Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T01:17:06.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Spanish gender agreement under complete and incomplete acquisition: Early and late bilinguals' linguistic behavior within the noun phrase*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2011

IRMA V. ALARCÓN*
Affiliation:
Wake Forest University
*
Address for correspondence: Wake Forest University, Department of Romance Languages, P.O. Box 7566, Winston-Salem, NC 27109, USA[email protected]

Abstract

The present study explores knowledge of Spanish grammatical gender in both comprehension and production by heritage language speakers and second language (L2) learners, with native Spanish speakers as a baseline. Most L2 research has tended to interpret morphosyntactic variability in interlanguage production, such as errors in gender agreement, as a lack of native-like representation in the learner's grammar because of maturational constraints. From this perspective, adult English-speaking learners of Spanish are incapable of acquiring gender fully, whereas heritage Spanish speakers, who have been exposed to the language from birth, can attain complete gender acquisition. However, results of two tasks, one measuring written comprehension and the other oral production, show that advanced proficiency L2 learners, as well as advanced proficiency heritage speakers, have gender in their underlying grammars, and that the errors in oral production that L2 learners occasionally produce are due to difficulties in the surface manifestations of the abstract features of gender, i.e., the “mapping problem” (Lardiere, 2007).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank the editor Carmen Silva-Corvalán as well as the anonymous reviewers for their many helpful suggestions, which greatly improved the article.

References

Alarcón, I. V. (2006). The second language acquisition of Spanish gender agreement: The effects of linguistic variables on accuracy. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Alarcón, I. [V.] (2009). The processing of gender agreement in L1 and L2 Spanish: Evidence from reaction time data. Hispania, 92 (4), pp. 814828.Google Scholar
Alarcos, E. (1999). Gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.Google Scholar
Andersen, R. (1984). What's gender good for, anyway? In Andersen, R. (ed.), Second languages: A cross-linguistic perspective, pp. 7799. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Bates, E., & MacWhinney, B. (1982). Functionalist approaches to grammar. In Wanner, E. & Gleitman, L. R. (eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art, pp. 173218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bates, E., & MacWhinney, B. (1987). Competition, variation, and language learning. In MacWhinney, B. (ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition, pp. 157193. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bley-Vroman, R. (1989). What is the logical problem of foreign language learning? In Gass, S. M. & Schachter, J. (eds.), Linguistic perspectives on second language acquisition, pp. 4168. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brisk, M. E. (1976). The acquisition of Spanish gender by first grade Spanish speaking children. In Keller, G. D., Teschner, R. V. & Viera, S. (eds.), Bilingualism in the bicentennial and beyond, pp. 143160. New York: Bilingual Press.Google Scholar
Bruhn de Garavito, J., & White, L. (2002). The second language acquisition of Spanish DPs: The status of grammatical features. In Pérez-Leroux, A. T. & Liceras, J. M. (eds.), The acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax: The L1/L2 connection, pp. 153178. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Cain, J., Weber-Olsen, M., & Smith, R. (1987). Acquisition strategies in a first and second language: Are they the same? Journal of Child Language, 14 (2), 333352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, S. (1989). Second language acquisition and the computational paradigm. Language Learning, 39, 535594.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H. (1988). Parameterized grammatical theory and language acquisition: A study of the acquisition of verb placement and inflection by children and adults. In Flynn, S. & O'Neil, W. (eds.), Linguistic theory in second language acquisition, pp. 4775. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comrie, B. (1999). Grammatical gender systems: A linguist's assessment. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28 (5), 457466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbett, G. (1991). Gender. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, M. (2006). A frequency dictionary of Spanish: Core vocabulary for learners. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dewaele, J.-M., & Veronique, D. (2001). Gender assignment and gender agreement in advanced French interlanguage: A cross-sectional study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4 (3), 275297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Domínguez, A., Cuetos, F., & Segui, J. (1999). The processing of grammatical gender and number in Spanish. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28 (5), 485498.Google Scholar
Ellis, N. C., & Schmidt, R. (1997). Morphology and longer distance dependencies. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, 145171.Google Scholar
Ellis, R. (2005). Measuring implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language: A psychometric study. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 141172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, R. (2008). Investigating grammatical difficulty in second language learning: Implications for second language acquisition research and language testing. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 18 (1), 422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández-García, M. (1999). Patterns of gender agreement in the speech of second language learners. In Gutiérrez-Rexach, J. & Martínez-Gil, F. (eds.), Advances in Hispanic linguistics: Papers from the 2nd Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, pp. 315. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Finnemann, M. D. (1992). Learning agreement in the noun phrase: The strategies of three first-year Spanish students. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Teaching, 30 (2), 121136.Google Scholar
Franceschina, F. (2001). Against an L2 morphological deficit as an explanation for the differences between native and non-native grammars. EUROSLA Yearbook, 1, 143158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franceschina, F. (2005). Fossilized second language grammars: The acquisition of grammatical gender. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gass, S. M., & Selinker, L. (2008). Second language acquisition: An introductory course. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gómez, L. (1998). Gramática didáctica del español. Madrid: Ediciones SM.Google Scholar
González, G. (1978). The acquisition of Spanish grammar by native Spanish speaking children. Rosslyn, VA: InterAmericana Research Associates.Google Scholar
Green, J. N. (1988). Spanish. In Harris, M. & Vincent, N. (eds.), The Romance languages, pp. 79130). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, J. (1991). The exponence of gender in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry, 22 (1), 2762.Google Scholar
Hawkins, R. (2000). Persistent selective fossilization in second language acquisition and the optimal design of the language faculty. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics, 34, 7590.Google Scholar
Hawkins, R., & Chan, Y.-H. C. (1997). The partial availability of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition: The ‘failed functional features hypothesis’. Second Language Research, 13, 187226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hernández-Pina, F. (1984). Teorías psicosociolingüísticas y su aplicación a la adquisición del español como lengua materna. Madrid: Siglo XXI.Google Scholar
Hoekstra, T., & Schwartz, B. D. (eds.) (1994). Language acquisition studies in generative grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keating, G. (2009). Sensitivity to violations of gender agreement in native and nonnative Spanish: An eye-movement investigation. Language Learning, 59 (3), 503535.Google Scholar
Lardiere, D. (2000). Mapping features to forms in second language acquisition. In Archibald, J. (ed.), Second language acquisition and linguistic theory, pp. 102129. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lardiere, D. (2007). Ultimate attainment in second language acquisition: A case study. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Lloret, M. R., & Viaplana, J. (1998). El binarismo del género gramatical en castellano y catalán. VERBA, 25, 7191.Google Scholar
López-Ornat, S. (1997). What lies in between a pre-grammatical and a grammatical representation? Evidence on nominal and verbal form–function mappings in Spanish from 1;7 to 2;1. In Pérez-Leroux, A. T. & Glass, W. R. (eds.), Contemporary perspectives on the acquisition of Spanish (vol. 1): Developing grammars, pp. 320. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. (1988). The acquisition of formal word classes. In Levy, Y., Schlesinger, I. & Braine, M. (eds.), Categories and processes in language acquisition, pp. 3144. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Mariscal, S. (2009). Early acquisition of gender agreement in the Spanish noun phrase: Starting small. Journal of Child Language, 36, 143171.Google Scholar
McCarthy, C. (2008). Morphological variability in the comprehension of agreement: An argument for representation over computation. Second Language Research, 24 (4), 459486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (1991). Principles of Universal Grammar and strategies of language learning: Some similarities and differences between first and second language acquisition. In Eubank, L. (ed.), Point counterpoint: Universal Grammar in second language, pp. 324376. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Montrul, S., Foote, R., & Perpiñán, S. (2008). Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. Language Learning, 58 (3), 503553.Google Scholar
Montrul, S., & Potowski, K. (2007). Command of gender agreement in school-age Spanish–English bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11 (3), 301328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Grady, W., Lee, M., & Cho, M. (2003). A subject–object asymmetry in the acquisition of relative clauses in Korean as a second language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 433448.Google Scholar
Oliphant, K. (1998). Acquisition of grammatical gender in Italian as a foreign language. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 54 (2), 239262.Google Scholar
Ortega, L. (2005). For what and for whom is our research? The ethical as transformative lens in instructed SLA. The Modern Language Journal, 89 (3), 427443.Google Scholar
Pérez-Pereira, M. (1991). The acquisition of gender: What Spanish children tell us. Journal of Child Language, 18 (3), 571590.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Polinsky, M. (2008). Gender under incomplete acquisition: Heritage speakers’ knowledge of noun categorization. Heritage Language Journal, 6 (1), 4071.Google Scholar
Prévost, P., & White, L. (2000). Missing surface inflection or impairment in second language acquisition? Evidence from tense and agreement. Second Language Research, 16 (2), 103133.Google Scholar
Rogers, M. (1987). Learners’ difficulties with grammatical gender in German as a foreign language. Applied Linguistics, 8 (1), 4874.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabourin, L., Stowe, L. A., & de Haan, G. J. (2006). Transfer effects in learning a second language grammatical gender system. Second Language Research, 22 (1), 129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sagarra, N. (2007). Online processing of gender agreement in low proficient English–Spanish late bilinguals. In Camacho, J., Flores-Ferrán, N., Sánchez, L., Déprez, V. & Cabrera, M. J. (eds.), Romance Linguistics 2006: Selected papers from the 36th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), New Brunswick, March–April 2006, pp. 241254. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sagarra, N., & Herschensohn, J. (2008). Processing gender in L2 Spanish. In Chan, H., Jacob, H. & Kapia, E. (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, pp. 427437. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Schlig, C. (2003). Analysis of agreement errors made by third-year students. Hispania, 86 (2), 312319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schriefers, H., & Jescheniak, J. D. (1999). Representation and processing of grammatical gender in language production: A review. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28 (6), 575600.Google Scholar
Schwartz, B. D., & Sprouse, R. (1994). Word order and nonnative case in nonnative language acquisition: A longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage. In Hoekstra & Schwartz (eds.), pp. 317–368.Google Scholar
Schwartz, B. D., & Sprouse, R. (1996). L2 cognitive states and the full transfer/full access model. Second Language Research, 12, 4072.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994). Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taraban, R., & Kempe, V. (1999). Gender processing in native and nonnative Russian speakers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 20, 119148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teschner, R. V., & Russell, W. M. (1984). The gender patterns of Spanish nouns: An inverse dictionary-based analysis. Hispanic Linguistics, 1, 115132.Google Scholar
Tokowicz, N., & MacWhinney, B. (2005). Implicit and explicit measures of sensitivity to violations in second language grammar. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 173204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, G. R., Lambert, W. E., & Rigault, A. A. (1977). The French speaker's skill with grammatical gender: An example of rule-governed behavior. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Vainikka, A., & Young-Scholten, M. (1994). Direct access to X′ theory: Evidence from Korean and Turkish adults learning German. In Hoekstra & Schwartz (eds.), pp. 265–316.Google Scholar
Vainikka, A., & Young-Scholten, M. (1996). Gradual development of L2 phrase structure. Second Language Research, 12, 739.Google Scholar
Valdés, G. (1997). The teaching of Spanish to bilingual Spanish-speaking students: Outstanding issues and unanswered questions. In Colombi, M. C. & Alarcón, F. X. (eds.), La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes: Praxis y teoría, pp. 844. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Valdés, G. (2000). Spanish for native speakers (vol. 1) (AATSP Professional Development Series Handbook for Teachers K-16). New York: Harcourt College Publishers.Google Scholar
Valdés, G. (2001). Heritage language students: Profiles and possibilities. In Peyton, J. K., Ranard, D. A. & McGinnis, S. (eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource, pp. 3777. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics/Delta Systems.Google Scholar
Valdés, G. (2005). Bilingualism, heritage language learners, and SLA research: Opportunities lost or seized? The Modern Language Journal, 89 (3), 410426.Google Scholar
Valdés, G. (2006). Making connections: Second language acquisition research and heritage language teaching. In Salaberry, R. & Lafford, B. (eds.), The art of teaching Spanish: Second language acquisition from research to praxis, pp. 193212. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Valdés, G., Fishman, J. A., Chávez, R., & Pérez, W. (2008). Maintaining Spanish in the United Status: Steps toward the effective practice of heritage language re-acquisition/development. Hispania, 91 (1), 424.Google Scholar
VanPatten, B. (2003). From input to output: A teacher's guide to second language acquisition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
White, L. (2003). Second language acquisition and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
White, L., Valenzuela, E., Kozlowska-Macgregor, M., & Leung, I. (2003). Gender agreement in L2 Spanish: Evidence against failed features. McGill Working Papers in Linguistics, 17 (2), 153182.Google Scholar
White, L., Valenzuela, E., Kozlowska-Macgregor, M., & Leung, I. (2004). Gender and number agreement in nonnative Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 105133.Google Scholar
White, L., Valenzuela, E., Kozlowska-Macgregor, M., Leung, I., & Ayed, H. B. (2001). The status of abstract features in interlanguage: Gender and number in L2 Spanish. In Do, A. H.-J. (ed.), Proceedings of the 25th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, pp. 792802. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Alarcon Supplementary Material

Alarcon Supplementary Material

Download Alarcon Supplementary Material(PDF)
PDF 27.4 KB