The representation of gender in the mind of Spanish-English bilinguals: Insights from code-switched Adjectival Predicates

Klassen, Rachel; Liceras, Juana M.

doi:10.7557/1.6.1.4100

Cited by 21 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“… 1. This gender avoidance strategy appears to be mediated by language dominance and experience: L1-Spanish L2-English speakers rate phrases like “ la F window” higher than “ el m window,” suggesting activation of the gender of ventana F “window” (e.g. Klassen & Liceras, 2017; Liceras et al, 2016). …”

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A corpus study of child heritage speakers’ Spanish gender agreement

Goebel-Mahrle

Shin

2020

International Journal of Bilingualism

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Objectives: This study investigates (a) whether child heritage speakers produce more gender mismatches in Spanish ( un piedra “a-masc. stone-fem.”) than monolingual children, (b) whether older child heritage speakers mismatch more than younger ones, and (c) linguistic contexts in which mismatches occur. Methodology: 3893 agreement forms were extracted from corpora of Spanish spoken by six monolingual children, ages 5–6 years, and three groups of US child heritage speakers: ten 5–6-year-olds, fifteen 7–8-year-olds, and twenty-one 9–11-year-olds. Data and analysis: Logistic regressions measured the impact of agreement form type, noun gender, noncanonical noun ending, and noun frequency on gender matching. One regression included 5–6-year-olds only (monolingual and heritage); the second included child heritage speakers only (5–11-year-olds). Findings: There were no significant differences between monolingual and heritage 5–6-year-olds; for these children, adjectives, direct object clitics, noncanonical nouns, and feminine nouns increased the likelihood of mismatches. Among the 5–11-year-old heritage speakers, direct object clitics referring to feminine nouns and noncanonical nouns increased the likelihood of mismatches. The 9–11-year-olds produced more gender mismatches referring to feminine nouns than the younger child heritage speakers, especially with direct object clitics. Originality: This corpus study provides evidence for high rates of gender matching and clarifies the contexts that increase the likelihood that children will mismatch. Implications: Gender matching remains an intact part of child heritage speakers’ Spanish grammars. The distribution of mismatches found provides evidence of a strong article–noun association and a weaker noun–direct object clitic association. The oldest child heritage speakers’ use of masculine clitic lo to refer to feminine nouns may reflect an association between English “it” and Spanish lo. More generally, the finding that mismatches tend to involve masculine forms referring to feminine nouns supports the idea that masculine is the default, unmarked form in Spanish.

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A corpus study of child heritage speakers’ Spanish gender agreement

Goebel-Mahrle

Shin

2020

International Journal of Bilingualism

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“…of the above-mentioned studies have also compared [+AC] Spanish Det + English N switches, as in (57.a), to [+AC] Spanish Adj switches, as in (58.a), in terms of gender agreement mechanisms. Gómez Carrero et al (2018),Klassen and Liceras (2017) andValenzuela et al (2012) find that bilingual speakers, regardless of their linguistic profile, opt for Spanish Adj switches over Spanish Det switches in both judgment and sentence selection data. Liceras and colleagues(Fernández Fuertes & Liceras, 2018a;Liceras et al, 2017) associate this preference to how the doublefeature valuation mechanism is realized in each structure.…”

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The role of grammatical gender in Spanish-English switched DPs and copula constructions..

Gómez Carrero

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Codeswitching is a language-contact phenomenon which is characterized by the simultaneous use of the two languages of the bilingual and which has been used as a tool to investigate how these two languages interact in the mind of the bilingual. The present investigation focuses on English-Spanish codeswitching within Determiner Phrases (DP switches) and within copulative constructions with an Adjective Phrase (Adj switches). By following the minimalist premises proposed by MacSwan (1999MacSwan ( , 2000 and by Liceras et al. (2005Liceras et al. ( , 2008, two issues have been under consideration: (i) the directionality of the switch, and (ii) the gender agreement mechanisms in Spanish DP switches and in Spanish Adj switches (i.e., the analogical criterion, both [+AC] and [-AC], and the masculine as default). Experimental data have been collected via three experiments from two groups of L1 Spanish -L2 English bilingual speakers (i.e., children and adults): (i) an eyetracking during reading task, (ii) a reaction time task in Gorilla, and (iii) a visual world paradigm task. Thus, both offline and online experimental data have been elicited and analyzed, as well as compared to those in previous studies. Overall, regarding the directionality of the switch, the results indicate that English DP switches and English Adj switches are processed faster and are preferred. In the case of the gender agreement mechanisms, the results point to a hierarchy (i.e., [+AC] < masculine as default < [-AC]), which shows how strongly represented Spanish gender features are in the mind of these bilinguals for whom Spanish is their L1. However, children and adults show differences which could be attributed to (i) the complexity of the structure in terms of lexical access (i.e., Adj switches are more complex than DP switches), (ii) the type of data (i.e., different patterns are found depending on whether offline data or online data are considered), (iii) the implementation of the requirements imposed by feature strength (i.e., children's performance is affected when experimental conditions make the task harder), and (iv) the interplay between the three. Keywords: codeswitching; Spanish grammatical gender; DP switches; Adj switches; directionality of the switch; gender agreement mechanisms; offline and online data; children and adults; L1 Spanish -L2 English.

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Two gender systems in a bilingual mind: A study of gender assignment in code-switched Russian-Hebrew adjective-noun phrases

Rekun,

Meir

2024

Ampersand

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The representation of gender in the mind of Spanish-English bilinguals: Insights from code-switched Adjectival Predicates

Cited by 21 publications

References 12 publications

A corpus study of child heritage speakers’ Spanish gender agreement

A corpus study of child heritage speakers’ Spanish gender agreement

The role of grammatical gender in Spanish-English switched DPs and copula constructions..

Two gender systems in a bilingual mind: A study of gender assignment in code-switched Russian-Hebrew adjective-noun phrases

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