ИСТИНА

In this paper, we focus on incomplete acquisition of the Russian Differential Object Marking (DOM) by Spanish speakers. Both Spanish and Russian display DOM on animate direct objects; however, specific morphological and lexico-semantic factors differentiate the patterns of the two languages. We offer the results of two experiments on the accuracy of incomplete acquisition of Russian DOM by Spanish L3 learners and Spanish-Russian bilingual children, living in Spain. The results of our survey show that incomplete acquisition of Russian DOM is vulnerable, if we compare L3 students and bilinguals to adult native speakers of Russian living in Russia. Acquisition of Russian DOM (and case in general) is clearly vulnerable in the case of Spanish L3 learners and, to a lesser extent, in Spanish-Russian bilinguals, who acquire the morphology of Russian case in a near-native way. We argue that this is due to the fact that Russian DOM and direct object marking comprises a complex array of morphological features that interface with purely syntactic criteria. Thus, we extend Lardiere’s (2008) Feature Reassembly Hypothesis to the syntax-morphology interface (besides the syntax-pragmatic interface). Likewise, our results partially confirm Kempe & MacWhinney’s (1998) hypothesis on a cue-based acquisition strategy of Russian case by L2/L3 learners.