The Influence of Standard and Substandard Dutch on Gender Assignment in Second Language German

Abstract

This study investigated how standard and substandard varieties of first language (L1) Dutch affect grammatical gender assignments to nouns in second language (L2) German. While German distinguishes between masculine, feminine, and neuter gender, the masculine–feminine distinction has nearly disappeared in Standard Dutch. Many substandard Belgian Dutch varieties, however, still mark this distinction, making them more akin to German than Standard Dutch in this respect. Seventy‐one Belgian and 104 Netherlandic speakers of Dutch with varying levels of German proficiency assigned gender‐marked German articles to German nouns with Dutch cognates; these gender assignments were then compared to the cognates’ gender in the standard and substandard L1 varieties. While the gender assignments of both Belgian and Dutch participants were strongly influenced by the cognates’ Standard Dutch gender, the Belgians’ responses showed, at best, weak traces of the masculine–feminine distinction in substandard Belgian Dutch. Possible reasons for this weak substandard variety influence are discussed. Open Practices This article has been awarded Open Data, Open Materials, and Preregistered Research Design badges. All data, R code, materials, and appendices, along with preregistration for research design and analyses, are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/5ahzj. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

Metalinguistic knowledge about the native language and language transfer in gender assignment

“…The present study's point of departure is Vanhove's (2017) findings regarding standard and substandard influences from the L1, Dutch, on gender assignment in a closely related L2, German. German distinguishes between three adnominal grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter).…”

“…Apart from sociolinguistic markedness and psychotypology, a third possible reason for the lack of transfer from the L1 substandard in Vanhove's (2017) study may be the participants' lack of metalinguistic knowledge about the substandard's gender system. If speakers of substandard Belgian Dutch do not know that their dialect distinguishes between masculine and feminine gender, or if they are not aware of which words are feminine and which are masculine, then this may make it more difficult for them to make the "necessary crosslingual tie-ups" (Kellerman, 1983, p. 114) or "interlingual identification" between the genders of a L1 noun and its L2 cognate (Weinreich, 1953, p. 7).…”

“…This assumption is sometimes incorrect (for examples, see the stimuli used in the present study), but to my knowledge, no data are available as to how often it is. In the other direction, Dutch-speaking learners of German similarly assume that neuter Dutch words tend to have neuter German translation equivalents (Vanhove, 2017), but they cannot rely on their L1 to distinguish between L2 masculine and feminine gender.…”

“…Table 1 shows how singular noun phrases are marked for gender in German, Standard Dutch, and substandard Belgian Dutch (the latter based on De Vogelaer and De Sutter's [2011] description of East-Flemish). Vanhove (2017) hypothesized that speakers of Belgian Dutch who are familiar with a three-gender substandard variety would make use of this additional masculine/feminine distinction when assigning gender to German nouns: compared to speakers of Netherlandic Dutch, Belgian speakers of Dutch were expected to more often assign feminine gender to German words whose cognates are feminine in substandard Belgian Dutch and masculine gender to words with masculine cognates in substandard Belgian Dutch. But while both the Dutch and Belgian participants' German gender assignments revealed a substantial influence from the common/neuter distinction in Standard Dutch (i.e., they generally assigned neuter gender to German nouns with neuter Dutch cognates and masculine or feminine gender to German nouns with common Dutch cognates), at best a weak trace of the additional substandard masculine/feminine distinction was found in the Belgian data (depending on the specific analysis; see Vanhove, 2017, p. 454).…”

Food for psycholinguistic thought on gender in Dutch and German: a literature review on L1 and L2 production and processing

“…Furthermore, many substandard Belgian Dutch varieties still mark masculine, feminine and neuter gender. There is some evidence that in certain contexts, gender is transferred to German inanimate cognates when Belgian Dutch speakers are asked to assign German articles to given nouns (Vanhove 2017). Gender agreement in Dutch occurs with determiners, adjectives, and pronouns.…”