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The Acquisition of Gender
Crosslinguistic perspectives
Editor
Gender as a morphosyntactic feature is arguably “an endlessly fascinating linguistic category” (Corbett 2014: 1). One may even say it is among “the most puzzling of the grammatical categories” (Corbett 1991: 1) that has raised probing questions from various theoretical and applied perspectives. Most languages display semantic and/or formal gender systems with various degrees of opacity and complexity, and even closely related languages present distinct differences, creating difficulties for second language learners. The first three chapters of this volume present critical reviews in three different areas – gender assignment in mixed noun phrases, subtle gentle biases and the gender acquisition in child and adult heritage speakers of Spanish – while the next six chapters present new empirical evidence in the acquisition of gender by bilingual children, adult L2/L3 learners and heritage speakers of various languages such as Italian, German, Dutch or Mandarin-Italian.
[Studies in Bilingualism, 63] 2022. xi, 282 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 3 January 2022
Published online on 3 January 2022
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- About the contributors | pp. vii–xii
- Chapter 1. Introduction: Gender, geslag, Geschlecht, γένος, ਲਿੰਗ, 性別Dalila Ayoun | pp. 1–10
- Part I. Review chapters
- Chapter 2. Gender assignment in mixed noun phrases: State of the artKate Bellamy and M. Carmen Parafita Couto | pp. 13–48
- Chapter 3. Empirical evidence for subtle gender biases in languageYulia Esaulova and Lisa von Stockhausen | pp. 49–70
- Chapter 4. The acquisition of grammatical gender in child and adult heritage speakers of Spanish: Beyond the source of differencesAlejandro Cuza and Liliana Sánchez | pp. 71–94
- Part II. Child, adult and heritage speakers
- Chapter 5. The second language acquisition of grammatical gender and number in ItalianDalila Ayoun and Stefano Maranzana | pp. 97–126
- Chapter 6. Grammatical gender and article use in beginning learners of GermanPeter Ecke | pp. 127–156
- Chapter 7. The non-default gender category in additional-language FrenchAmanda Edmonds, Aarnes Gudmestad and Thomas Metzger | pp. 157–182
- Chapter 8. Investigating grammatical gender agreement in Spanish: A methodological exploration of eye trackingLeAnne Spino | pp. 183–208
- Chapter 9. Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual grammars: Evidence from gender assignment in unilingual Dutch and mixed speechBrechje van Osch, Ivo Boers, Janet Grijzenhout, M. Carmen Parafita Couto, Bo Sterken and Deniz Tat | pp. 209–242
- Chapter 10. Prediction on the basis of gender and number in Mandarin-Italian bilingual childrenJasmijn E. Bosch, Mathilde Chailleux, Jia’en Yee, Maria Teresa Guasti and Fabrizio Arosio | pp. 243–272
- Language index | pp. 273–274
- Name index | pp. 275–280
- Subject index | pp. 281–282
“This timely volume reflects the vitality of current research on gender, including both critical reviews and novel empirical studies. Topics include gender acquisition by bilingual children, issues of adult learners – both L2 and L3 – and heritage speakers of very different languages. The variety in subject matter is matched by the choice of research methods; these range from corpus work, semi-guided interviews and picture narration, through to eye-tracking. An interesting feature is the way in which gender serves both as the research topic and the means to address other research questions. As a result, the volume appeals to a wide range of readers.”
Greville G. Corbett, Surrey Morphology Group
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Claassen, Simon A., Renata Enghels & M. Carmen Parafita Couto
Vanhaverbeke, Margot, Renata Enghels, María del Carmen Parafita Couto & Iva Ivanova
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