The processing of input with differential objectmarking by heritage Spanish speakers

Authors

Jill Jegerski, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignFollow
Irina A. Sekerina, CUNY College of Staten IslandFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-1-2019

Abstract

Heritage Spanish speakers and adult immigrant bilinguals listened to wh-questions with the differential object marker a (quién/a quién ‘who/whoACC’) while their eye movements across four referent pictures were tracked. The heritage speakers were less accurate than the adult immigrants in their verbal responses to the questions, leaving objects unmarked for case at a rate of 18%, but eye movement data suggested that the two groups were similar in their comprehension, with both starting to look at the target picture at the same point in the question and identifying the target sooner with a quién ‘whoACC’ than with quién ‘who’ questions.

Comments

This work was originally published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728919000087