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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 13:2 (2023) ► pp.267–297

Grammatical gender in Spanish child heritage speakers

Incomplete or different acquisition?

ORCID logo | University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
ORCID logo | Arizona State University
This study examines grammatical gender (GG) production in young Spanish heritage-speakers (HSs) and the potential effect of the children’s language use and their parents’ input. We compared four and eight-year-old HSs to same-age monolingual children on their gender production. We measured GG production in determiners and adjectives via an elicited production task. HSs’ parents reported children’s time in each language and also completed the elicitation task. Results show that HSs’ scored significantly lower than monolinguals in both grammatical structures in which the unmarked masculine default predominates. However, older HSs had higher accuracy than younger HSs. Input from parents is not correlated with HSs’ performance and neither Spanish use nor language proficiency predicts GG performance on HSs. For theories of language acquisition, it is important to consider that although the linguistic knowledge of the HSs may differ from that of monolinguals, their grammar is protracted rather than incomplete.
Keywords: Spanish grammatical gender, Spanish heritage speakers, heritage grammars, incomplete acquisition
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Grammatical outcomes in HSs’ grammar
  • 2.Gender
    • 2.1Spanish-GG acquisition
    • 2.2Language proficiency and GG
  • 3.The present study
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1Participants
      • Participant selection criteria
    • 4.2Language-proficiency measures
    • 4.3Experimental task
      • Expressive article-noun-adjective task
    • 4.4Procedure
  • 5.Analysis and results
    • 5.1Gender accuracy
    • 5.2Accuracy per target-structure
    • 5.3Error patterns
      • Masculine-feminine use
    • 5.4Canonical–Non-canonical ending
    • 5.5Assignment vs agreement
    • 5.6Language use and proficiency as predictors of GG accuracy
    • 5.7Correlation of HSs’ gender accuracy with parents’ gender accuracy
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Accuracy and error patterns
      • Error types
      • Canonical vs non-canonical forms
    • 6.2Theoretical implications
    • 6.3Language use and type of bilingualism
  • 7.Limitations and future directions
    • 7.1Educational and clinical implications
  • 8.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 14 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.20042.mar
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