Doctoral Dissertation Research: Acquisition of grammatical variation: Differential object marking in heritage speakers

根据人口普查局的数据，美国有4100多万人在家里说西班牙语。重要的是要了解越来越多的美国儿童是如何在家里用西班牙语长大的，他们是如何在成年后学会和使用语言的。该项目的目标是探索在美国长大的双语成年人中使用可变语法形式的情况，这些成年人在家里说西班牙语，在学校说英语；这些双语成年人也被称为“传统说话者”。考察变量模式有助于更全面地理解美国语境下的双语习得。通过科学和公共渠道传播这一项目的发现有助于研究人员和教育工作者制定更有效的教育策略，并提高言语语言病理学家在临床环境中评估语言能力的能力。以前的研究表明，说遗产的人在语法形式的使用上表现出显著的多样性。这种变异性可以追溯到特定于语言的因素以及个人语言经验的各个方面。虽然不同的语言和语言社区都有不同的语法模式，但这些模式很少在传统说话者中进行研究。这个项目使用了一项针对传统语言使用者和单语者的句子重复任务，以考察对差异对象标记(DOM)分布的相互影响之间的权衡。差异对象标记(DOM)是一种在许多语言中发现的现象，其中句子中的某些对象伴随着前缀/后缀、介词或其他标记。该项目涉及以下问题：(1)传统说话者如何获得DOM等可变语法模式？(2)限制传统说话者使用可变模式的语言和非语言因素是什么？(3)变量用法在几代双语说话者中是如何变化的？这一新的方法结合了对变异、语言习得和跨代传承人的研究，具有巨大的潜力，有助于我们理解双语和语言习得。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

According to the Census Bureau, more than 41 million people in the US speak Spanish at home. It is important to understand how the growing number of US children who are raised speaking Spanish at home come to acquire and use language as adults. The goal of this project is to explore the use of a variable grammatical form in bilingual adults who were raised in the US speaking Spanish at home and English in school; these bilingual adults are also known as “heritage speakers”. Examining variable patterns leads to a more comprehensive understanding of bilingual language acquisition in the US context. Disseminating the findings from this project through both scientific and public channels helps researchers and educators to develop more effective educational strategies and improves speech-language pathologists' ability to assess language abilities in clinical settings. Previous studies have shown that heritage speakers demonstrate significant variability in their use of grammatical forms. This variability can be traced to language-specific factors as well as aspects of an individual’s language experience. While variable grammatical patterns appear across languages and speech communities, these patterns are rarely studied in heritage speakers. This project uses a sentence repetition task with heritage language speakers and monolinguals to examine the trade-off between competing influences on the distribution of differential object marking (DOM), a phenomenon found in a number of languages where certain objects in a sentence are accompanied by a prefix/suffix, preposition, or other marker. The project addresses the following questions: (1) How do heritage speakers acquire variable grammatical patterns such as DOM? (2) What are the linguistic and extralinguistic factors that constrain heritage speakers’ use of variable patterns? (3) How does variable usage change across generations of bilingual speakers? This novel approach combining the study of variation, language acquisition, and cross-generational heritage speakers has significant potential to contribute to our understanding of bilingualism and language acquisition.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.