Abstract

This paper displays an analysis of the acquisition of differential object marking (DOM) in Spanish by students whose native language (L1) is the regional Italian spoken in Sicily. The primary objective of the study is to examine the relationship between the students’ linguistic proficiency and their mastery of DOM. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis, the study investigates the factors that influence the activation of DOM. A corpus derived from the written exams of Spanish language courses taught in a university setting was utilized for this purpose. The findings reveal both the progress made and the challenges encountered in learning DOM in Spanish as a foreign language (SFL). Specifically, the results suggest that the influence of the students’ native language is only partial in the learning process. Additionally, from a quantitative perspective, the results indicate that the semantic and pragmatic properties of the direct object are the most significant factors in the successful acquisition of DOM.