The role of morphology in grammatical gender assignment

2011 ◽  
pp. 321-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spyridoula Varlokosta
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Gender Assignment

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.

Grammatical gender selection and phrasal word order in child heritage Spanish: A feature re-assembly approach

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEJANDRO CUZA ◽  
ROCÍO PÉREZ-TATTAM
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Naming Task ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
English Bilingual

The present study examines the development of grammatical gender assignment, agreement, and noun-adjective word order in child heritage Spanish among thirty-two Spanish–English bilingual children born and raised in the United States. A picture-naming task revealed significant overextension of the masculine form and high levels of ungrammatical word order strings. There were no significant differences by age regarding gender concord or noun-adjective word order. We argue that the differences found can be accounted for in terms of a re-assembly of gender features leading to both morphological and syntactic variability. This approach allows for subsequent morphosyntactic shifts during early childhood depending on patterns of language use, and conceptualizes heritage language variation along the lines of current linguistic theorizing regarding the role of innate linguistic principles and language experience in language development.

scholarly journals Assignment of Grammatical Gender in Heritage Greek

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Demetris Karayiannis ◽  
Maria Kambanaros ◽  
Kleanthes K. Grohmann ◽  
Artemis Alexiadou
Keyword(s):  
Age Differences ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Semantic Cues ◽  
Phonological Rule

This study investigates the acquisition of grammatical gender in Heritage Greek as acquired by children (6–8 years of age) and adolescents (15–18 years) growing up in Adelaide, South Australia. The determiner elicitation task from Varlokosta (2005) was employed to assess the role of morphological and semantic cues when it comes to gender assignment for real and novel nouns. Ralli’s (1994) inflectional classes for Greek nouns and Anastasiadi-Symeonidi and Cheila-Markopoulou’s (2003) categories of prototypicality were employed in the analysis of the collected data. The performance of heritage speakers was compared to that of monolingual speakers from Greece (Varlokosta, 2011). The results indicate that–beyond age differences in the two groups–a formal phonological rule guides gender assignment in the production of heritage speakers which departs from initial expectations.

scholarly journals Grammatical gender in bilingual Norwegian–Russian acquisition: The role of input and transparency

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
YULIA RODINA ◽  
MARIT WESTERGAARD
Keyword(s):  
Age Of Onset ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Experimental Production ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Production Study ◽  
Parental Input

This paper investigates the role of parental input and transparency in the acquisition of two different gender systems, Norwegian and Russian, by bilingual children living in Norway. While gender in Russian is generally predictable from the morphophonological shape of the noun (with some exceptions), gender assignment in Norwegian is opaque. An experimental production study was carried out with two groups of bilinguals, children with one or two Russian-speaking parents, and monolingual controls (age 4;1–7;11). The findings show that both groups of bilinguals perform similarly to monolinguals in Norwegian, the majority language, despite the lack of transparency. In Russian, on the other hand, not only quantitative, but also qualitative differences are found in the data of the bilingual children with the least exposure to the language. These qualitative differences indicate that early age of onset is not sufficient to acquire phenomena such as gender; extensive input is necessary.

Nominal Gender in Coptic Egyptian

2021 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Sabrina Bendjaballah ◽  
Chris H. Reintges
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Stress Assignment ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Masculine Gender

Summary The interdisciplinary research (philology, typology, morphology, phonology) presented here explores the role of gender in the meaning and morphology of Coptic nouns. Coptic has a predominantly grammatical gender system, albeit with a niche for semantically based gender assignment. The gender system marks a three-way semantic contrast between a [male] versus a [female] versus an [unspecified] gender value, even where the morphology draws only a two-way distinction between grammatical masculine and feminine gender. By integrating quantitative data and morphophonological analysis, we shall argue that masculine gender is morphologically unmarked. Although no discrete morpheme can be identified, feminine gender is always morphologically marked on nouns. Masculine and feminine nouns are distinguished in terms of their templatic structure, which interacts in complex ways with vowel distributions, stress assignment, and noun class.

scholarly journals Variation and change in grammatical gender marking: the case of Dutch ethnolects

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frans Hinskens ◽  
Roeland van Hout ◽  
Pieter Muysken ◽  
Ariën van Wijngaarden
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Conditioning Factors ◽  
Male Adolescents ◽  
Demographic Profiles ◽  
Immigrant Background ◽  
The Social

AbstractOur research on variation in the expression of grammatical gender (in determiners and adnominal inflection) in present-day ethnolectal Dutch is based on interactional speech data collected among 10–12 and 18–20-year-old male adolescents with Turkish, Moroccan and non-immigrant Dutch backgrounds, born and raised in the Dutch cities of Amsterdam or Nijmegen. The cities, which both have multicultural demographic profiles, are located in different dialect areas. In the data, the realization of neuter gender appears to vary greatly; in our analyses of this variation linguistic and social parameters were included. With regard to the language-internal conditioning, grammatical and semantic dimensions have been taken into account. Apart from the speakers’ age and city of residence, the social dimensions also include background of both the speaker and the interlocutor. The outcomes shed light on three aspects. As regards conditioning factors, L1 substrates, processes of L2 acquisition of the first generations of migrants, and surrounding regional variation all play a role. As regards the place of ethnolectal variation in the speakers’ verbal repertoires, we found evidence for a stylistic role of variable gender assignment in determiners. Our data do not support the hypothesis of the cross-over of ethnolectal changes in Dutch grammatical gender marking to speakers without an immigrant background.

Gender Indeterminacy in Translation: the Case of R. L. Stine’s Give Yourself Goosebumps Gamebooks via Portuguese Translation

2018 ◽  
pp. 329-345
Author(s):  
Ana Brígida Paiva
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Second Person ◽  
The North ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Gender Neutral ◽  
Literary Systems ◽  
Second Person Perspective ◽  
Neutral Language

As works of fction, gamebooks offer narrative-bound choices – the reader generally takes on the role of a character inserted in the narrative itself, with gamebooks consequently tending towards being a story told in the second-person perspective. In pursuance of this aim, they can, in some cases, adopt gender-neutral language as regards grammatical gender, which in turn poses a translation challenge when rendering the texts into Portuguese, a language strongly marked by grammatical gender. Stemming from an analysis of a number of gamebooks in R. L. Stine’s popular Give Yourself Goosebumps series, this article seeks to understand how gender indeterminacy (when present) is kept in translation, while examining the strategies used to this effect by Portuguese translators – and particularly how ideas of implied readership come into play in the dialogue between the North-American and Portuguese literary systems.

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