Examining verb-specific lexical effects in heritage Spanish Differential Object Marking

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This study examined the production and receptive grammatical knowledge of Spanish Differential Object Marking (DOM) among adult heritage speakers (HSs) and addressed the role of proficiency, animacy, and verb-specific lexical effects in terms of verb class in explaining variability. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 65 participants (41 HSs and 24 Spanish Dominant Controls) completed an Elicited Production Task and a Grammatical Acceptability Task, eliciting animate-specific direct objects. Data and analysis: All responses were coded and analyzed with a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) and cumulative link mixed models (CLMMs), which included effects of proficiency, task, and verb class. Findings/conclusions: Proficiency modulated both production and receptive grammatical knowledge of DOM. Also, verb-specific patterns that favor animate, inanimate, or both with or without DOM were found to modulate the grammaticality in Verb Class 3 (verbs mostly preceding inanimate Determiner Phrases (DP)) than in Verb Class 2 conditions (verbs that can precede either animate or inanimate DPs). This indicates that HSs face more challenges remapping the features of the DOM into morphology with verb-specific conditions that have the variability of either preceding or not DOM. Originality: This study is the first one to operationalize verb-specific lexical effects into verb classes following Heusinger and Kaiser’s verb class dimension on Spanish DOM as a way to examine a contributing factor of inter-speaker variability in HSs. Significance/implications: These findings shed light on additional variables that should be taken into account when investigating between-speaker variability in Spanish as a heritage language.