Grammatical gender assignment in French: dispelling the native speaker myth

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
DALILA AYOUN
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Gender Effects ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
And Gender

ABSTRACTThis study highlights the complexity of French grammatical gender as a lexical property at the interface of morpho-phonology and the lexicon. French native speakers (n = 168) completed a gender assignment task with written stimuli illustrating common versus uncommon nouns, vowel-initial versus consonant-initial nouns, compounds and grammatical homonyms; they also indicated the strategies they used to assign a gender to stimuli. The findings showed strong lexical and gender effects suggesting that grammatical gender must be acquired for individual lexical items as morpho-phonological cues alone are unreliable and vary greatly.

Gender assignment strategies used by L1 and L2 speakers of Spanish

2019 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Martoccio
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Native Spanish Speakers ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Bare Nouns ◽  
And Gender ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
L1 English

Abstract This article compares gender assignment on known nouns by intermediate (n=15) and advanced (n=15) second language (L2) learners of Spanish (L1 English) and native Spanish speakers (n=15). Participants completed a written vocabulary task, which asked the meaning and gender of 63 nouns. Gender assignment scores revealed that only intermediate and native speaker groups scored significantly differently on known nouns, as shown by the vocabulary task. Results indicated that intermediate learners assigned the incorrect gender to known nouns significantly more than native speakers. Both L2 learner groups made errors on high frequency known nouns, whereas the few native speaker errors were on low frequency known nouns. Along with think-aloud data which showed the effectiveness of strategies that directly link the noun with its article, these results indicate that nouns need to be taught as units rather than bare nouns, using distributional co-occurrence relations.

scholarly journals Semantic Categories and Gender Assignment in Contact Spanish: Type of Code-Switching and its Relevance to Linguistic Outcomes

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Osmer Balam
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Semantic Domains

The present study examines two aspects of determiner phrases (dps) that have been previously investigated in Spanish/English code-switching; namely, the openness of semantic domains to non-native nouns and gender assignment in monolingual versus code-switched speech. The quantitative analysis of naturalistic, oral production data from 62 native speakers of Northern Belizean Spanish revealed both similarities and notable differences vis-à-vis previous findings for varieties of Spanish/English code-switching in theu.s. Hispanophone context. Semantic domains that favoured non-native nouns in Spanish/Englishdps included academia, technology, work/money-related terms, abstract concepts, linguistics/language terms and everyday items. In relation to gender assignation, assignment patterns in monolingualdps were canonical whereas an overwhelming preference for the masculine default gender was attested in mixeddps. Biological gender was not found to be deterministic in switcheddps. The analysis highlights the important role that type of code-switching has on contact outcomes in bi/multilingual communities, as speech patterns are reflective of the status and resourcefulness that code-switching is afforded at a societal and idiolectal level.

Assignment of grammatical gender by native speakers and foreign learners of French

1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. M. HOLMES ◽  
B. DEJEAN DE LA BÂTIE
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Explicit Instruction ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Real Word ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Written Production ◽  
On Line ◽  
Gender Attribution

This study compared the skill in gender attribution of foreign learners and native speakers of French. Accuracy and fluency of gender attribution by the foreign learners were assessed in spontaneous written production. Both groups performed on-line gender assignment to real nouns whose gender was regular or exceptional, given their ending, and to invented nouns with nonword stems and real-word endings. The pattern of results indicated that the native speakers' gender attributions were primarily based on rapidly evoked lexical associations, with gender-ending correspondences playing a significant but subsidiary role. The foreign learners were less able to summon lexical associations, relying heavily on ending-based rules. Overall, none of the foreign learners attained the same level of performance as any of the native speakers. We conclude that instruction in which students learn nouns in the context of distinctive lexical associates could profitably be supplemented by explicit instruction in gender-ending regularities.

L1 effects on the processing of grammatical gender in L2

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 159-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura L. Sabourin
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Romance Language ◽  
English Group

This paper explores L1 effects on the L2 off-line processing of Dutch (grammatical gender) agreement. The L2 participants had either German, English or a Romance language as their L1. Non-gender agreement (finiteness and agreement) was tested to ascertain the level of proficiency of the participants. It was found that the German and Romance groups did not differ from the native speaker controls while the English group performed significantly worse. For the two grammatical gender experiments clear effects of L1 were found. No groups performed at a level similar to the native speakers, but of the L2 groups a hierarchy of performance was found. The German group performed the best, then the Romance group followed by the lower proficient English group. This was taken to mean that not only having grammatical gender in the L1 was an important factor but that the grammatical gender had to be similar in order for the L2 distinctions to be learnt.

scholarly journals Early and late bilingual processing of Spanish gender, morphology and gender congruency

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-208
Author(s):  
Irma Alarcón
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Distinct Advantage ◽  
Learning Context ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Real Time Processing ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Late Bilinguals

The present study investigates whether advanced proficiency-matched early and late bilinguals display gender agreement processing quantitatively and qualitatively similar to that of native speakers of Spanish. To address this issue, a timed grammaticality judgment task was used to analyze the effects on accuracy and reaction times of grammatical gender, morphology, and gender congruency of the article and adjective within a noun phrase. Overall results indicated no significant statistical differences between the native speakers and the two bilingual groups. Both early and late bilinguals displayed similar grammatical gender knowledge in their underlying grammars. A detailed examination of the congruency effect, however, revealed that the native speakers, not the bilinguals, displayed sensitivity to gender agreement violations. Moreover, the native and heritage speakers pattern together in accuracy and directionality of gender agreement processing: both were less accurate with incongruent articles than with incongruent adjectives, while the second language learners were equally accurate in both agreement domains. Despite having internalized gender in their implicit grammars, the late bilinguals did not show native-like patterns in real time processing. The present findings suggest that, for high proficiency speakers, there is a distinct advantage for early over late bilinguals in achieving native-like gender lexical access and retrieval. Therefore, age of acquisition, in conjunction with learning context, might be the best predictor of native-like gender agreement processing at advanced and near-native proficiency levels.

scholarly journals Gender Agreement in Online Versus Classroom Students of First-Semester Spanish

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana María Díaz Collazos ◽  
David Vásquez Hurtado
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Delivery Mode ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Online Students ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
First Semester ◽  
Physical Presence ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Blended Course

AbstractThe goal of this paper is to compare the learning outcomes of beginning online students (n=14) of Spanish with classroom students engaged in a hybrid or blended course (n=19). All students were native speakers of English. Some studies show that online students perform better than classroom students, while other studies show no significant differences. All previous studies use general measurements of proficiency or scoring instead of examining particular differences within specific linguistic elements. This paper focuses on gender agreement and gathers acquisitionist research on the matter to weight the factors that affect its learning in online and classroom students. We extracted 2777 tokens from writing tasks and performed multivariate analysis using Rbrul (Johnson) to test gender accuracy against delivery mode and linguistic factors such as animacy, morphological endings and gender assignment of the noun, as well as the grammatical category of the agreeing word. Results suggest that the delivery mode does not play a role in the overall performance of online versus classroom students. However, classroom students perform better with animate nouns, while online students do so in a non-significant manner. Physical presence of people may favor the learning of gender agreement with animate referents.

scholarly journals Differences between grammatical gender and semantic gender in pronominal antecedent retrieval in Brazilian Portuguese

Diacrítica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-115
Author(s):  
Michele Calil dos Santos Alves
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Interference Effects ◽  
Morphological Cues ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Syntactic Dependency

Coreference is a syntactic dependency in which pronouns are bound to previous referents in discourse. Granted that antecedents of anaphors must be retrieved from memory in coreference, the aim of this research is to provide more information on how pronominal antecedents are retrieved, and more precisely to clarify the role of gender cues in pronominal antecedent retrieval when gender morphology is overt. Since Portuguese is a language with visible morphology, speakers of this language are used to rely on agreement cues to process language. The results of two eye-tracking experiments conducted with native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese demonstrated that both binding structural constraints and gender morphological cues are equally important in antecedent retrieval in memory throughout processing. In addition, the results indicated that semantic gender seemed to weigh more in memory than grammatical gender since structurally unacceptable candidates carrying semantic gender caused more interference effects than grammatical gender.

Transfer effects in learning a second language grammatical gender system

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Sabourin ◽  
Laurie A. Stowe ◽  
Ger J. de Haan
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Similar System ◽  
Gender System ◽  
L1 And L2

In this article second language (L2) knowledge of Dutch grammatical gender is investigated. Adult speakers of German, English and a Romance language (French, Italian or Spanish) were investigated to explore the role of transfer in learning the Dutch grammatical gender system. In the first language (L1) systems, German is the most similar to Dutch coming from a historically similar system. The Romance languages have grammatical gender; however, the system is not congruent to the Dutch system. English does not have grammatical gender (although semantic gender is marked in the pronoun system). Experiment 1, a simple gender assignment task, showed that all L2 participants tested could assign the correct gender to Dutch nouns (all L2 groups performing on average above 80%), although having gender in the L1 did correlate with higher accuracy, particularly when the gender systems were very similar. Effects of noun familiarity and a default gender strategy were found for all participants. In Experiment 2 agreement between the noun and the relative pronoun was investigated. In this task a distinct performance hierarchy was found with the German group performing the best (though significantly worse than native speakers), the Romance group performing well above chance (though not as well as the German group), and the English group performing at chance. These results show that L2 acquisition of grammatical gender is affected more by the morphological similarity of gender marking in the L1 and L2 than by the presence of abstract syntactic gender features in the L1.

scholarly journals Production-based training benefits the comprehension and production of grammatical gender in L2 German

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Valérie Keppenne ◽  
Elise W. M. Hopman ◽  
Carrie N. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
Classroom Instruction ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
And Gender

Abstract Ongoing debate exists regarding the role of production-based versus comprehension-based training for L2 learning. However, recent research suggests an advantage for production training due to benefits stemming from the opportunity to compare generated output with feedback and from the memory mechanisms associated with language production. Based on recent findings with an artificial language paradigm, we investigated the effects of production-based and comprehension-based training for learning grammatical gender among beginning L2 German learners. Participants received production-based or comprehension-based training on grammatical gender assignment and gender agreement between determiners, adjectives, and 15 German nouns, followed by four tasks targeting the comprehension and production of the target nouns and their corresponding gender marking on determiners and adjectives. Both groups were equally accurate in comprehending and producing the nouns. For tasks requiring knowledge of grammatical gender, the production-based group outperformed the comprehension-based group on both comprehension and production tests. These findings demonstrate the importance of language production for creating robust linguistic representations and have important implications for classroom instruction.

The processing of gender assignment in Spanish

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 523-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ainara Imaz Agirre
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Native Spanish Speakers ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Assignment Accuracy ◽  
Bilingual Group ◽  
Accuracy Rates ◽  
Spanish Bilinguals

This paper reports on an experiment investigating the processing of accurate gender assignment in canonical and non-canonical inanimate nouns in Spanish by native speakers of Basque with nativelike proficiency in Spanish. 33 Basque/Spanish bilinguals and 32 native speakers of Spanish completed an online and an offline gender assignment task. Participants assigned gender to inanimate nouns with canonical (-o; -a) and non-canonical word endings (-e; consonants). The results revealed that the Basque/Spanish bilingual group obtained high accuracy scores in both tasks, similar to the Spanish native speaker group. Interestingly, unlike the Spanish group, the Basque speakers showed faster reaction times with feminine nouns than masculine ones. Canonicity seems to be a strong cue for both groups, since all participants were more accurate and faster with canonical word endings. Even though quantitatively Basque/Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals’ gender assignment accuracy rates do not differ, qualitatively, the Basque/Spanish bilinguals’ assignment patterns seem to differ somewhat from those of the native Spanish speakers.

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