scholarly journals Gender assignment and gender agreement in adult bilinguals and second language learners of French

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Kupisch ◽  
Deniz Akpinar ◽  
Antje Stöhr
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Age Of Onset ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Language Context

This paper is concerned with gender marking in adult French. Four groups of subjects are compared: German-French simultaneous bilinguals (2L1ers) who grew up in France, German-French 2L1ers who grew up in Germany, advanced second language learners (L2ers) who are resident either in France or in Germany at the time of testing. The major goal of the study is to investigate whether differences in input conditions (acquisition in a minority vs. a majority language context) and differences in age of onset affect gender assignment and gender agreement in the same way or differently. Furthermore, we investigate whether successful acquisition of gender is dependent on influence from German. Two experiments, an acceptability judgment task and an elicited production task, are carried out. Results show successful acquisition of agreement in all groups. By contrast, gender assignment may be mildly affected if French is acquired in a minority language context or as an L2.

The Acquisition of Spanish Gender Marking in the Writing of Heritage and Second Language Learners

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 242-267
Author(s):  
Antonio Pérez-Núñez
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Nonlinear Process ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Written Production ◽  
And Gender

This study aims to expand on previous research on the acquisition of gender marking by examining the longitudinal written production of second language (L2) and heritage language (HL) learners. The written production of 24 participants (L2, n = 12; HL, n = 12) enrolled in the same course was traced over four weeks and all cases of canonical and non-canonical gender marking (i.e., gender assignment and gender agreement) were coded. The group results indicated that the HL learners were significantly more accurate than their L2 counterparts with both canonical and non-canonical ending nouns; however, close inspection of the participants’ individual accuracy patterns revealed a nonlinear process that was subject to great instability in their performance over time. Findings are discussed in light of interlanguage development and implications for research in second language acquisition are presented.

The production of gender agreement in native and L2 Spanish: The role of morphophonological form

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Foote
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Model Simulations ◽  
Subject Noun ◽  
And Gender

In native speakers of gender-marking languages, mechanisms of gender production appear to be affected by the morphophonological cues to gender present in the noun phrase. This influence is manifested in higher levels of production accuracy when more transparent cues to gender are present in comparison to when they are not. The goal of the present study was to examine the role of morphophonological cues to gender in the production of gender agreement in native speakers and second language learners of Spanish in light of the Marking and Morphing account of agreement (Eberhard et al., 2005). Participants repeated and completed complex subject noun phrases with head nouns that varied in gender and gender-marking transparency. Analyses of accuracy rates along with Marking and Morphing model simulations of the results indicated that, contrary to previous findings, native speakers were not affected by gender-marking transparency. However, based on model simulations, second language (L2) learners were affected by the morphophonological form of the head noun.

scholarly journals Morphosyntactic Processing in Late Second-Language Learners

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 1870-1887 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Gillon Dowens ◽  
Marta Vergara ◽  
Horacio A. Barber ◽  
Manuel Carreiras
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
First Language ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Sentence Position ◽  
And Gender

The goal of the present study was to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of second-language (L2) morphosyntactic processing in highly proficient late learners of an L2 with long exposure to the L2 environment. ERPs were collected from 22 English–Spanish late learners while they read sentences in which morphosyntactic features of the L2 present or not present in the first language (number and gender agreement, respectively) were manipulated at two different sentence positions—within and across phrases. The results for a control group of age-matched native-speaker Spanish participants included an ERP pattern of LAN-type early negativity followed by P600 effect in response to both agreement violations and for both sentence positions. The late L2 learner results included a similar pattern, consisting of early negativity followed by P600, in the first sentence position (within-phrase agreement violations) but only P600 effects in the second sentence position (across-phrase agreement violation), as well as significant amplitude and onset latency differences between the gender and the number violation effects in both sentence positions. These results reveal that highly proficient learners can show electrophysiological correlates during L2 processing that are qualitatively similar to those of native speakers, but the results also indicate the contribution of factors such as age of acquisition and transfer processes from first language to L2.

scholarly journals Specific and generic subjects in the Italian of German–Italian simultaneous bilinguals and L2 learners

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 736-756 ◽  
Author(s):  
TANJA KUPISCH
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Age Of Onset ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

This study investigates definite articles in specific and generic subject nominals in Italian spoken by adult simultaneous bilinguals (2L1ers) and second language learners (L2ers). The study focuses on plural and mass DPs, in which German and Italian differ. The aims are to (i) compare acquisition outcomes between the weaker and the stronger language in 2L1 acquisition, (ii) see in a comparison with L2ers whether the phenomenon under investigation, which is typically acquired late (after age 6;0), lacks age of onset effects, and (iii) discuss predictions for the directionality of cross-linguistic influence. Twenty German–Italian 2L1ers and 15 advanced L2ers of Italian with German as their native language were tested in an acceptability judgment task and a truth value judgment task. The results show clear differences between Italian as the weaker and as the stronger language in 2L1 acquisition, and similarities between Italian as L2 and as the weaker language in 2L1 acquisition.

Gender in Italian–German bilinguals: A comparison with German L2 learners of Italian

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 538-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
GIULIA BIANCHI
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
External Factors ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
L2 Learners

This study compares mastery of gender assignment and agreement in Italian by adult Italian–German bilinguals who have acquired two languages simultaneously (2L1), and by adult German highly proficient second language learners (L2ers) of Italian. Our data show that incompleteness in bilingual acquisition and in second language (L2) acquisition primarily affects gender assignment: the categorization of nouns and the interpretable gender feature are subject to vulnerability in the two modalities of acquisition. Overall, mastery of morpho-syntax (i.e., gender agreement) was nearly native-like for both groups of speakers, suggesting that uninterpretable features are unlikely to be subject to vulnerability in the heritage language of adult bilingual speakers and can be acquired in adult L2 acquisition. Deviances from the target in gender assignment and, to a lesser extent, in gender agreement are attributed to both language-internal (i.e., language) and language-external factors (i.e., amount of input).

Morphosyntactic Knowledge in Late Second Language Learners and Heritage Speakers of Russian

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-150
Author(s):  
Kira Gor
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Language Curriculum ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
Early Learners

The current study pursues two goals. First, it establishes developmental trajectories in the acquisition of 10 morphosyntactic features of Russian by American learners, using a grammaticality judgment task (GJT), an offline test of morphosyntactic knowledge that allows for direct comparison of native and nonnative performance through a highly controlled set of materials. Second, it compares the performance of late second language learners and heritage speakers (early learners) of Russian matched in global proficiency as established by the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), and ranging from Intermediate to Superior proficiency. The study demonstrates that heritage speakers outperform late second language learners on most, but not all the morphosyntactic features tested in the GJT. These findings shed new light on the development of nonnative grammatical knowledge in early and late learners of Russian, and will inform Russian language curriculum development.

scholarly journals Knowledge of expletive and pronominal subjects by learners of Spanish

2002 ◽  
Vol 135-136 ◽  
pp. 37-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristóbal Lozano
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Subject Pronouns ◽  
Third Person ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Empty Element ◽  
Gender Features

Abstract Abstract A number of studies investigating second language acquisition (SLA) from the perspective of Principles and Parameters Theory (P&P, CHOMSKY, 1981, 1995) have focused on the pro-drop parameter, and have argued that older second language learners are sensitive to the different, properties it purportedly covers (e.g., AL-KASEY & PÉREZ-LEROUX, 1998; LICERAS, 1989; PHINNEY, 1987; WHITE, 1986). In this paper we extend this work by investigating two of its syntactic corollaries, namely, referential pronominal subjects (ProS) and expletive pronominal subjects (ExpS). In so-called [+pro-drop] languages both may be realised as an empty element (pro). While on the surface these forms are identical, referential subject pro is different from expletive subject pro both syntactically and semantically; syntactically because referential pro co-exists with a set of overt subject pronouns (yo 'I' , tú 'you', etc), whereas there are no overt expletive pronouns; semantically because referential pro is distinguished for 3 persons, number and gender features, whereas expletive pro would appear to be a third person, singular, gender-neutral pronoun. We will examine whether older L2 learners are sensitive to these differences by using paired grammaticality judgement tests (PGJT). Results are consistent with the claim that learners have different mental representations for ProS and ExpS.

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