The acquisition of differential object marking in Spanish by Romanian
speakers
The obligatory use of the preposition ‘a’ with
animate, specific direct objects in Spanish (Juan conoce a
María “Juan knows Maria”) is a well-known instance of Differential
Object Marking (dom). This study investigates the acquisition of
dom by native speakers of Romanian learning Spanish. Spanish and
Romanian have dom lexicalized in the prepositions ‘a’
(Spanish) and in ‘pe’ (Romanian). In the two languages
dom is regulated by animacy and specificity. Thirty-two native
speakers of Spanish and 36 Romanian-speaking learners of Spanish with advanced
proficiency completed a written production, a written comprehension, and an
acceptability judgment task. The results show that, in general, and unlike what
has been found for English-speaking learners of Spanish, advanced Romanian
learners of Spanish are successful at acquiring the feature specification and
distribution of dom in Spanish. The findings are discussed with respect
to the nature of ultimate attainment as a function of language transfer.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Differential Object Marking (DOM)
- 3.The study
- 3.1Participants
- 3.2Tasks
- 3.2.1Written production
- 3.2.2Written comprehension
- 3.2.3Acceptability judgments
- 4.Discussion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
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