Herein, we contextualize, problematize, and offer some insights for moving beyond the problem of monolingual comparative normativity in (psycho) linguistic research on bilingualism. We argue that, in the vast majority of cases, juxtaposing (functional) monolinguals to bilinguals fails to offer what the comparison is supposedly intended to do: meet the standards of empirical control in line with the scientific method. Instead, the default nature of monolingual comparative normativity has historically contributed to inequalities in many facets of bilingualism research and continues to impede progress on multiple levels. Beyond framing our views on the matter, we offer some epistemological considerations and methodological alternatives to this standard practice that improve empirical rigor while fostering increased diversity, inclusivity, and equity in our field.

This study examines heritage speakers of Spanish in The Netherlands regarding their production of gender in both their languages (Spanish and Dutch) as well as their gender assignment strategies in code-switched constructions. A director-matcher task was used to elicit unilingual and mixed speech from 21 participants (aged 8 to 52, mean = 17). The nominal domain consisting of a determiner, noun, and adjective was targeted in three modes: (i) Unilingual Spanish mode, (ii) unilingual Dutch mode, and (iii) code-switched mode in both directions (Dutch to Spanish and Spanish to Dutch). The production of gender in both monolingual modes was deviant from the respective monolingual norms, especially in Dutch, the dominant language of the society. In the code-switching mode, evidence was found for the gender default strategy (common in Dutch, masculine in Spanish), the analogical gender strategy (i.e., the preference to assign the gender of the translation equivalent) as well as two thus far unattested strategies involving a combination of a default gender and the use of a non-prototypical word order. External factors such as age of onset of bilingualism, amount of exposure and use of both languages had an effect on both gender accuracy in the monolingual modes and assignment strategies in the code-switching modes.

This study reports on grammatical gender assignment in elicited production data from heritage speakers of Turkish, Papiamento, and Spanish in the Netherlands. We investigate the role of cross-linguistic influence from the heritage language onto the societal language by comparing three heritage languages that differ in terms of the properties of the nominal domain, including gender. Determiner-adjective-noun constructions were elicited by means of a Director-Matcher task (Gullberg, Indefrey, & Muysken, 2009), which was performed both in a unilingual Dutch mode, and in a code-switching mode from Dutch to the heritage language. The results show that all groups tend to overgeneralize the common gender in the Dutch unilingual mode. Strikingly, the performance of heritage speakers of Spanish was more target-like than the Papiamento and Turkish speakers, which may be due to the fact that Spanish is the only language that has a grammatical gender system. In code-switching mode, most speakers tend to assign common gender to inserted nouns, but some speakers also apply a gender assignment strategy based on the translation equivalent of the noun in Dutch, or produce a postnominal adjective construction with an uninflected adjective. An analysis of extra-linguistic variables demonstrated that gender assignment strategies seem to be determined to some extent by the degree of dominance in the societal language.

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