Chapter published in:
The Acquisition of Differential Object Marking
Edited by Alexandru Mardale and Silvina Montrul
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 26] 2020
► pp. 207–235

Chapter 8
Verbal lexical frequency and DOM in heritage speakers of Spanish

| Rutgers University

This chapter examines the effect of lexical frequency of the verb on heritage speakers’ (HS) production of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish. Specifically, it examines whether HS are more likely to use DOM with animate direct objects that are the complement of high frequent telic verbs, as opposed to low-frequency telic verbs. Thirty HSs of different levels (intermediate and advanced) and 15 Spanish-dominant controls (SDC) completed an elicited production task (EPT). Results revealed that intermediate heritage speakers produced more DOM with high-frequency verbs but such an effect was not found in the advanced group. In explaining our data, we follow the activation approach that argues that the variability of DOM among HS is due to how frequently the HS activates the functional features (FF) of the heritage language (HL) for production purposes.

Keywords: heritage language, Spanish DOM, lexical activation, lexical frequency
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature overview
    • 2.1Differential Object Marking
    • 2.2Variability among heritage speakers of Spanish
    • 2.3Lexical frequency
    • 2.4Lexical development in the L2 and HS
  • 3.The study
    • 3.1Research questions and hypotheses
    • 3.2Methods
      • 3.2.1Participants
      • 3.2.2Tasks and procedures
        • 3.2.2.1DELE proficiency exam
        • 3.2.2.2Elicited Production Task: EPT
        • 3.2.2.3Language Background Questionnaire: LBQ
    • 3.3Statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.26.08hur
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