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

根据人口普查局的数据，美国有超过4100万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在家里说西班牙语长大，成年后如何获得和使用语言。这个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，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“遗产发言人”。检查变量模式导致更全面的了解双语语言习得在美国的情况。通过科学和公共渠道传播该项目的研究结果有助于研究人员和教育工作者制定更有效的教育策略，并提高语言病理学家在临床环境中评估语言能力的能力。以往的研究表明，传统的发言者在他们使用的语法形式表现出显着的变化。这种差异可以追溯到语言的具体因素，以及个人的语言经验的方面。虽然不同的语法模式出现在不同的语言和言语社区，但这些模式很少在传统的说话者中进行研究。这个项目使用了一个句子重复任务与传统语言的发言者和单语者之间的权衡竞争影响的分布差异对象标记（DOM），在一些语言中发现的现象，在句子中的某些对象伴随着前缀/后缀，介词，或其他标记。该项目解决了以下问题：（1）传统的发言者如何获得可变的语法模式，如DOM？(2)是什么语言和语言外的因素限制了传统语言使用可变模式？(3)变量的使用在几代双语者中是如何变化的？这种结合了变异研究、语言习得研究和跨代传统语言使用者研究的新方法，对我们理解双语和语言习得有着巨大的潜力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值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.