Strategien beim Erwerb des russischen und deutschen Genus (am Beispiel mehrsprachiger Kinder)

Elena Dieser

doi:10.1524/slaw.2008.0028

Article

Strategien beim Erwerb des russischen und deutschen Genus (am Beispiel mehrsprachiger Kinder)

Elena Dieser

Published/Copyright: September 25, 2009

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From the journal Zeitschrift für Slawistik Volume 53 Issue 4

Abstract

The present study explores the strategies in gender acquisition in Russian and German among multilingual children using the data from four longitudinal studies. The results of the data analysis showed that the gender development in Russian and German is distinguished by a gradual increase in complexity. First, a two-part gender system is constructed in both languages, whereby feminine and masculine are distinguished in Russian, and feminine and non-feminine in German. Only after this intermediate stage is a three-part gender system developed in the target languages.

In view of the strategies employed in gender acquisition it was determined that lexical learning of gender attribution and rule-based learning both play an important role in gender acquisition. The proportional division between these two ways of learning varies widely depending upon typological characteristics of the language (in Russian gender acquisition the proportion of rule-based learning is higher than in German).

Keywords: Gender acquisition; multilingual children; longitudinal studies; two-part Gender system; feminine and masculine

Published Online: 2009-09-25

Published in Print: 2008-12

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1524/slaw.2008.0028

Keywords for this article

Gender acquisition; multilingual children; longitudinal studies; two-part Gender system; feminine and masculine