Double Object Constructions in Afro-Brazilian Portuguese

During the colonial period (16th - 19th centuries), Brazil was a multilingual country, home to Portuguese, Indigenous peoples, and Africans. Portuguese was learned as a second language by the Africans brought to Brazil by the slave trade, mainly under the influence of the Bantu languages the slaves spoke. From this language contact, an Afro-Brazilian Portuguese variety has emerged (ABP) which displays a ditransitive construction with an unmarked Goal dative, and V-Goal-Theme order, similar to Double Object Constructions (DOC) in English. We propose that the so-called DOC in ABP can be understood in terms of the Maximizing Minimal Means model (Biberauer 2018, 2019). In this model, Feature Economy and Feature/Input Generalization (Biberauer & Roberts 2017) constitute a major factor in L2 learning in contact scenarios. For the innovative ABP structure, the [+animate] and low applicative features of the Bantu substrate grammars are shown to have been key in the first generation’s L2 acquisition of a marked Classical Portuguese V-Goal-Theme structure. The structure becomes established in subsequent L1 acquisition of ABP, with expansion beyond the original core structures.