Loosing grammatical gender in Dutch: The result of bilingual acquisition and/or an act of identity?

Abstract

Academy of Sciences AcknowledgmentI would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. AbstractIn the Dutch sociolinguistic literature it is often noted that the overgeneralization of common gender, that is, the use of the definite article de where het is required, characterizes the Dutch variety(ies) of immigrants. Recent sociolinguistic research shows that this overgeneralization also occurs in the speech of subsequent generations born in the Netherlands who acquire Dutch as one of their first languages. The aim of this paper is to discuss whether the overuse of de can exclusively be ascribed to the effects of bilingual (2L1 / child L2) acquisition. It is argued that although the overgeneralization of de constitutes a linguistic resource for every bilingual child acquirer (and even for monolingual acquirers), it only becomes meaningful in the indexing and reproducing of an (immigrant) "allochtone" identity versus the dominant (indigenous) "autochtone" one. It is used according to a set of language use norms defined by generations of that social group of speakers.

Multi-ethnolects: Kebabnorsk, Perkerdansk, Verlan, Kanakensprache, Straattaal, etc.

“…A quote from Nortier and Dorleijn (2008: 138) The overgeneralization of common gender is characteristic of multiethnolects in the Netherlands. Leonie Cornips (2008) asks the question whether this loss of grammatical gender distinction is the consequence of incomplete second language acquisition only, or an active act of identity. Cornips and de Rooij have published about a variety of Straattaal which is used among young people with a Surinamese background.…”

Dummy auxiliaries in child and adult second language acquisition of Dutch

“…In order to use dummies, learners must have the dummies available in their lexicon, which means that they either incorrectly analyze the meaning of auxiliaries in the target language or are exposed to dummy auxiliaries in the input (Jordens, 1990;Zuckerman, 2001). It has been found that dummies function as markers of identity in Moroccan and Turkish ethnic minority groups living in the Netherlands (Cornips, 2000(Cornips, , 2008El-Aissati et al, 2005). As members of these ethnic communities, the children in our sample may be exposed to dummy auxiliaries.…”

Minority language ownership and authority: perspectives of native speakers and new speakers

“…Research on new speakers of Scots Gaelic (Nance 2013), Occitan (Costa 2015), Dutch (Cornips 2008), Yiddish and Breton (Hornsby 2015) has shown them to use some aspects of accent such as intonation pattern to mark local identity affiliation. Nance (2013) disputed the controversial concept of 'incomplete acquisition' by learners, arguing that speakers may actually have fully acquired the language to the extent they need, and that this also affects the speech sounds they use to achieve this communication.…”