Gender Acquisition in Spanish : : Effects of Language and Age / / Jessica Diebowski.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Ebook Package English 2021
• VerfasserIn: Diebowski, Jessica,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter Mouton, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Studies on Language Acquisition [SOLA] , 61
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XXIV, 320 p.)

The comparative investigation of the acquisition of gender in Spanish by early and late bilinguals of different language combinations is highly debated and crucial as the phenomenon of gender involves grammatical features that differ in all three languages under investigation. Against this background, both early and late bilinguals face an arduous learning task which differs in complexity. Couched within a generative framework, the empirical study focuses on 257 participants with different levels of proficiency in Spanish ranging from low to advanced, and through a series of tests aims to discover which extra-linguistic and intra-linguistic factors act as triggers for non-native outcomes in adult heritage speakers and L2 learners. The observed morphological variability is argued not to stem from a representational (i.e. syntactic) deficit, but rather from a mapping problem in L2 learners and heritage speakers. Successful attainment in terms of gender is possible but dependent on the interplay between various extralinguistic and linguistic factors.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- Abbreviations -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Grammatical gender in Spanish -- 3 Competing theories on the sources of variability in HLA and SLA -- 4 The acquisition of gender by L1, 2L1 and L2 speakers -- 5 The empirical study -- 6 Discussion, implications and conclusions -- References -- Appendices -- Subject index