The acquisition of Differential Object Marking: a longitudinal study on L1 Dutch learners of Hindi as a foreign language

This article investigates the acquisition of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Hindi as a foreign language. The study aims to verify earlier cross-sectional studies on Hindi DOM, and their earlier explanations related to L1 influence, item-based learning and semantic mapping. Via multiple oral interviews with five L1 Dutch speakers we compiled a longitudinal learner corpus of n = 3684 utterances. Our findings confirm high omission rates, suggesting initial expansion of the optionality of Hindi DOM (possibly enhanced by L1 transfer) and late acquisition of functional DOM use (possibly via item-based learning).