Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition

Language Learning

Volumn 58, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 503-553

  Montrul, Silvina ^a   Foote, Rebecca ^b   Perpiñán, Silvia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

^b MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Comprehension; Critical Period Hypothesis; Grammatical competence; Heritage speakers; Incomplete acquisition; L2 acquisition; Production

Indexed keywords

EID: 50249084534     PISSN: 00238333     EISSN: 14679922     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2008.00449.x     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. Abney, S. (1987). The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
2. Ambadiang, T. (1999). La flexión nominal. Género y número [Nominal inflection. Gender and number]. In I. Bosque & V. Demonte (Eds Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española: Vol. 3. Entre la oración y el discurso. Morfología (pp. 4843 4914). Madrid : Espasa Calpe.
3. Anderson, R. (1999). Loss of gender agreement in L1 attrition: Preliminary results. Bilingual Research Journal, 23, 319 338.
4. Au, T., Knightly, L., Jun, S., & Oh, J. (2002). Overhearing a language during childhood. Psychological Science, 13, 238 243.
5. Barreña, A. (1997). Desarrollo diferenciado de sistemas gramaticales en un niño vasco-español bilingüe [Differentiated development of grammatical systems in a Basque-Spanish bilingual child]. In A. T. Pérez-Leroux & W. Glass (Eds Contemporary perspectives on the acquisition of Spanish (pp. 55 74). Sommerville, MA : Cascadilla Press.
6. Bernstein, J. (1993). Topics in the syntax of nominal structure across Romance. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, City University of New York, Graduate Center, New York.
7. Bialystok, E. (1994). Analysis and control in the development of second language proficiency. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 16, 157 168.
8. Bialystok, E., & Ryan, E. (1985). A metacognitive framework for the development of first and second language skills. In D. L. Forrester-Pressley, G. E. MacKinnon, & T. G. Waller (Eds Metacognition, cognition, and human performance (pp. 207 252). Orlando, FL : Academic Press.
9. Birdsong, D. (1989). Metalinguistic performance and interlinguistic competence. Berlin : Springer-Verlag.
10. Bley-Vroman, R. (1989). The logical problem of second language learning. In S. Gass & J. Schachter (Eds Linguistic perspectives on second language acquisition (pp. 41 68). Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
11. Bley-Vroman, R. (1990). The logical problem of foreign language learning. Linguistic Analysis, 20, 3 49.
12. Bruhn de Garavito, J 2002). Verb raising in Spanish: A comparison of early and late bilinguals. In B. Skarabela, S. Fish, & A. H.- J. D. (Eds Proceedings of the 26th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 84 94). Sommerville, MA : Cascadilla Press.
13. Bruhn de Garavito, J., & White, L. (2003). The L2 acquisition of Spanish DPs. The status of grammatical features. In A. T. Pérez-Leroux & J. Liceras (Eds The acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax: The L1/L2 connection (pp. 151 176). Dordrecht : Kluwer.
14. Carreira, M. (2004). Seeking explanatory adequacy: A dual approach to understanding the term "heritage language learner Heritage Language Journal, 2 (1). Retrieved May 20, 2008, from http://www.heritagelanguages.org
15. Carroll, S. (1989). Second language acquisition and the computational paradigm. Language Learning, 39, 535 594.
16. Carstens, V. (2000). Concord in minimalist theory. Linguistic Inquiry, 31, 319 355.
17. Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.
18. Clahsen, H., & Muysken, P. (1986). The UG paradox in L2 acquisition. Second Language Research, 5, 1 29.
19. Corbett, G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
20. Crain, S., & Thornton, R. (1998). Investigations in Universal Grammar: A guide to experiments on the acquisition of syntax and semantics. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.
21. DeKeyser, R. (2000). The robustness of critical period effects in second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 499 534.
22. DeKeyser, R. (2003). Implicit and explicit learning. In C. Doughty & M. Long (Eds The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 313 348). Malden, MA : Blackwell.
23. Dewaele, J-M., & Véronique, D. (2001). Gender assignment and gender agreement in advanced French interlanguage: A cross-sectional study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4, 275 296.
24. Ellis, N. (2005). At the interface: Dynamic interactions of explicit and implicit language knowledge. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 305 352.
25. Ellis, R. (2005). Measuring implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language: A psychometric study. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 141 172.
26. Epstein, S., Flynn, S., & Martohardjono, G. (1996). Second language acquisition: Theoretical and experimental issues in contemporary research. Brain and Behavioral Sciences, 19, 677 758.
27. Fernández, M. (1999). Patterns in gender agreement in the speech of second language learners. In J. Gutiérrez-Rexach & F. Martínez-Gil (Eds Advances in Hispanic linguistics (pp. 3 15). Sommerville, MA : Cascadilla Press.
28. Franceschina, F. (2001). Morphological or syntactic deficits in near-native speakers? An assessment of some current proposals. Second Language Research, 17, 213 247.
29. Franceschina, F. (2005). Fossilized second language grammars: The acquisition of grammatical gender. Amsterdam : Benjamins.
30. Gess, R., & Herschensohn, J. (2001). Shifting the DP parameter: A study of Anglophone French L2ers. In C. Whiteshire & J. Camps (Eds Romance syntax, semantics and their L2 acquisition (pp. 105 119). Amsterdam : Benjamins.
31. Granfeldt, J. (2000). The acquisition of the determiner phrase in bilingual and second language French. Bilingualism : Language and Cognition, 3, 263 280.
32. Guasti, M. T. (2002). Language acquisition: The growth of grammar. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.
33. Guillelmon, D., & Grosjean, F. (2001). The gender marking effect in spoken word recognition: The case of bilinguals. Memory & Cognition, 29, 503 511.
34. Harris, J. (1991). The exponence of gender in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry, 22, 27 62.
35. Hawkins, R. (1998, September). Explaining the difficulty of gender attribution for speakers of English. Paper presented at EUROSLA, Paris.
36. Hawkins, R., & Chan, C. (1997). The partial accessibility of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition: The "failed formal features hypothesis. Second Language Research, 13, 187 226.
37. 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 (pp. 175 205). Amsterdam : Benjamins.
38. Hernández Pina, F. (1984). Teorías psicosociolingü ísticas y su aplicación a la adquisición del español como lengua maternal Psychosociolinguistic theories and their application to the acquisition of Spanish as a mother tongue Madrid : Siglo XXI.
39. Jiang, N. (2007). Selective integration of linguistic knowledge in adult second language learning. Language Learning, 57, 1 33.
40. Kanno, K., Hasegawa, T., Ikeda, K., Ito, Y., & Long, M. H. (2008). Relationships between prior language-learning experience and variation in the linguistic profiles of advanced English-speaking learners of Japanese. In D. Brinton, O. Kagan, & S. Bauckus (Eds Heritage language education (pp. 165 180). New York : Routledge.
41. Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1979). Micro- and macrodevelopmental changes in language acquisition and other representational systems. Cognitive Science, 3, 91 117.
42. Kim, J-H., Montrul, S., & Yoon, J. (in press). Dominant language influence in acquisition and attrition of binding: Interpretation of the Korean reflexive caki. Bilingualism, Language and Cognition.
43. Knightly, L., Jun, S., Oh, J., & Au, T. (2003). Production benefits of childhood overhearing. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 114, 465 474.
44. Kondo-Brown, K. (2003). Heritage language instruction for post-secondary students from immigrant backgrounds. Heritage Language Journal, 1 (1). Retrieved May 20, 2008, from http://www.heritagelanguages.org
45. Kondo-Brown, K. (2005). Differences in language skills: Heritage language learner subgroups and foreign language learners. Modern Language Journal, 89, 563 581.
46. Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. New York : Pergamon Press.
47. Lardiere, D. (2006). The fossilized steady state in second language acquisition. Mahwah, NJ : Erlbaum.
48. Lew-Williams, C., & Fernald, A. (2008). Young children learning Spanish make rapid use of grammatical gender in spoken word recognition. Psychological Science, 18 (3 193 281.
49. Liceras, J., 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 R. Leow & C. Sanz (Eds Spanish applied linguistics at the turn of the millennium (pp. 67 96). Sommerville, MA : Cascadilla Press.
50. 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.
51. Long, M. (1990). Maturational constraints on language development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 12, 251 285.
52. Long, M. (2003). Stabilization and fossilization in interlanguage development. In C. Doughty & M. Long (Eds The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 487 536). Malden, MA : Blackwell.
53. Long, M. (2007). Problems in SLA. Mahwah, NJ : Erlbaum.
54. McCarthy, C. (2007). Morphological variability in second language Spanish. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
55. Meisel, J. (1997). The acquisition of the syntax of negation in French and German: Contrasting first and second language development. Second Language Research, 13, 227 263.
56. Merino, B. (1983). Language loss in bilingual chicano children. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 4, 277 294.
57. Montrul, S. (2002). Incomplete acquisition and attrition of Spanish tense/aspect distinctions in adult bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5, 39 68.
58. Montrul, S. (2004a). Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morpho-syntactic convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 1 18.
59. Montrul, S. (2004b). The acquisition of Spanish: Morphosyntactic development in monolingual and bilingual L1 acquisition and adult L2 acquisition. Amsterdam : Benjamins.
60. Montrul, S. (2005). Second language acquisition and first language loss in adult early bilinguals: Exploring some differences and similarities. Second Language Research, 21, 1 51.
61. Montrul, S. (2006). Incomplete acquisition as a feature of L2 and bilingual grammars. In R. Slabakova, S. Montrul, & P. Prévost (Eds Inquiries in linguistic development: In honor of Lydia White (pp. 335 360). Amsterdam : Benjamins.
62. Montrul, S. (in press). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualis: Re-examining the age factor Series on Studies in Bilingualism Amsterdam : John Benjamins Expected publication October 2008)
63. Montrul, S., Foote, R., & Perpiñán, S. (in press). Knowledge of wh-movement in Spanish L2 learners and heritage speakers. In M. Almazán, J. Bruhn de Garavito, & E. Valenzuela (Eds Selected papers from the 8th Hispanic linguistics symposium. Sommerville, MA : Cascadilla Press.
64. Montrul, S., & Potowski, K. (2007). Command of gender agreement in school age Spanish-English bilingual children. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 11 (3 301 328.
65. Mueller Gathercole, V 2002). Grammatical gender in bilingual and monolingual children: A Spanish morphosyntactic distinction. In D. K. Oller & R. Eilers (Eds Language and literacy in bilingual children (pp. 207 219). Clevedon, UK : Multilingual Matters.
66. O'Grady, W. (1997). Syntactic development. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press.
67. Paradis, M. (2004). A neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism. Amsterdam : Benjamins.
68. Pérez Pereira, M. (1991). The acquisition of gender: What Spanish children tell us. Journal of Child Language, 18, 571 590.
69. Picallo, C. (1991). Nominals and nominalizations in Catalan. Probus, 3, 279 316.
70. Pinker, S., & Ullman, M. (2002). The past and future of the past tense. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 456 463.
71. Polinsky, M. (1997). American Russian: Language loss meets language acquisition. Proceedings of the annual workshop on formal approaches to Slavic linguistics (The Cornell Meeting 1995) (pp. 370 406). Ann Arbor : Michigan Slavic Publications.
72. Polinsky, M. (in press). Russian gender under incomplete acquisition. The Heritage Language Journal. Retrieved from http://www.heritagelanguages.org
73. Potowski, K. (2002). Experiences of Spanish heritage speakers in university foreign language courses and implications for teacher training. ADFL Bulletin, 33, 35 42.
74. Prévost, P., & White, L. (2000). Missing surface inflection or impairment in second language acquisition? Evidence from tense and agreement. Second Language Research, 16, 110 133.
75. Ritter, E. (1991). Two functional categories in noun phrases: Evidence from Modern Hebrew. Syntax and Semantics, 26, 37 62.
76. Sabourin, L., Stowe, L., & de Haan, G. (2006). Transfer effects in learning a second language grammatical gender system. Second Language Research, 22 (1 1 29.
77. Sánchez-Sadek, C., Kiraithe, J., & Villareal, H. (1975). The acquisition of the concept of grammatical gender in monolingual and bilingual speakers of Spanish. In F. Aid, M. Resnick, & B. Saciuk (Eds 1975 Colloquium on Hispanic linguistics (pp. 131 149). Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press.
78. Schachter, J. (1990). On the issue of completeness in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 6, 93 124.
79. Schwartz, B., & Sprouse, R. (1996). L2 cognitive states and the full transfer/full access hypothesis. Second Language Research, 12, 40 72.
80. Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994). Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
81. Silva-Corvalán, C. (2003). Linguistic consequences of reduced input in bilingual first language acquisition. In S. Montrul & F. Ordóñez (Eds Linguistic theory and language development in Hispanic languages (pp. 375 397). Sommerville, MA : Cascadilla Press.
82. Snyder, W., Senghas, A., & Inman, K. (2001). Agreement morphology and the acquisition of N-drop in Spanish. Language Acquisition, 9, 157 173.
83. Tsimpli, I., & Dimitrakopoulou, M. (2007). The interpretability hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Language Research, 23, 215 242.
84. Ullman, M. (2001). The neural basis of lexicon and grammar in first and second language: The declarative/procedural model. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4, 105 122.
85. Unsworth, S. (in press). Age and input in the acquisition of grammatical gender in Dutch. Second Language Research.
86. Valdés, G. (1995). The teaching of minority languages as "foreign" languages: Pedagogical and theoretical challenges. The Modern Language Journal, 79, 299 328.
87. Valdés, G. (1997). The teaching of Spanish to bilingual Spanish-speaking students: Outstanding issues and unanswered questions. In M. C. Colombi & F. Alarcón (Eds La enseñanza del español a hispanoahablantes (pp. 8 44). Boston, MA : Houghton Mifflin.
88. Van Patten, B., Lee, J., & Ballman, T. (2000). Sabías que...? Beginning Spanish (3rd ed.). New York : McGraw-Hill.
89. White, L., Valenzuela, E., Kozlowska-Macgregor, M., & Leung, Y.-K. I. (2004). Gender agreement in nonnative Spanish: Evidence against failed features. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 105 133.