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Chapter 9. Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual grammars

Evidence from gender assignment in unilingual Dutch and mixed speech
  • Brechje van Osch , Ivo H.G. Boers , Janet Grijzenhout , M. Carmen Parafita Couto , Bo Sterken and Deniz Tat
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The Acquisition of Gender
This chapter is in the book The Acquisition of Gender

Abstract

This study reports on grammatical gender assignment in elicited production data from heritage speakers of Turkish, Papiamento, and Spanish in the Netherlands. We investigate the role of cross-linguistic influence from the heritage language onto the societal language by comparing three heritage languages that differ in terms of the properties of the nominal domain, including gender. Determiner-adjective-noun constructions were elicited by means of a Director-Matcher task (Gullberg, Indefrey, & Muysken, 2009), which was performed both in a unilingual Dutch mode, and in a code-switching mode from Dutch to the heritage language. The results show that all groups tend to overgeneralize the common gender in the Dutch unilingual mode. Strikingly, the performance of heritage speakers of Spanish was more target-like than the Papiamento and Turkish speakers, which may be due to the fact that Spanish is the only language that has a grammatical gender system. In code-switching mode, most speakers tend to assign common gender to inserted nouns, but some speakers also apply a gender assignment strategy based on the translation equivalent of the noun in Dutch, or produce a postnominal adjective construction with an uninflected adjective. An analysis of extra-linguistic variables demonstrated that gender assignment strategies seem to be determined to some extent by the degree of dominance in the societal language.

Abstract

This study reports on grammatical gender assignment in elicited production data from heritage speakers of Turkish, Papiamento, and Spanish in the Netherlands. We investigate the role of cross-linguistic influence from the heritage language onto the societal language by comparing three heritage languages that differ in terms of the properties of the nominal domain, including gender. Determiner-adjective-noun constructions were elicited by means of a Director-Matcher task (Gullberg, Indefrey, & Muysken, 2009), which was performed both in a unilingual Dutch mode, and in a code-switching mode from Dutch to the heritage language. The results show that all groups tend to overgeneralize the common gender in the Dutch unilingual mode. Strikingly, the performance of heritage speakers of Spanish was more target-like than the Papiamento and Turkish speakers, which may be due to the fact that Spanish is the only language that has a grammatical gender system. In code-switching mode, most speakers tend to assign common gender to inserted nouns, but some speakers also apply a gender assignment strategy based on the translation equivalent of the noun in Dutch, or produce a postnominal adjective construction with an uninflected adjective. An analysis of extra-linguistic variables demonstrated that gender assignment strategies seem to be determined to some extent by the degree of dominance in the societal language.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. About the contributors vii
  4. Chapter 1. Introduction 1
  5. Part I. Review chapters
  6. Chapter 2. Gender assignment in mixed noun phrases 13
  7. Chapter 3. Empirical evidence for subtle gender biases in language 49
  8. Chapter 4. The acquisition of grammatical gender in child and adult heritage speakers of Spanish 71
  9. Part II. Child, adult and heritage speakers
  10. Chapter 5. The second language acquisition of grammatical gender and number in Italian 97
  11. Chapter 6. Grammatical gender and article use in beginning learners of German 127
  12. Chapter 7. The non-default gender category in additional-language French 157
  13. Chapter 8. Investigating grammatical gender agreement in Spanish 183
  14. Chapter 9. Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual grammars 209
  15. Chapter 10. Prediction on the basis of gender and number in Mandarin-Italian bilingual children 243
  16. Language index 273
  17. Name index 275
  18. Subject index 281
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.63.09van

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. About the contributors vii
  4. Chapter 1. Introduction 1
  5. Part I. Review chapters
  6. Chapter 2. Gender assignment in mixed noun phrases 13
  7. Chapter 3. Empirical evidence for subtle gender biases in language 49
  8. Chapter 4. The acquisition of grammatical gender in child and adult heritage speakers of Spanish 71
  9. Part II. Child, adult and heritage speakers
  10. Chapter 5. The second language acquisition of grammatical gender and number in Italian 97
  11. Chapter 6. Grammatical gender and article use in beginning learners of German 127
  12. Chapter 7. The non-default gender category in additional-language French 157
  13. Chapter 8. Investigating grammatical gender agreement in Spanish 183
  14. Chapter 9. Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual grammars 209
  15. Chapter 10. Prediction on the basis of gender and number in Mandarin-Italian bilingual children 243
  16. Language index 273
  17. Name index 275
  18. Subject index 281
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