Cover not available

In:Perspectives on Input, Evidence, and Exposure in Language Acquisition: Studies in honour of Susanne E. Carroll
Edited by Lindsay Hracs
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 69] 2024
► pp. 88–116

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 4
Gender assignment in German as a heritage language in an English-speaking context

A case study of acquisition and maintenance

 | University of Konstanz | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
 | University of Calgary
Published online: 26 August 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.69.04kup
Abstract
We present a case study of a heritage speaker of German, Luisa, who is growing up in an English-speaking part of Canada, focussing on the acquisition of grammatical gender in German. While German has cues to gender assignment, the acquisition of gender in this setting is compromised by the magnitude of gender cues and form syncretism, and the absence of gender in English. We present longitudinal, naturalistic data from three periods: age 1–2, age 4–5, and age 7. We ask whether Luisa develops grammatical gender akin to monolingual children or whether there are indications of delay, stagnation, or attrition, as observed for heritage speakers of other languages. The results show monolingual-like development despite a shift in dominance from German to English.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Gender marking in German
  • 3.The acquisition of gender (with a focus on German)
    • 3.1Monolingual German children
    • 3.2The acquisition of gender by bilingual children
    • 3.3Research questions
  • 4.Study
    • 4.1Participant
    • 4.2Data collection
    • 4.3Coding
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Phase 1 (Early development)
      • 5.1.1Nouns by assignment categories
    • 5.2Phase 2 (Kindergarten and primary school)
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
    • 6.1Early development: Emergence and quantity
    • 6.2Early development: Quality of errors
    • 6.3Later development
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (52)
References
Bianchi, G. 2013. Gender in Italian–German bilinguals: A comparison with German L2 learners of Italian. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16(3): 538–557. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bittner, D. 2006. Case before gender in the acquisition of German. Folia Linguistica 40(1–2): 115–134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bottari, P., Cipriano, P. & Chilosi, A. M. 1993/1994. Protosyntactic devices in the acquisition of Italian free morphology. Language Acquisition 3(4): 327–369. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carroll, S. E. 1989. Second language acquisition and the computational paradigm. Language Learning 39(4): 535–594. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1999. Input and SLA: Adults’ sensitivity to different sorts of cues to French gender. Language Learning 49(1): 37–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cornips, L. & Hulk, A. 2008. Factors of success and failure in the acquisition of grammatical gender in Dutch. Second Language Research 24(3): 267–295. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corteen, E. M. 2018. The Assignment of Grammatical Gender in German: Testing Optimal Gender Assignment Theory. PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge.
De Houwer, A. 2007. Parental language input patterns and children’s bilingual use. Applied Psycholinguistics 28(3): 411–424. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dieser, E. 2009. Genuserwerb im Russischen und Deutschen: Korpusgestützte Studie zu ein- und zweisprachigen Kindern und Erwachsenen. München: Sagner. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eichler, N., Jansen, V. & Müller, N. 2013. Gender acquisition in bilingual children: French-German, Italian-German, Spanish-German and Italian-French. International Journal of Bilingualism 17(5): 550–572. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Granfeldt, J. 2018. The development of gender in simultaneous and successive bilingual acquisition of French: Evidence for AoO and input effects. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 21(4): 674–693. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hager, M. 2014. Der Genuserwerb bei mehrsprachig aufwachsenden Kindern –Eine longitudinale Untersuchung bilingualer und trilingualer Kinder der Sprachenkombinationen deutsch-französisch/italienisch/spanisch, französisch-italienisch/spanisch und deutsch-spanisch-katalanisch. PhD dissertation, Bergische Universität Wuppertal.
Heidolph, K. E., Flämig, W. & Motsch, W. 1984. Grundzüge einer deutschen Grammatik (2nd ed.). Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hulk, A. & Müller, N. 2000. Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3(3): 227–244. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hulk, A. & van der Linden, E. 2010. How vulnerable is gender? In New Directions in Language Acquisition: Romance Languages in the Generative Perspective, P. Guijarro-Fuentes & L. Domínguez (eds), 107–134. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaltsa, M., Prentza, A., Papadopoulou, D. & Tsimpli, I. M. 2017. Language external and language internal factors in the acquisition of gender: The case of Albanian-Greek and English-Greek bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 20: 1–22.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kehoe, M., Lleó, C. & Rakow, M. 2004. Voice onset time in bilingual German-Spanish children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7(1): 71–88. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Köpcke, K.-M. 1982. Untersuchungen zum Genussystem der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Köpcke, K.-M. & Zubin, D. 1983. Die kognitive Organisation der Genuszuweisung zu den einsilbigen Nomen der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 11: 166–82. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1984. Sechs Prinzipien für die Genuszuweisung im Deutschen: Ein Beitrag zur natürlichen Klassifikation. Linguistische Berichte 93: 26–50.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1996. Prinzipien für die Genuszuweisung im Deutschen. In Deutsch-typologisch. Institut für deutsche Sprache Jahrbuch 1995, E. Lang & G. Zifonun (eds), 473–491. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kupisch, T. 2006. The acquisition of determiners in German-French and German-Italian children. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kupisch, T., Akpinar, D. & Stöhr, A. 2013. Gender assignment and gender agreement in adult bilinguals and second language learners of French. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 3(2): 150–179. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kupisch, T. & J. Rothman. 2016. Interfaces with syntax in language acquisition. In Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance, S. Fischer & C. Gabriel (eds), 551–586. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kupisch, T., Müller, N. & Cantone, K. F. 2002. Gender in monolingual and bilingual first language acquisition: Comparing Italian and French. Lingue e Linguaggio 1: 107–150.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
La Morgia, F. 2011. Bilingual First Language Acquisition: The Nature of the Weak Language and the Role of the Input. PhD dissertation, Dublin City University.
Lemmerth, N. & Hopp, H. 2018. Gender processing in simultaneous and successive bilingual children: Cross-linguistic lexical and syntactic influences. Language Acquisition 26(1): 21–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindauer, M. In preparation. The Acquisition of German by Italian and Turkish Heritage Language Speaking Children: Sociolinguistic Aspects and Production Experiments on Proficiency in German Verb Placement, Morphosyntax and Prosody. PhD Dissertation, University of Konstanz.
Lleó, C. 2016. Acquiring phonology and its interfaces: 2L1, L2, L3. In Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance, S. Fischer & C. Gabriel (eds), 519–550. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B., Leinbach, J., Taraban, R. & McDonald, J. 1989. Language learning: Cues or rules? Journal of Memory and Language 28(3): 255–277. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meisel, J. M. 2018. Early child second language acquisition: French gender in German children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 21(4): 656–673. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mills, A. E. 1986. The Acquisition of Gender: A Study of English and German. Berlin: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montrul, S. 2018. Heritage language development: Connecting the dots. International Journal of Bilingualism 22(5): 530–546. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montrul, S., Foote, R. & Perpiñán, S. 2008. Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. Language Learning 58(3): 504–553. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Müller, N. 1990. Developing two gender-assignment systems simultaneously. In Two First Languages: Early Grammatical Development in Bilingual Children, J. M. Meisel (ed.), 193–234. Dordrecht: Foris. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Müller, N. 1994. Gender and number agreement within DP. In Bilingual First Language Acquisition. French and German Grammatical Development, J. M. Meisel (ed.), 53–88. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1999. Gender and number in acquisition. In Gender in Grammar and Cognition: Approaches to Gender, B. Unterbeck & M. Rissanen (eds), 351–399. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Opitz, A. & Pechmann, T. 2016. Gender features in German. Evidence for underspecification. The Mental Lexicon 11(2): 216–241. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pérez-Pereira, M. 1991. The acquisition of gender: What Spanish children tell us. Journal of Child Language 18(3): 571–590. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Polinsky, M. 2008. Gender under incomplete acquisition: Heritage speakers’ knowledge of noun categorization. Heritage Language Journal 6: 40–71. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rodina, Y. & Westergaard, M. 2015. Grammatical gender in Norwegian: Language acquisition and language change. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 27(2): 145–187. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ruberg, T. 2013. Der Genuserwerb ein- und mehrsprachiger Kinder. Hamburg: Dr. Kovac.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schlyter, S. 1993. The weaker language in bilingual Swedish-French children. In Progression and Regression in Language: Sociocultural, Neuropsychological and Linguistic Perspectives, K. Hyltenstam & A. Viberg (eds), 289–308. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwartz, M., Minkov, M., Dieser, E., Protassova, E., Moin, V. & Polinsky, M. 2015. Acquisition of Russian gender agreement by monolingual and bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism 19(6): 726–752. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwichtenberg, B. & Schiller, N. O. 2004. Semantic gender assignment regularities in German. Brain and Language 90(1–3): 326–337. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steinmetz, D. 2006. Gender shifts in Germanic and Slavic: Semantic motivation for neuter? Lingua 116(9): 1418–1440. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stern, C. & Stern, W. 1928. Die Kindersprache: Eine psychologische und sprachtheoretische Untersuchung. Leipzig: Barth.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stoehr, A., Akpinar, D., Bianchi, G. & Kupisch, T. 2012. Gender marking in L2 learners and Italian-German bilinguals with German as the weaker language. In Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies, K. Braunmüller & C. Gabriel (eds), 153–170. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Szagun, G., Stumper, B., Sondag, N. & Franik, M. 2007. The acquisition of gender marking by young German-speaking children: Evidence for learning guided by phonological regularities. Journal of Child Language 34(3): 445–471. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Unsworth, S. 2013. Assessing the role of current and cumulative exposure in simultaneous bilingual acquisition: The case of Dutch gender. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16(1): 86–110. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Unsworth, S., Argyri, F., Cornips, L., Hulk, A., Sorace, A. & Tsimpli, I. 2014. On the role of age of onset and input in early child bilingualism in Greek and Dutch. Applied Psycholinguistics 35(4): 765–805. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wegener, H. 1995. Die Nominalflexion des Deutschen – verstanden als Lerngegenstand. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue