Chapter published in:
The Acquisition of Differential Object Marking
Edited by Alexandru Mardale and Silvina Montrul
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 26] 2020
► pp. 183–206

Animacy hierarchy effects on L2 processing of Differential Object Marking

| Rutgers University
| Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
| University of Illinois at Chicago
Studies on L2 processing of Differential Object Marking (DOM) are scant and mostly focus on the animacy of the object. We investigated the interaction of three understudied factors in L1 and L2 processing of DOM: type of animacy (human vs. non-human animal), gender and number of the object (masculine vs. feminine, plural vs. singular), and morphological salience of the DOM marker (e.g., al bound/less salient vs. a unbound/more salient). Forty-three Spanish monolinguals and 81 English learners of Spanish (39 intermediate, 42 advanced) completed a self-paced reading task with subject relative clauses (RCs) containing DPs with singular and plural human or animal direct object nouns. Results showed that L2 learners’ sensitivity to animacy hierarchy differences is possible in cognitively easy conditions (unbound DOM, masculine gender). These findings inform current L2 representational and processing models, and stress the value of examining multiple factors to fully understand the complexity of DOM.
Keywords: Spanish DOM, relative clauses, animacy hierarchy, L2 learners, proficiency
Published online: 18 June 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.26.07sag
References

References

Antón-Méndez, M. I.
(1999) Gender and number agreement processing in Spanish (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Aissen, J.
(2003) Differential Object Marking: Iconicity vs. economy. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 21, 435–483. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Barrouillet, P., & Camos, V.
(2007) The time-based resource-sharing model of working memory. In N. Osaka, R. H. Logie, & M. D’Esposito (Eds.), The Cognitive Neuroscience of Working Memory (pp. 59–80). Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bossong, G.
(2003) Nominal and/or verbal marking of central actants. In G. Fiorentino (Ed.), Romance objects. Transitivity in Romance languages (pp. 17–49). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chamorro, G., Sturt, P., & Sorace, A.
(2016) Selectivity in L1 attrition: Differential Object Marking in Spanish near-native speakers of English. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 45(3), 697–715. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C.
(2017) Critical commentary. Some notes on the shallow structure hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 40(3), 693–706. https://​10​.1017​/S0272263117000250.
Dumitrescu, D.
(2008) El parámetro discursivo en la expresión del objeto directo lexical: Español Madrileño vs. Español Porteño. Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes.Google Scholar
Dussias, P. E., & Sagarra, N.
(2007) The effect of exposure on syntactic parsing in Spanish–English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10(1), 101–116. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dussias, P. E., Valdés Kroff, J. R., Guzzardo Tamargo, R. E., & Gerfen, C.
(2013) When gender and looking go hand in hand: Grammatical gender processing in L2 Spanish. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 35(2), 353–387. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, N.
(2006) Selective attention and transfer phenomena in L2 acquisition: Contingency, cue competition, salience, interference, overshadowing, blocking, and perceptual learning. Applied Linguistics, 27, 164–194. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goldschneider, J. M., & De Keyser, R. M.
(2001) Explaining the “natural order of L2 morpheme acquisition” in English: A meta-analysis of multiple determinants. Language Learning 51: 1–50. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Guijarro-Fuentes, P.
(2011) Feature composition in Differential Object Marking. Eurosla Yearbook, 11, 138–164. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Guijarro Fuentes, P.
(2012) The acquisition of interpretable features in L2 Spanish: Personal a . Bilingualism, Language and Cognition, 15(4), 701–720. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Guijarro-Fuentes, P., & Marinis, T.
(2009) The acquisition of the personal preposition a by Catalan-Spanish and English-Spanish bilinguals. In J. Collentine, M. García, B. Lafford, & F. Marcos Marín (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 11th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 81–92). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Harris, J.
(1991) The exponence of gender in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry, 22, 27–62.Google Scholar
Havik, E., Roberts, L., van Hout, R., Schreuder, R., & Haverkort, M.
(2009) Processing subject–object ambiguities in the L2: A self-paced reading study with German L2 learners of Dutch. Language Learning, 59, 73–112. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Heese, H. W.
(1997) Counterbalancing and other uses of repeated-measures Latin-Square designs: Interpretations. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 64, 137–158. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hopp, H.
(2014) Working memory effects in the L2 processing of ambiguous relative clauses. Language Acquisition, 21(3), 250–278. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hopp, H., & León Arriaga, M.
(2016) Structural and inherent case in the non-native processing of Spanish: Constraints on inflectional variability. Second Language Research, 32(1), 75–108. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jegerski, J.
(2015) The processing of case in near native Spanish. Second Language Research, 31(3), 281–307. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Just, M. A., Carpenter, P. A., & Woolley, J. D.
(1982) Paradigms and processes in reading comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 111, 228–238. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Leonetti, M.
(2008) Specificity in clitic doubling and in Differential Object Marking. Probus, 20(1), 33–66. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
López, L.
(2012) Indefinite object, scrambling, choice functions, and Differential Object Marking. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, B.
(2011) The logic of the unified model. In S. Gass & A. Mackey (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 211–227). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
McCarthy, C.
(2008) Morphological variability in the comprehension of agreement: An argument for representation over computation. Second Language Research, 24(4), 459–486. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S.
(2011) Interfaces and incomplete acquisition. Lingua, 121(4), 591–604. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S., Bhatt, R., & Girju, R.
(2015) Differential Object Marking in Spanish, Hindi, and Romanian as heritage languages. Language, 91(3), 564–610. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. & Gürel, A.
(2015) The acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Spanish by Turkish speakers. In T. Judy & S. Perpiñán (Eds.), The acquisition of Spanish by speakers of less commonly studies languages (pp. 281–308). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Montrul, S., & Sánchez-Walker, N.
(2013) Incomplete acquisition of Differential Object Marking in child and adult Spanish heritage speakers. Language Acquisition, 20, 109–132. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Perpiñán, S., & Moreno Villamar, I.
(2013) Inversion and case assignment in the language of Spanish heritage speakers. In S. Luo (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2013 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistics Association. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria.Google Scholar
Real Academia Española
(2005) Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas. Madrid: Real Academia Española.Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Mondoñedo, M.
(2007) The syntax of objects: Agree and Differential Object Marking (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
(2008) The acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Spanish. Probus, 20, 111–145. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sagarra, N., & Herschensohn, J.
(2010) The role of proficiency and working memory in gender and number agreement processing in L1 and L2 Spanish. Lingua, 20, 2022–2039. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sagarra, N., & LaBrozzi, R.
(2018) Benefits of study abroad on L2 morphosyntactic processing, and of working memory on L2 semantic processing. In C. Sanz & A. Morales (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of study abroad research and practice (pp. 149–164). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sagarra, N., Sánchez, L., & Bel, A.
(2017) Processing DOM in relative clauses. Salience and optionality in early and late bilinguals. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 9(1), 120–160. https://​10​.1075​/lab​.16020​.sag
Ticio, E.
(2015) Differential Object Marking in Spanish-English early bilinguals. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 5(1), 62–90. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ticio, E., & Avram, L.
(2015) The acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Spanish and Romanian: Semantic scales or semantic features? Revue Romaine de Linguistique, 4, 383–402Google Scholar
Torrego, E.
(1998) The dependencies of objects. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Torrego Salcedo, E.
(1999) El complemento directo preposicional. In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, I. Bosque & V. Demonte (Eds.), 1779–1805. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Google Scholar
VanPatten, B.
(1996) Input processing and grammar instruction in second language acquisition. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Zobl, H,. & Liceras, J.
(1994) Functional categories and acquisition orders. Language Learning, 44(1), 159–180. CrossrefGoogle Scholar