Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 2:4 (2012) ► pp.379–403

Knowing versus producing

The acquisition of grammatical gender and the definite determiner in Dutch by L1-TD, L1-SLI, and eL2 children

| | Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Universiteit Utrecht
| | Meertens Instituut KNAW Amsterdam, Universiteit Maastricht
|
| | Universiteit van Amsterdam
|
Dutch nouns are divided into two groups according to grammatical gender which is, among others, marked on the definite determiner: common nouns take the definite determiner de and neuter nouns take the definite determiner het. This study is unique in systematically investigating the acquisition of grammatical gender and the definite determiner in the production and knowledge data of the same Dutch children. Three groups of children were examined: (i) typically developing monolinguals (L1-TD: 6;7—9;11), (ii) monolinguals with Specific Language Impairment (L1-SLI: 8;4-12;0), and (iii) typically developing bilinguals, who are early second language learners (eL2: 6;7-10;0). The three groups of children reveal different stages in discovering that de and het cover the gender paradigm. At comparable ages, the L1-TD children have completed this paradigm discovery; however, the eL2 children have not yet completed it, and the L1- SLI children are only at the first stage of the discovery of the gender paradigm.
Keywords: language acquisition, grammatical gender, bilingualism, SLI, production, knowledge
Article outline
  • 1Introduction
  • 2.Participants, design, and methodology
    • 2.1The lexicon task
    • 2.2The Production task
    • 2.3The Knowledge task
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Group results
      • 3.1.1Production task
      • 3.1.2Knowledge task
      • 3.1.3The production and knowledge data compared
      • 3.1.4The seven identical items in the production and knowledge data
    • 3.2Individual Patterns
      • 3.2.1Production task
      • 3.2.2Knowledge task
  • 4.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 November 2012
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.2.4.02kei
References (34)
References
Bishop, D., & Leonard, L. (Eds.). (2000). Speech and language impairments in children: Causes, characteristics, intervention and outcome. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Blom, E., Polišenská, D., & Weerman, F. (2008). Articles, adjectives and age of onset: The acquisition of Dutch grammatical gender. Second Language Research, 241, 297–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bol, G., & Kuiken, F. (1988). Grammaticale analyse van taalontwikkelingsstoornissen. Doctoral dissertation, Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Brouwer, S., Cornips, L., & Hulk, A. (2008). Misrepresentation of Dutch neuter gender in older bilingual children? In B. Hazdenar, & E. Gavruseva (Eds.), Current trends in child second language acquisition: A generative perspective (pp. 83–96). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H. (1988). Normale und gestörte Kindersprache. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cornips, L., Van der Hoek, M., & Verwer, R. (2006). The acquisition of grammatical gender in bilingual child acquisition of Dutch (by older Moroccan and Turkish children). The definite determiner, attributive adjective and relative pronoun. In J. van de Weijer, & B. Los (Eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 2006 (pp. 40–51). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Cornips, L., & Hulk, A. (2008). Factors of success and failure in the acquisition of grammatical gender in Dutch. Second Language Research, 241, 267–296. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Houwer, A., & Gillis, S. (1998). Dutch child language: An overview. In S. Gillis & A. De Houwer (Eds.), The acquisition of Dutch (pp. 1–100). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis Weismer, S., & Evans, J. (2002). The role of processing limitations in early identification of Specific Language Impairment. Topics in Language Disorders, 221, 15–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gathercole, S., & Baddeley, A. (1990). Phonological memory deficits in language disordered children: Is there a causal connection? Journal of Memory and Language, 291, 336–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gopnik, M. (1990a). Feature blindness: A case study. Language Acquisition, 11, 139–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1990b). Feature-blind grammar and dysphasia. Nature, 3441, 715. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grüter, T. (2005). Comprehension and production of French object clitics by child second language learners and children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 261, 363–391. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Håkansson, G., & Nettelbladt, U. (1993). Developmental sequences in L1 (normal and impaired) and L2 acquisition of Swedish. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 31, 131–157. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hulk, A., & Cornips, L. (2006a). The acquisition of definite determiners in child L2 Dutch: Problems with neuter gender nouns. In S. Unsworth, T. Parodi, A. Sorace, & M. Young-Scholten (Eds.), Paths of development in L1 and L2 acquisition (pp. 107–134). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006b). Between 2L1- and child L2 acquisition: An experimental study of bilingual Dutch. In C. Lleó (Ed.), Cognitive processes in bilinguals (pp. 115–137). Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
(2010). The role of gender and count features in the acquisition of ‘het’ as a pronoun: Similarities and differences with its acquisition as a determiner. In J. Costa, M. Castro, M. Lobo, & F. Pratas (Eds.), Proceedings of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition 2009 (pp. 232–243). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Keij, B. (2009). De verwerving van grammaticaal geslacht in het Nederlands. Een onderzoek naar de verwerving van het grammaticaal geslacht van zelfstandig naamwoorden bij eentalige normaalontwikkelende kinderen, meertalige normaalontwikkelende kinderen en eentalige kinderen met een taalontwikkelingsstoornis. Master thesis, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Leonard, L.B. (2003). Specific language impairment: Characterizing the deficit. In I. Levy, & J. Schaeffer (Eds.), Language competence across populations: Toward a definition of specific language impairment (pp. 209–231). Mahwah: Laurence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Orgassa, A. (2009). Specific language impairment in a bilingual context: The acquisition of Dutch inflection by Turkish-Dutch learners. Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht: LOT.
Orgassa, A., & Weerman, F. (2008). Dutch gender in specific language impairment and second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 24(3), 325–365. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J. (2004). The relevance of specific language impairment in understanding the role of transfer in second language acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 251, 67–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J., & Crago, M. (2000). Tense and temporality: Similarities and differences between language impaired and second-language children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 431, 834–848. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rice, M.L., Wexler, K., & Cleave, P. (1995). Specific language impairment as a period of Extended Optional Infinitive. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 381, 850–863. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roodenburg, J., & Hulk, A. (2008). Puzzles on grammatical gender. Lingue e Linguaggio, VII1, 67–92.Google Scholar
(2009). Gender puzzels. Taal en Tongval, 221, 143–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schaerlaekens, A., & Goorhuis-Brouwer, S. (2000). Taalproblemen en taalpathologie. In S. Gillis, & A. Schaerlaekens (Eds.), Kindertaalverwerving: Een handboek voor het Nederlands (pp. 395–433). Groningen: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Southwood, F. (2007). Specific language impairment in Afrikaans: Providing a Minimalist account for problems with grammatical feature and word order. Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht: LOT.
Tallal, P. (1994). In the perception of speech time is of the essence. In G. Buzsaki, R. Llinas, W. Singer, A. Berthoz, & Y. Christen (Eds.), Temporal coding in the brain (pp. 291–299). Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag Berlin. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ullman, M., & Pierpont, E. (2005). Specific language impairment is not specific to language: The procedural deficit hypothesis. Cortex, 411, 399–433. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Unsworth, S. (2008). Age and input in the acquistition of grammatical gender in Dutch. Second Language Research, 24(3), 365–395. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Unsworth, S., & Hulk, A. (2010). L1 acquisition of neuter gender in Dutch: Production and judgement. In J. Costa, M. Castro, M. Lobo, & F. Pratas (Eds.), Proceedings of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition 2009 (pp. 50–51). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Unsworth, S., Argyri, F., Cornips, L., Hulk, A., Sorace, A., & Tsimpli, I. (2011). On the role of age of onset and input in early child bilingualism in Greek and Dutch. In M. Pirvulescu et al. (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 4th conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2010) (pp. 249–265). Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Van Emmerik, J., Van Hout, R., Van de Craats, I., & Klatter-Folmer, J. (2009). ‘Het’ gaat niet vanzelf. De verwerving van het genus door dove volwassenen en horende tweedetaalleerders. Taal en Tongval, 221, 188–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

KUPISCH, Tanja, Natalia MITROFANOVA & Marit WESTERGAARD
2022. Phonological vs. natural gender cues in the acquisition of German by simultaneous and sequential bilinguals (German–Russian). Journal of Child Language 49:4 ► pp. 661 ff. DOI logo
Scheffer, Anouk, Brigitta Keij, Britt Hakvoort, Esther Ottow, Ellen Gerrits & Frank Wijnen
2022. Disentangling the Grammar of 3- to 6-Year-Old Dutch Children With a Developmental Language Disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 65:11 ► pp. 4250 ff. DOI logo
Tribushinina, Elena, Julia Lomako, Natalia Gagarina, Ekaterina Abrosova & Pim Mak
2020. Processing of pronoun gender by Dutch-Russian simultaneous bilinguals. In Typical and Impaired Processing in Morphosyntax [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 64], ► pp. 153 ff. DOI logo
Blom, Elma, Leonie Cornips & Jeannette Schaeffer
2017. Cross-linguistic influence in bilingualism. In Cross-linguistic Influence in Bilingualism [Studies in Bilingualism, 52], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Marinis, Theodoros, Vasiliki Chondrogianni, Nada Vasić, Fred Weerman & Elma Blom
2017. The impact of transparency and morpho-phonological cues in the acquisition of grammatical gender in sequential bilingual children and children with Specific Language Impairment. In Cross-linguistic Influence in Bilingualism [Studies in Bilingualism, 52], ► pp. 153 ff. DOI logo
Durrleman, Stephanie & Hélène Delage
2016. Autism Spectrum Disorder and Specific Language Impairment: Overlaps in Syntactic Profiles. Language Acquisition 23:4 ► pp. 361 ff. DOI logo
Zwitserlood, Rob, Marjolijn van Weerdenburg, Ludo Verhoeven & Frank Wijnen
2015. Development of Morphosyntactic Accuracy and Grammatical Complexity in Dutch School-Age Children With SLI. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 58:3 ► pp. 891 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.