Case Marking in Hindi as the Weaker Language

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Silvina Montrul¹  Archna Bhatia²  Rakesh Bhatt¹  Vandana Puri¹ 

[1] Department of Spanish and Portuguese/Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States;Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, United States

关键词: Hindi;    dominance;    heritage speakers;    second language;    case;    ergativity;    differential object marking;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00461

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Does language dominance modulate knowledge of case marking in Hindi-speaking bilinguals? Hindi is a split ergative language with a rich morphological case system. Subjects of transitive perfective predicates are marked with ergative case (- ne ). Human specific direct objects, indirect objects, and dative subjects are marked with the particle - ko . We compared knowledge of case marking in Hindi–English bilinguals with different dominance patterns: 23 balanced bilinguals and two groups of bilinguals with Hindi as their weaker language: 24 L2 learners of Hindi with age of acquisition (AoA) of Hindi in adulthood and 26 Hindi heritage speakers with AoA of Hindi since birth in oral production and acceptability judgments. The balanced bilinguals outperformed the English-dominant bilinguals; the L2 learners and the heritage speakers, who showed similar lower command of the Hindi case marking system, with the exception of - ko marking as a function of specificity with direct objects. We consider how dominant language transfer, AoA of Hindi, and input factors may explain the acquisition and knowledge of morphology in Hindi as the weaker language.

【 授权许可】

CC BY