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Part of
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

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

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.

Keywords: gender assignment, German, heritage speaker, language dominance, cross-linguistic influence
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
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