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.

AGE OF ONSET, TYPE OF EXPOSURE, AND ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT OF L2 MORPHO-SYNTACTIC SENSITIVITY

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 801-823
Author(s):  
Eun-Kyoung Rosa Lee
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Age Of Onset ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Learning Context ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
Third Person

AbstractThe present study examined whether early immersive L2 exposure in a foreign language learning context can yield long-term advantages in L2 morpho-syntactic sensitivity. Participants were 40 Korean university students with high English proficiency, who had either attended an English kindergarten or begun learning English in a classroom, and a control group of native English speakers. All participants performed a speeded aural grammaticality judgment task that included the following features: articles, subcategorization, plural -s, third-person -s. Results showed that the English-kindergarten group outperformed the late-classroom group in terms of accuracy for ungrammatical sentences, while the two groups did not differ significantly on grammatical sentences and in reaction time measures. The learners altogether scored higher in plural -s and third-person -s compared to articles. While the native speakers showed near-perfect accuracy and fast reaction times, the highly proficient learners were at near-chance level in detecting morpho-syntactic errors during online L2 aural processing.

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.

Grammatical gender processing in L2: Electrophysiological evidence of the effect of L1–L2 syntactic similarity

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALICE FOUCART ◽  
CHERYL FRENCK-MESTRE
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Electrophysiological Evidence ◽  
Syntactic Similarity ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Gender Processing

This study examines the effect of proficiency and similarity between the first and the second language on grammatical gender processing in L2. In three experiments, we manipulated gender agreement violations within the determiner phrase (DP), between the determiner and the noun (Experiment 1), the postposed adjective and the noun (Experiment 2) and the preposed adjective and the noun (Experiment 3). We compared the performance of German advanced learners of French to that of French native controls. The results showed a similar P600 effect for native and non-native speakers for agreement violations when agreement rules where similar in L1 and L2 (Experiment 1, depending on proficiency), whereas no effect was found for L2 learners when agreement rules varied across languages. These results suggest that syntactic processing in L2 is affected by the similarity of syntactic rules in L1 and L2.

The role of experience in the acquisition and production of diminutives and gender in Spanish: Evidence from L2 learners and heritage speakers

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvina Montrul ◽  
Israel de la Fuente ◽  
Justin Davidson ◽  
Rebecca Foote
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
Early Language Development ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Advanced Proficiency

This study examined whether type of early language experience provides advantages to heritage speakers over second language (L2) learners with morphology, and investigated knowledge of gender agreement and its interaction with diminutive formation. Diminutives are a hallmark of Child Directed Speech in early language development and a highly productive morphological mechanism that facilitates the acquisition of declensional noun endings in many languages (Savickienė and Dressler, 2007). In Spanish, diminutives regularize gender marking in nouns with a non-canonical ending. Twenty-four Spanish native speakers, 29 heritage speakers and 37 L2 learners with intermediate to advanced proficiency completed two picture-naming tasks and an elicited production task. Results showed that the heritage speakers were more accurate than the L2 learners with gender agreement in general, and with non-canonical ending nouns in particular. This study confirms that early language experience and the type of input received confer some advantages to heritage speakers over L2 learners with early-acquired aspects of language, especially in oral production.

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.

The production of gender agreement in native and L2 Spanish: The role of morphophonological form

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Foote
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Model Simulations ◽  
Subject Noun ◽  
And Gender

In native speakers of gender-marking languages, mechanisms of gender production appear to be affected by the morphophonological cues to gender present in the noun phrase. This influence is manifested in higher levels of production accuracy when more transparent cues to gender are present in comparison to when they are not. The goal of the present study was to examine the role of morphophonological cues to gender in the production of gender agreement in native speakers and second language learners of Spanish in light of the Marking and Morphing account of agreement (Eberhard et al., 2005). Participants repeated and completed complex subject noun phrases with head nouns that varied in gender and gender-marking transparency. Analyses of accuracy rates along with Marking and Morphing model simulations of the results indicated that, contrary to previous findings, native speakers were not affected by gender-marking transparency. However, based on model simulations, second language (L2) learners were affected by the morphophonological form of the head noun.

scholarly journals Gender assignment and gender agreement in adult bilinguals and second language learners of French

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Kupisch ◽  
Deniz Akpinar ◽  
Antje Stöhr
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Age Of Onset ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Language Context

This paper is concerned with gender marking in adult French. Four groups of subjects are compared: German-French simultaneous bilinguals (2L1ers) who grew up in France, German-French 2L1ers who grew up in Germany, advanced second language learners (L2ers) who are resident either in France or in Germany at the time of testing. The major goal of the study is to investigate whether differences in input conditions (acquisition in a minority vs. a majority language context) and differences in age of onset affect gender assignment and gender agreement in the same way or differently. Furthermore, we investigate whether successful acquisition of gender is dependent on influence from German. Two experiments, an acceptability judgment task and an elicited production task, are carried out. Results show successful acquisition of agreement in all groups. By contrast, gender assignment may be mildly affected if French is acquired in a minority language context or as an L2.

Morphosyntactic processing in advanced second language (L2) learners: An event-related potential investigation of the effects of L1–L2 similarity and structural distance

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Alemán Bañón ◽  
Robert Fiorentino ◽  
Alison Gabriele
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Structural Distance ◽  
Morphological Differences ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Syntactic Dependencies

Different theoretical accounts of second language (L2) acquisition differ with respect to whether or not advanced learners are predicted to show native-like processing for features not instantiated in the native language (L1). We examined how native speakers of English, a language with number but not gender agreement, process number and gender agreement in Spanish. We compare agreement within a determiner phrase ( órgano muy complejo ‘[DP organ-MASC-SG very complex-MASC-SG]’) and across a verb phrase ( cuadro es auténtico ‘painting-MASC-SG [VP is authentic-MASC-SG]’) in order to investigate whether native-like processing is limited to local domains (e.g. within the phrase), in line with Clahsen and Felser (2006). We also examine whether morphological differences in how the L1 and L2 realize a shared feature impact processing by comparing number agreement between nouns and adjectives, where only Spanish instantiates agreement, and between demonstratives and nouns, where English also instantiates agreement. Similar to Spanish natives, advanced learners showed a P600 for both number and gender violations overall, in line with the Full Transfer / Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1996), which predicts that learners can show native-like processing for novel features. Results also show that learners can establish syntactic dependencies outside of local domains, as suggested by the presence of a P600 for both within and across-phrase violations. Moreover, similar to native speakers, learners were impacted by the structural distance (number of intervening phrases) between the agreeing elements, as suggested by the more positive waveforms for within-phrase than across-phrase agreement overall. These results are consistent with the proposal that learners are sensitive to hierarchical structure.

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.

scholarly journals ERPs and task effects in the auditory processing of gender agreement and semantics in French

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phaedra Royle ◽  
John E. Drury ◽  
Karsten Steinhauer
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Special Populations ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Conceptual Semantic ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Judgment Data ◽  
And Task

We investigated task effects on violation ERP responses to Noun-Adjective gender mismatches and lexical/conceptual semantic mismatches in a combined auditory/visual paradigm in French. Participants listened to sentences while viewing pictures of objects. This paradigm was designed to investigate language processing in special populations (e.g., children) who may not be able to read or to provide stable behavioural judgment data. Our main goal was to determine how ERP responses to our target violations might differ depending on whether participants performed a judgment task (Task) versus listening for comprehension (No-Task). Characterizing the influence of the presence versus absence of judgment tasks on violation ERP responses allows us to meaningfully interpret data obtained using this paradigm without a behavioural task and relate them to judgment-based paradigms in the ERP literature. We replicated previously observed ERP patterns for semantic and gender mismatches, and found that the task especially affected the later P600 component.

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