9. Learning Grammatical Gender in a Second Language Changes Categorization of Inanimate Objects: Replications and New Evidence from English Learners of L2 French

The present study examined the processing of grammatical gender in second language (L2) French as a function of language background (Experiment 1) and as a function of overt phonetic properties of agreement (Experiment 2) by examining Event Related Potential (ERP) responses to gender discord in L2 French. In Experiment 1 we explored the role of the presence/absence of abstract grammatical gender in the L1 (gendered German, ungendered English): we compared German and English learners of French when processing post-nominal plural (no gender cues on determiner) attributive adjectives that either agreed in gender with the noun or presented a gender violation. We found grammaticalized responses (P600) by native and L1 English learners, but no response by German L1, a result we attribute to the possible influence of plurality, which is gender neutralized in German DP concord. In Experiment 2, we examined the role of overt phonetic cues to noun-adjective gender agreement in French, for both native speakers and Spanish L2 learners of French, finding that both natives and L2 learners showed a more robust P600 in the presence of phonetic cues. These data, in conjunction with those of other ERP studies can best be accounted for by a model that allows for native language influence, that is not, however constrained by age of acquisition, and that must also allow for clear cues in the input to influence acquisition and/or processing.

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A Bayesian approach to establishing coreference in second language discourse: Evidence from implicit causality and consequentiality verbs

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s136672891800055x ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 22 (3) ◽

pp. 456-475 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

WEI CHENG ◽

AMIT ALMOR

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Bayesian Approach ◽

English Learners ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Sentence Completion ◽

Language Discourse ◽

Implicit Causality ◽

New Evidence ◽

Two Populations ◽

Expression Form

This study investigated Chinese-speaking English learners’ use of implicit causality and consequentiality biases in establishing coreference under a Bayesian view of reference interpretation, which distinguishes between context-based priors about which entity will be re-mentioned and new evidence provided by the referential expression form. In two sentence-completion experiments, participants wrote continuations to sentence fragments with either implicit causality (Experiment 1) or consequentiality (Experiment 2) biases that ended either with or without a pronoun. In both experiments, L2 speakers showed native-like re-mention biases following no-pronoun fragments, indicating native-like predictions about the next-mentioned referent. Following pronoun fragments in NP2-biasing contexts, L2 speakers produced more NP1 continuations than native speakers. We show that this difference lies in different beliefs about pronoun use in the two populations. Specifically, L2 speakers showed a stronger association between pronouns and NP1 referents than native speakers following NP2-biasing verbs.

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Individual differences predict ERP signatures of second language learning of novel grammatical rules

10.31234/osf.io/ea58h ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Emily S Nichols ◽

Marc F Joanisse

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Language Learning ◽

First Language ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Grammatical Gender ◽

Grammatical Rule ◽

Related Potentials ◽

And Gender ◽

Anterior Negativity

We investigated the extent to which second-language (L2) learning is influenced by the similarity of grammatical features in one’s first language (L1). We used event-related potentials to identify neural signatures of a novel grammatical rule - grammatical gender - in L1 English speakers. Of interest was whether individual differences in L2 proficiency and age of acquisition (AoA) influenced these effects. L2 and native speakers of French read French sentences that were grammatically correct, or contained either a grammatical gender or word order violation. Proficiency and AoA predicted Left Anterior Negativity amplitude, with structure violations driving the proficiency effect and gender violations driving the AoA effect. Proficiency, group, and AoA predicted P600 amplitude for gender violations but not structure violations. Different effects of grammatical gender and structure violations indicate that L2 speakers engage novel grammatical processes differently from L1 speakers and that this varies appreciably based on both AoA and proficiency.

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Grammatical Gender in the German Multiethnolect

Journal of Germanic Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s1470542720000082 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

pp. 5-29

Author(s):

Peter Auer ◽

Vanessa Siegel

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

First Language ◽

Spontaneous Speech ◽

Grammatical Gender ◽

Grammatical Category ◽

Immigrant Background ◽

Frequent Use ◽

Bare Nouns ◽

Gender System ◽

Germanic Languages

While major restructurings and simplifications have been reported for gender systems of other Germanic languages in multiethnolectal speech, this article demonstrates that the three-way gender distinction of German is relatively stable among young speakers from an immigrant background. We investigate gender in a German multiethnolect based on a corpus of approximately 17 hours of spontaneous speech produced by 28 young speakers in Stuttgart (mainly from Turkish and Balkan background). German is not their second language, but (one of) their first language(s), which they have fully acquired from childhood. We show that the gender system does not show signs of reduction in the direction of a two-gender system, nor of wholesale loss. We also argue that the position of gender in the grammar is weakened by independent innovations, such as the frequent use of bare nouns in grammatical contexts where German requires a determiner. Another phenomenon that weakens the position of gender is the simplification of adjective-noun agreement and the emergence of a generalized gender-neutral suffix for prenominal adjectives (that is, schwa). The disappearance of gender and case marking in the adjective means that the grammatical category of gender is lost in Adj + N phrases (without a determiner).

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Plural marking in the second language: Atomicity, definiteness, and transfer

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716420000569 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-30

Author(s):

Sea Hee Choi ◽

Tania Ionin

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

English Learners ◽

Judgment Task ◽

Native Languages ◽

L1 Transfer ◽

Mass Nouns ◽

Count Nouns ◽

Grammaticality Judgment ◽

L2 Learners ◽

Plural Marking

Abstract This paper examines whether second language (L2)-English learners whose native languages (L1; Korean and Mandarin) lack obligatory plural marking transfer the properties of plural marking from their L1s, and whether transfer is manifested both offline (in a grammaticality judgment task) and online (in a self-paced reading task). The online task tests the predictions of the morphological congruency hypothesis (Jiang 2007), according to which L2 learners have particular difficulty automatically activating the meaning of L2 morphemes that are incongruent with their L1. Experiment 1 tests L2 learners’ sensitivity to errors of –s oversuppliance with mass nouns, while Experiment 2 tests their sensitivity to errors of –s omission with count nouns. The findings show that (a) L2 learners detect errors with nonatomic mass nouns (sunlights) but not atomic ones (furnitures), both offline and online; and (b) L1-Korean L2-English learners are more successful than L1-Mandarin L2-English learners in detecting missing –s with definite plurals (these boat), while the two groups behave similarly with indefinite plurals (many boat). Given that definite plurals require plural marking in Korean but not in Mandarin, the second finding is consistent with L1-transfer. Overall, the findings show that learners are able to overcome morphological incongruency and acquire novel uses of L2 morphemes.

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Regular and Novel Metonymy: Can You Curl up with a Good Agatha Christie in Your Second Language?

Applied Linguistics ◽

10.1093/applin/amu003 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 37 (2) ◽

pp. 175-197 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Roumyana Slabakova ◽

Jennifer Cabrelli Amaro ◽

Sang Kyun Kang

Keyword(s):

Experimental Study ◽

Second Language ◽

English Learners ◽

Teaching Practices ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Native Language ◽

Stages Of Development ◽

Psychological Reality ◽

Experimental Support ◽

Agatha Christie

Abstract This article presents results of two off-line comprehension tasks investigating the acceptability of unconventional and conventional metonymy by native speakers of Korean and Spanish who speak English as a second language. We are interested in discovering whether learners differentiate between conventional and unconventional metonymy, and whether the acceptability of metonymic expressions in the native language has an effect on learners’ judgments in the second language. The findings of this study constitute further experimental support for the psychological reality of the distinction between conventional and unconventional metonymy, but only in English. Learners of English at intermediate levels of proficiency exhibit transfer from the native language in comprehending metonymic shifts of meanings. Restructuring of the grammar is evident in later stages of development. Finally, complete success in acquiring L2 metonymic patterns is attested in our experimental study. Implications for L2A theories and teaching practices are discussed.

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English Speakers’ Implicit Gender Concepts Influence Their Processing of French Grammatical Gender: Evidence for Semantically Mediated Cross-Linguistic Influence

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.740920 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Elena Nicoladis ◽

Chris Westbury ◽

Cassandra Foursha-Stevenson

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Response Time ◽

Response Times ◽

First Language ◽

Grammatical Gender ◽

Word Embedding ◽

English Speakers ◽

French Words ◽

L1 English ◽

French Gender

Second language (L2) learners often show influence from their first language (L1) in all domains of language. This cross-linguistic influence could, in some cases, be mediated by semantics. The purpose of the present study was to test whether implicit English gender connotations affect L1 English speakers’ judgments of the L2 French gender of objects. We hypothesized that gender estimates derived from word embedding models that measure similarity of word contexts in English would affect accuracy and response time on grammatical gender (GG) decision in L2 French. L2 French learners were asked to identify the GG of French words estimated to be either congruent or incongruent with the implicit gender in English. The results showed that they were more accurate with words that were congruent with English gender connotations than words that were incongruent, suggesting that English gender connotations can influence grammatical judgments in French. Response times showed the same pattern. The results are consistent with semantics-mediated cross-linguistic influence.

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Engaging English Learners Through Literature, Fairy Tales, and Drama

International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature ◽

10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.8n.2p.138 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 138

Author(s):

Alison Larkin Koushki

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Student Engagement ◽

Fairy Tales ◽

English Learners ◽

Fairy Tale ◽

Research Question ◽

Language Education ◽

Project Based Learning ◽

The Impact

Use of literature in the English language classroom deepens student engagement, and fairy tales add magic to the mix. This article details the benefits of engaging English learners in literature and fairy tales, and explores how drama can be enlisted to further mine their riches. An educator’s case studies of language teaching through literature and drama projects are described, and the research question driving them highlighted: What is the impact of dramatizing literature on students’ engagement in novels and second language acquisition? Research on the effects of literature, drama, and the fairy tale genre on second language education is reviewed. Reading and acting out literature and fairy tales hones all four language skills while also enhancing the Seven Cs life skills: communication, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, commitment, compromise, and confidence. Adding the frame of project-based learning to the instructional strengths of literature and drama forms a strong pedagogical triangle for second language learning. Fairy tales are easily enacted. English educators and learners can download free fairy tale scripts and spice them with creative twists of their own creation or adapted from film and cartoon versions. Providing maximum student engagement, tales can be portrayed with minimum preparation. Using a few simple props and a short script, English learners can dramatize The Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, or Snow White in class with little practice. Engagement increases when teams act out tales on stage for an audience of family, friends, classmates, and educators. In fairy tale enactment projects, whether in class or on stage, students apply their multiple intelligences when choosing team roles: script-writing, acting, backstage, costumes, make-up, sound and lights, reporter, advertising, usher, writer’s corner, or stage managing. The article concludes with a list of engaging language activities for use with fairy tales, and a summary of the benefits of fairy tale enactments for English learners.

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Language background affects online word order processing in a second language but not offline

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728918000573 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 22 (04) ◽

pp. 802-825 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

ANNIKA ANDERSSON ◽

SUSAN SAYEHLI ◽

MARIANNE GULLBERG

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Word Order ◽

English Learners ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Language Background ◽

Order Processing ◽

Online Processing ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Crosslinguistic Influence

This study examines possible crosslinguistic influence on basic word order processing in a second language (L2). Targeting Swedish V2 word order we investigate adult German learners (+V2 in the L1) and English learners (-V2 in the L1) of Swedish who are matched for proficiency. We report results from two offline behavioural tasks (written production, metalinguistic judgements), and online processing as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). All groups showed sensitivity to word order violations behaviourally and neurocognitively. Behaviourally, the learners differed from the native speakers only on judgements. Crucially, they did not differ from each other. Neurocognitively, all groups showed a similar increased centro-parietal P600 ERP-effect, but German learners (+V2) displayed more nativelike anterior ERP-effects than English learners (-V2). The results suggest crosslinguistic influence in that the presence of a similar word order in the L1 can facilitate online processing in an L2 – even if no offline behavioural effects are discerned.

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Learning Paradigmatic Structure

Changing Minds Changing Tools ◽

10.7551/mitpress/9780262037860.003.0008 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 179-200

Author(s):

Vsevolod Kapatsinski

Keyword(s):

Language Learning ◽

Grammatical Gender ◽

Second Order ◽

Production Plan ◽

Artificial Language ◽

Artificial Language Learning ◽

Noun Classes ◽

Paradigmatic Structure ◽

New Evidence

This chapter reviews research on the acquisition of paradigmatic structure (including research on canonical antonyms, morphological paradigms, associative inference, grammatical gender and noun classes). It discusses the second-order schema hypothesis, which views paradigmatic structure as mappings between constructions. New evidence from miniature artificial language learning of morphology is reported, which suggests that paradigmatic mappings involve paradigmatic associations between corresponding structures as well as an operation, copying an activated representation into the production plan. Producing a novel form of a known word is argued to involve selecting a prosodic template and filling it out with segmental material using form-meaning connections, syntagmatic and paradigmatic form-form connections and copying, which is itself an outcome cued by both semantics and phonology.

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