A look into the bilingual grammar through the study of Basque-Spanish null objects and Basque differential object marking

Vazquez-Lozares, Almike

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115486 Copy

Description

Title

A look into the bilingual grammar through the study of Basque-Spanish null objects and Basque differential object marking

Author(s)

Vazquez-Lozares, Almike

Issue Date

2022-04-20

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

MacDonald, Jonathan E

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

MacDonald, Jonathan E

Committee Member(s)

• Hualde, Jose I
• Ionin, Tania
• Talić, Aida

Department of Study

Spanish and Portuguese

Discipline

Spanish

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• contact linguistics
• morphosyntax
• Basque
• Spanish
• bilingualism
• bilingual grammar
• null objects
• differential object marking

Abstract

In this dissertation I analyze two contact phenomena: null objects in the Spanish spoken in the Basque Country, and Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Basque. I frame these contact phenomena within López’s (2020) 1Lex model of bilingual grammar where the central argument is that bilinguals have a single integrated lexicon, a single phonology, and a single computational system. By framing the analyses for these phenomena in the 1Lex model, I account for the interaction between Spanish and Basque that gives rise to them. Additionally, I present acceptability judgments from four groups of Spanish/Basque bilinguals: one Spanish-dominant group from a region where the intensity of language contact is low and Spanish is the most used language; and three groups from an intense language contact region, with Spanish-dominant, Basque-dominant, and balanced bilingual profiles. This categorization of speakers based on societal and individual factors allows to determine the effects of individual language dominance and societal bilingualism on the contact phenomena under study. For the analysis of null objects, I show that the relevant feature in the object is lack of case. This is supported with data from ditransitive constructions with animate direct objects and from constructions with DOM inanimate objects. Once I identify case as the key aspect, I develop an analysis in which a D-feature in v licenses (caseless) null objects. Different Vocabulary Insertion Rules determine whether the object is spelled out overtly or is null, depending on its being in the context of v or v[D]. Access to the v[D] which is originally associated with Basque is possible thanks to the integrated lexicon assumed in the 1Lex model. In the analysis of Basque DOM, DOM objects have a case phrase (KP) that prevents them from checking case in situ. These objects have to move to an alphaP where they can check dative case. In Spanish, this alphaP is related to dative case assignment, and its goal is to host the moved object. AlphaP is available to use in Basque thanks to the integrated List 1 of Spanish/Basque bilinguals. The results of the Acceptability Judgment Tasks for both phenomena indicate that the primary factor influencing them is societal bilingualism. The participants from the intense-contact region find null objects in Basque-Spanish and DOM in Basque more acceptable than the participants from the low-contact region. Secondly, among the groups from the intense contact region, there is a small effect of language dominance, but, importantly, higher rates of self-reported codeswitching translate to higher acceptability of both contact phenomena. This leads me to argue that the contact phenomena, whose surface form or morphophonology appears to be monolingual, can be analyzed as cases of covert codeswitching within the 1Lex model. The term codeswitching is normally used to refer to the overt, perceptible switch between vocabulary items from two discrete languages. Within Distributed Morphpology, this would be switching on the level of List 2, where the rules for vocabulary insertion are stored. Meanwhile, I propose that codeswitching happens on List 1 as well, where roots and functional elements are found. This can account for the contact phenomena under study: using in Basque the alphaP that is available thanks to Spanish, and using in Spanish the v[D] that is available thanks to Basque are both a form of codeswitching. This argument is supported by the fact that participants who are aware of codeswitching overtly find these constructions more acceptable than those who do not report codeswitching. Finally, I propose that probabilistic weights or word activation levels may regulate some aspects of bilinguals’ codeswitching, and this allows to account for the differences in acceptability rates found across the different groups. By adding these probability weights to the model, I make a contribution to López’s (2020) 1Lex model of bilingual grammar, and to models of bilingual grammar in general.

Graduation Semester

2022-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Almike Vázquez-Lozares

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