Chapter 4. The acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Basque as a sociolinguistic variable

The role of social meaning in contact‐induced variation among new speakers of Basque

“…The role of classic social factors (such as proficiency, child versus adult immersion learning, and home language in minority language variation (Nagy, 2018) were previously considered, with results showing that DOM decreased as proficiency increased (Rodríguez‐Ordóñez, 2020b). In the current study, proficiency was initially considered alongside speaker category in explaining DOM use.…”

“…Previous work has demonstrated that Basque DOM is also subject to significant dialectal and individual variation, making it an ideal candidate for variationist analysis; it is conditioned by a number of linguistic and social factors such as person and number, specificity/definiteness, verb semantics, verbal borrowings, tense–aspect–mood, whether the direct object is overtly realized as an NP, intensity of contact, and type of bilingual (Austin, 2015; Fernández & Rezac, 2016; Rodríguez‐Ordóñez, 2016, 2017, 2020b; Odria, 2014, 2,107).…”

The role of linguistic ideologies in language contact situations

“…This kind of data collection maximizes interaction among participants as they take interactional stances on their beliefs and attitudes towards language. Largely used in educational settings (Wilson, ), this method has also gained ground in recent studies as a way of understanding the ideologies that govern new speakers' linguistic identities and how they use contact phenomena to construct such identities (Lantto, ; O'Rourke & Ramallo, ; Ortega et al, ; Rodríguez‐Ordóñez, , in press).…”

“…Aikhenvald () shows that the cross‐linguistic influence in the same region between Tucanoan and Arawak languages is limited with respect to overt borrowing but extensive when it comes to underlying syntactic patterns. Similarly, Rodríguez‐Ordóñez (, , in press) examines the grammaticalization patterns of Basque Differential Object Marking (DOM) in contact with Spanish and proposes that the two mechanisms behind them are governed by linguistic ideologies: while speakers who are considered “legitimate” Basque speakers exhibit a higher degree of Spanish verbal borrowings in their use of Basque DOM, “less legitimate” speakers limit their use of DOM to superficially less overt forms of pattern borrowing (i.e., Basque verbs). In short, the grammaticalization patterns of DOM are determined by the different borrowing patterns, which are, in turn, constrained by the social value attached to borrowing material in the Basque‐Spanish contact scenario.…”

“…A pointed investigation into how the “negotiation, debate, contestation and appropriation” of these ideologies (Costa et al, , p. 12) are linked to the emergence of new forms of linguistic variation (including those that are contact induced) has powerful potential to help us better understand how hegemonic discourses are “re‐signified, reindexicalized [and] re‐imagined” (Gal, , p. 238), as well as how they lead to various forms of language contact. Though a few advancements on the study of new speaker contact outcomes have been made (Kasstan, ; Kasstan & Müller, ; Kennard, ; Lantto, , ; Nance, ; Rodríguez‐Ordóñez, , in press), future work on new speakers' linguistic practices is essential as we continue to theorize about how multilinguals linguistically mediate among their socio‐political structures and in‐the‐moment interactional contexts as they navigate sociolinguistics reality and continually construct their individualized notions of “speakerhood.”…”