Article published in:
Language Acquisition Beyond Parameters: Studies in honour of Juana M. Liceras
Edited by Anahí Alba de la Fuente, Elena Valenzuela and Cristina Martínez Sanz
[Studies in Bilingualism 51] 2016
► pp. 237–279

The acquisition of grammatical gender in L1 bilingual Spanish

| University of Valladolid Language Acquisition Lab
| University of Valladolid Language Acquisition Lab
| University of Valladolid Language Acquisition Lab
We analyze the emergence of grammatical gender in the spontaneous longitudinal Spanish production of a set of Spanish/English bilingual twins from the FerFuLice corpus (Fernández Fuertes & Liceras, 2009). We take as a point of departure theoretical accounts on gender assignment and gender concord and previous empirical work on the acquisition of gender by monolinguals and bilinguals. Our study deals with how gender incorporates in the case of L1 Spanish bilinguals; how concord within the determiner phrase (DP) operates; and how monolingual and bilingual Spanish pattern in the same way in this respect. We conclude that DP syntax and the gender concord valuation mechanism are in place from very early stages and that morphology and semantics are not determinant factors in this process.
Keywords: DP syntax, grammatical gender, gender features, bilingual Spanish, gender concord
Published online: 16 December 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.51.10fue
References

References

Aguado, G.
(1988) Appraisal of the morphosyntactic competence in a 2.5 year old child. Infancia y Aprendizaje, 43, 75–95.Google Scholar
Alonso, A., & Henríquez Ureña, P.
(1964) Gramática castellana (Vol. 2). Buenos Aires: Losada.Google Scholar
Andersen, R.
(1984) What’s gender good for, anyway. In R. Andersen (Ed.), Second Languages: A Cross-linguistic Perspective (pp. 77–99). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Anderson, R.
(1999) Loss of gender agreement in L1 attrition: Preliminary results. Bilingual Research Journal, 23, 319–338. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Archangeli, D.
(1984) Underspecification in Yawelmani Phonology and Morphology (Unpublished PhD dissertation). MIT.Google Scholar
Baker, P.
(2008) Sexed Texts: Language, Gender and Sexuality. London: Equinox.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Devescovi, A., Hernandez, A., & Pizzamiglio, L.
(1996) Gender priming in Italian. Perception and Psychophysics, 58(7), 992–1004. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A.
(1985) The acquisition of Hebrew. In D. Slobin (Ed.), The Cross-linguistic Study of Language Acquisition, 1. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Bhatia, T.K., & Ritchie, W.C.
(Eds.) (2004) The Handbook of Bilingualism. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Boloh, Y., & Ibernon, L.
(2010) Grammatical gender vs. natural gender in French Williams syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 31(6), 1291–8. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Boloh, Y., Escudier, F., & Royer, F.
(2012) Determiners and noun endings in French children’s gender attribution choices. First Language, 32(3), 398–410. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bouchard, D.
(2002) Adjectives, Number and Interfaces: Why Languages Vary. Oxford: Elsevier Science.Google Scholar
(2005) Sériation des adjectives dans le SN et formation de concepts. Recherches Linguistiques de Vincennes, 34, 125–142. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bruhn de Garavito, J. & White, L.
(2002) L2 acquisition of Spanish DPs: The status of grammatical features. In A. Pérez-Leroux & J. M. Liceras (Eds.), The Acquisition of Spanish Morphosyntax: The L1/L2 Connection (pp. 153–178). Dordrecht: Kluwer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bull, W. E.
(1965) Spanish for Teachers: Applied Linguistics. New York, NY: Ronald Press.Google Scholar
Carroll, S.
(1989) Second language acquisition and the computational paradigm. Language Learning, 39, 535–594. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Carstens, V.
(2008) DP in Bantu and Romance. In C. De Cat & K. Demuth (Eds.), The Bantu-Romance Connection: A Comparative Investigation of Verbal Agreement, DPs, and Information Structure (pp. 131–166). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2000) Concord in minimalist theory. Linguistic Inquiry, 31(2), 319–355. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2010) Grammatical gender and the theory of uninterpretable features. In M. Putnam (Ed.), Exploring Crash-proof Grammars (pp. 31–57). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N.
(1993) A minimalist program for linguistic theory. In K. Hale & S. J., Keyser. (Eds.), The View from Building 20. Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger (pp. 1–52). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
(1995) The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
(2001) Derivation by phase. In M. Kenstowicz (Ed.), K. Hale. A Life in Language (pp. 1–52). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cinque, G.
(1994) On the evidence for partial N-movement in the Romance DP. In G. Cinque, J. Koster, J. Pollock, L. Rizzi, & R. Zanuttini (Eds.), Paths towards Universal Grammar (pp. 85–110). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
(1995) Italian Syntax and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2010) The Syntax of Adjectives: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. H.
(1985) Language use and language users. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (3rd ed.; pp. 179–231). New York, NY: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Corbett, G.
(1991) Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Deuchar, M., & Quay, S.
(2000) Bilingual Acquisition: Theoretical Implications of a Case Study. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Epstein S. D., Kitahara, H., & Seely, T. D.
(2010) Uninterpretable features: What are they and what do they do? In M. Putnam (Ed.), Exploring Crash-proof Grammars (pp. 125–142). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fantini, A. E.
(1985) Language Acquisition of a Bilingual Child: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. San Diego, CA: College Hill Press.Google Scholar
Fernández Fuertes, R., & Liceras, J. M.
(2010) Copula omission in the English developing grammar of English/Spanish bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13(5), 525–551. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(dirs.) (2009) The FerFuLice Corpus: English/Spanish Bilingual Twins. [File data]. Available from http://​childes​.psy​.cmu​.edu​/data​/Biling/
Fernández Ramírez, S.
(1986) Gramática española 4. El verbo y la oración. Madrid: Arco/Libros.Google Scholar
Foynard, M.
(2002) Etude de la production des déterminants chez des enfants francophones de 25 à 30 mois. Unpublished ms., Université Paris 5, France.Google Scholar
Franceschina, F.
(2001) Morphological or syntactic deficits in near-native speakers? An assessment of some current proposals. Second Language Research, 17, 213–247. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. M.
(2002) Grammatical gender in bilingual and monolingual children: A Spanish morphosyntactic distinction. In D. Kimbrough Oller & R. E. Eilers (Eds.), Language and Literacy in Bilingual Children (pp. 207–219). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Gillis, S., & de Houwer, A.
(1998) Dutch child language: An overview. In S. Gillis & A. de Houwer (Eds.), The Acquisition of Dutch (pp. 1–100). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Grégoire, A.
(1947) L’apprentissage du langage. Gembloux, France: J, Duculot.Google Scholar
Harris, J. W.
(1980) Nonconcatenative morphology and Spanish plurals. Journal of Linguistic Research, 1, 14–31.Google Scholar
(1983) Syllable Structure and Stress in Spanish. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
(1985) Spanish word markers. In F. H, Nuessel. Jr. (Ed.), Current Issues in Hispanic Phonology and Morphology (pp. 34–54). Bloomington, IN: Indiana Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
(1991) The exponence of gender in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry, 22(1), 27–62.Google Scholar
Hawkins, R., & Franceschina, F.
(2004) Explaining the acquisition and non-acquisition of determiner-noun gender concord in French and Spanish. In P. Prévost & J. Paradis (Eds.), The Acquisition of French in Different Contexts. Focus on Functional Categories (pp. 175–205). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hernández Pina, F.
(1984) Teoría psicolingüísticas y su aplicación a la adquisición del español como lengua materna. Madrid: Siglo XXI.Google Scholar
Hickey, T.
(1991) Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish. Journal of Child Language, 3, 553–569. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hulk, A.
(2004) The acquisition of the French DP in a bilingual context. In P. Prévost & J. Paradis (Eds.), The Acquisition of French in Different Contexts, Focus. on Functional Categories (pp. 243–275). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jakubowicz, C. & Roulet, L.
(2008) Narrow syntax or interface deficit? Gender agreement in French SLI. In J. M. Liceras, H. Zobl, & H. Goodluck (Eds.), The Role of Formal Features in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 184–225). New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A.
(1979) A Functional Approach to Child Language: A Study of Determiners and Reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kihm, A.
(2005) Noun class, gender, and the lexicon / syntax / morphology interfaces: A comparative study of Niger-Congo and Romance languages. In G. Cinque & R. Kayne (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Syntax (pp. 459–512). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Koehn, C.
(1994) The acquisition of gender and number morphology within NP. In J. Meisel (Ed.), Bilingual First Language Acquisition (pp. 29–51). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kupisch, T., Müller, N., & Cantone, K.
(2002) Gender inmonolingual and bilingual first language acquisition: Comparing Italian and French. Lingue e Linguaggio, 1, 107–149.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. B., Sabbadini, L., Volterra, V., & Leonard, J.
(1988) Some influences on the grammar of English- and Italian-speaking children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9, 39–57. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levy, Y.
(1983) It’s frogs all the way down. Cognition, 15, 75–93. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Liceras, J. M., Díaz, L., & Mongeon, C.
(2000) N-drop and determiners in native and non-native Spanish: More on the role of morphology in the acquisition of syntactic knowledge. In CLAC: Círculo de lingüística aplicada a la comunicación, 3. Retrieved from http://​www​.ucm​.es​/info​/circulo​/no3​/liceras​.htm (July 21, 2013).
Liceras, J. M., Fernández Fuertes, R., & Pérez-Tattam, R.
(2008) Null and over subjects in developing grammar (L1 English/L1Spanish) of two bilingual twins. In C. Pérez-Vidal, A. Bel, & M. Juan (Eds.), A Portrait of the Young in the New Multilingual Spain (pp. 111–134). Clevendon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Liceras, J. M., Rosado, E., & Díaz, L.
(1998, September). On the differences and similarities between primary and non primary language acquisition: evidence from Spanish null nouns. Paper presented at EUROSLA ’98, The British Institute, Paris.
Lipski, J.
(1993) Creoloid phenomena in the Spanish of transitional bilinguals. In A. Roca & J. Lipski (Eds.), Spanish in the United States (pp. 155–173). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lleó, C.
(1998) Proto-articles in the acquisition of Spanish: Interface between phonology and syntax. In R. Fabri, A. Ortman, & T. Parodi (Eds.), Models of Inflection (pp. 175–195). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
López Ornat, S.
(1997) What lies in between a pre-grammatical and a grammatical representation? In W. R, Glass. & A. T. Pérez-Leroux (Eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on the Acquisition of Spanish (pp. 3–20) . Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Lumsden, J.
(1992) Underspecification in grammatical and natural gender. Linguistic Inquiry, 23, 469–486.Google Scholar
Lumsden, J. S., & Halefom, G.
(2000) A Minimal Theory of Lexical Insertion: Synchronic and Diachronic Generalization in Syncretism and Suppletion (Unpublished PhD dissertation). Université du Québec á Montréal.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B.
(2000) The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
(2009) The emergence of linguistic complexity. In T. Givon (Ed.), Linguistic Complexity (pp. 405–432). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Malakoff, M. E., Mayes, L. C., Schottenfeld, R., & Howell, S.
(1999) Language production in 24-month-old inner-city children of cocaine-and-other-drug-using mothers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 20, 159–180. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Marantz, A.
(1997) No escape from syntax: Don’t try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. In A. Dimitriadis (Ed.), Proceedings of the 21st annual Penn linguistics colloquium: Penn working papers in linguistics, 4(2), 201–225.Google Scholar
Mariscal, S.
(1998) El proceso de gramaticalización de las categorías nominales en español (Unpublished PhD dissertation). Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.Google Scholar
(2008) Early acquisition of gender agreement in the Spanish noun phrase: Starting small. Journal of Child Language, 35, 1–29.Google Scholar
Mel’cuk, I.
(1958) Statistika i zavisimost’ roda francuzskix suscestvitel’nyx ot ix okoncanija. Voprosy statistiki reci (pp. 112–30). Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta.Google Scholar
Miller, J. F., & Chapman, R. S.
(1981) The relation between age and mean length of utterance in morphemes. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 24(2), 154–161. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mills, A. E.
(1986) The Acquisition of Gender. Berlin: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Monnery, S.
(2001) Calcul de l’attachement au sein du syntagme nominal: Le rôle des informations morphosyntaxiques de genre (Unpublished PhD dissertation). Université de Bourgogne.Google Scholar
Montrul, S., & Potowski, K.
(2007) Command of gender agreement in school-age Spanish-English bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11, 301–328. CrossrefGoogle 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), 503–553. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Müller, N.
(1994) Gender and number agreement within DP. In J. Meisel (Ed.), Bilingual First Language Acquisition (pp. 53–88). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Namai, K.
(2000) Gender features in English. Linguistics, 38(4), 771–779. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Name, M. C. L. & Corrêa, L. M. S.
(2003) Delimitação perceptual de uma classe correspondente à categoria funcional D: Evidências da aquisição do Português. Fórum Lingüístico, 3(1), 55–88.Google Scholar
Pérez-Pereira, M.
(1991) The acquisition of gender: What Spanish children tell us. Journal of Child Language, 18, 571–590. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pesetsky, D., & Torrego, E.
(2007) The syntax of valuation and the interpretability of features. In S. Karimi, V. Samiian, & W. Wilkins (Eds.), Phrasal and Clausal Architecture (pp. 262–294). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pizzuto, E., & Caselli, M. C.
(1992) The acquisition of Italian morphology: Implications for models of language development. Journal of Child Language, 19(3), 491–557. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Radford, A., Uppish, T., Köppe, R., & Azzaro, G.
(2007) Concord, convergence and accommodation in bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10(3), 239–256. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Roca, I. M.
(1989) The organisation of grammatical gender. Transactions of the Philological Society, 87, 1–32. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2005) La gramática y la biología en el género del español (1ª parte). Revista Española de Lingüística, 35(1), 17–44.Google Scholar
(2006) La gramática y la biología en el género del español (2ª parte). Revista Española de Lingüística, 35(2), 397–432.Google Scholar
Rosado, E.
(1998) La adquisición de la categoría funcional determinante y los sustantivos nulos del español infantil (Unpublished PhD dissertation), University of Ottawa.Google Scholar
Royle, P. & Valois, D.
(2007) The acquisition of concord in French and Spanish determiner phrases: Two elicitation experiments. Actas del XXIV Congreso Internacional de AESLA: Aprendizaje de lenguas, uso del lenguaje y modelación cognitiva: Perspectivas aplicadas entre disciplinas. Madrid: UNED.Google Scholar
Sánchez-Sadek, C., Kiraithe, J., & Villareal, H.
(1976) The acquisition of the concept of grammatical gender in monolingual and bilingual speakers of Spanish. In F. Aid, M. Resnick, & B. Saciuk (Eds.), Colloquium on Hispanic Linguistics (pp. 131–149). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Schiller, N. O., & Caramazza, A.
(2003) Grammatical feature selection in noun phrase production: Evidence from German and Dutch. Journal of Memory & Language, 48, 169–194. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Serra, M., Sanz Torrent, M., Aguilar, E., Noguera, E., & Pañella, S.
(1999) Psycholinguistic profiles of Spanish specific language impairment children: Cognitive and linguistic difficulties from 3 to 4 years. Poster presented at the VIII International Congress for the Study of Child Language, San Sebastián.Google Scholar
Serra, M., Serrat, E., Solé, R., Bel, A. & Aparici, M.
(2000) La adquisición del lenguaje. Madrid: Ariel.Google Scholar
Serrat, E., Capdevilla, M. & Serra, M.
(1994) The interaction of functional categories and syntax in the acquisition of Spanish and Catalan. Paper presented at the first Lisbon meeting on child language, Lisbon.
Tanner, D.
(2008) Agreeing that agreement isn´t the problem. In M. Bowles, R. Foote, S. Perpiñán, & R. Bhatt (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 2007 Second Language Research Forum (pp. 22–34). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google 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
White, L., Valenzuela, E., Kozlowska–MacGregor, M., & Yan-Kit I. L.
(2004) Gender and number agreement in nonnative Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25(1), 105–133. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Goebel-Mahrle, Thomas & Naomi L. Shin
2020. A corpus study of child heritage speakers’ Spanish gender agreement. International Journal of Bilingualism 24:5-6 ► pp. 1088 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 02 march 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.