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The Acquisition of Differential Object Marking
Edited by Alexandru Mardale and Silvina Montrul
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 26] 2020
► pp. 77–104

Chapter 3
Differential Object Marking in simultaneous Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals

 | University of Bucharest
 | University of Bucharest
This study charts the acquisition of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Romanian by Hungarian-Romanian simultaneous bilinguals (2L1). The main finding is that these 2L1 children acquire the properties of the DOM system similarly to monolinguals, with only one difference deriving from descriptive DPs, with which marking is constrained by discourse-pragmatics. During the early stages, the 2L1 children inconsistently mark these DPs in comparison with age-matched monolinguals. Data from ‘frog story’ narratives of 4-year-old bilinguals reveal an increase in DOM use with these DPs. The results show that the vulnerability is selective and that it is overcome early. We explain our findings with reference to the syntax of DOM in Romanian and positive cross-linguistic influence from Hungarian.
Keywords: Romanian, Hungarian, simultaneous bilingual children, selective vulnerability, Differential Object Marking
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous studies on DOM in 2L1
  • 3.DOM in Romanian bilingual acquisition
    • 3.1DOM in Romanian
    • 3.2DOM in Hungarian?
    • 3.3Predictions for DOM in 2L1 Romanian in a Hungarian-Romanian context
  • 4.The study
    • 4.1Main questions
    • 4.2Longitudinal study
      • 4.2.1Corpus and methodology
      • 4.2.2Results
      • 4.2.3DOM in child-directed speech
      • 4.2.4Interim conclusions
    • 4.3DOM in narrative
      • 4.3.1Aim
      • 4.3.2Corpus and methodology
      • 4.3.3Results
    • 4.4Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.26.03avr
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