribute to the vulnerability of particular grammatical features? The project investigates these questions with respect to the domain of Differential Object Marking (DOM): the overt morphological marking of some direct objects. Previous results demonstrate the fragility of DOM and dative case marking in Spanish heritage speakers. This research will study DOM in Spanish, Hindi and Romanian heritage speakers. These three languages were chosen because the salience of the DOM marker varies: it is a vocalic preposition in Spanish (a), a syllabic preposition in Romanian (pe), and a syllabic post-position in Hindi (-ko). The project will test the hypothesis that the acoustic salience of the object marker contributes to its erosion or retention in these heritage languages. Experimental data will be collected from native speakers with full command of the language, and heritage speakers of each language who were born in or immigrated to the United States in childhood. Extensive language background questionnaires and oral/written production, comprehension and grammaticality judgment tasks will be used. The study is one of the first theoretically informed large-scale investigations of the acquisition of DOM in different heritage languages, and the first study on Hindi and Romanian heritage speakers. Since the experimental design includes a sizable number of fluent native speakers of Spanish, Hindi and Romanian, the results will also add to existing studies of DOM.This research will impact Spanish, Hindi and Romanian linguistics, and linguistic theory in general. More centrally, it will have theoretical implications for first language acquisition and language maintenance/loss in bilingual settings. It will shed light on the range of early bilingual acquisition as a function of age and linguistic environment. It will provide information on how age of second language acquisition affects linguistic competence in heritage language speakers. Most importantly, by identifying what heritage speakers retain from childhood, what biographical factors contribute to language maintenance, as well as potential linguistic gaps in their knowledge, the results will inform the teaching of heritage languages. Heritage language instruction is a new field in urgent need of solid basic research findings from which to build sound pedagogical materials.