Cover not available
Article published In:
The Acquisition and Processing of Spanish and Portuguese Morphosyntax: Theoretical and experimental issues
Edited by Rachel Klassen, Anahí Alba de la Fuente, Joanne Markle LaMontagne and Almudena Basanta y Romero-Valdespino
[Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 29:2] 2016
► pp. 523–543

The processing of gender assignment in Spanish

Does canonicity have an effect on Basque speakers?

| Mondragon Unibertsitatea

This paper reports on an experiment investigating the processing of accurate gender assignment in canonical and non-canonical inanimate nouns in Spanish by native speakers of Basque with nativelike proficiency in Spanish. 33 Basque/Spanish bilinguals and 32 native speakers of Spanish completed an online and an offline gender assignment task. Participants assigned gender to inanimate nouns with canonical (-o; -a) and non-canonical word endings (-e; consonants). The results revealed that the Basque/Spanish bilingual group obtained high accuracy scores in both tasks, similar to the Spanish native speaker group. Interestingly, unlike the Spanish group, the Basque speakers showed faster reaction times with feminine nouns than masculine ones. Canonicity seems to be a strong cue for both groups, since all participants were more accurate and faster with canonical word endings. Even though quantitatively Basque/Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals’ gender assignment accuracy rates do not differ, qualitatively, the Basque/Spanish bilinguals’ assignment patterns seem to differ somewhat from those of the native Spanish speakers.

Keywords: Basque, canonicity, Spanish, assignment, gender
Published online: 2 February 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.29.2.06ima
References (36)
Alarcón, I
(2011) Spanish gender agreement under complete and incomplete acquisition: Early and late bilinguals’ linguistic behavior within the noun phrase. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 141, 332–350. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Grammatical gender in second language Spanish. In K.L. Gesslin (Ed.), The handbook of Spanish second language acquisition (pp. 202–218). New York: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Devescovi, A., Hernández, A., & Pizzamiglio, L
(1996) Gender priming in Italian. Perception and Psychophysics, 581, 992–1004. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, E., Devescovi, A., Pizzamiglio, L., D’Amico, S., & Hernandez, A
(1995) Gender and lexical access in Italian. Perception & Psychophysics, 57(6), 847–862. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bruhn de Garavito, J., & White, L
(2002) L2 acquisition of Spanish DPs: The status of grammatical features. In A.T. Pérez-Leroux & J. Liceras (Eds.), The acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax: The L1 / L2 connection (pp. 153–174). Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carroll, S
(1989) Second language acquisition and the computational paradigm. Language Learning, 391, 535–594. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davis, C.J., & Perea, M
(2005) BuscaPalabras: A program deriving orthographic and phonological neighborhood statistics and other psycholinguistic indices in Spanish. Behavior Research Methods, 371, 665–671. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dewaele, J.M., & Véronique, D
(2001) Gender assignment and gender agreement in advanced French interlanguage: A cross-sectional study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 41, 275–296. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dussias, P.E
(2003) Syntactic ambiguity resolution in L2 learners: Some effects of bilinguality on L1 and L2 processing strategies. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 251, 529–557. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ezeizabarrena, M.J
(2005) Development in early Basque-Spanish language mixing. Paper presented at V International Symposium on Bilingualism , Barcelona, 20-23 March.
Franceschina, F
(2001) Morphological or syntactic deficits in near-native speakers?: An assessment of some current proposals. Second Language Research, 171, 213–247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) Fossilized second language grammars: The acquisition of grammatical gender. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foote, R
(2014) Age of acquisition and sensitivity to gender in Spanish word recognition. Language Acquisition, 211, 365–385. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guillelmon, D., & Grosjean, F
(2001) The gender marking effect in spoken word recognition: The case of bilinguals. Memory and Cognition, 291, 503–511. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grüter, T., Lew-Williams, C., & Fernald, A
(2012) Grammatical gender in L2A: A production or a real-time processing problem? Second Language Research, 281, 191–215. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harris, J
(1991) The exponence of gender in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry, 221, 27–62.Google Scholar
Hernández-Pina, F
(1984) Teorías psico-sociolingüísticas y su aplicación a la adquisición del español como lengua materna (Psycho-sociolinguistic theories and their application to the acquisition of Spanish as a mother tongue). Madrid: Siglo XXI.Google Scholar
Kroll, J.F., Dussias, P.E., Bogulski, C.A., & Valdes-Kroff, J
(2012) Juggling two languages in one mind: What bilinguals tell us about language processing and its consequences for cognition. In B. Ross (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (pp. 229–262). San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Larrañaga, P., & Guijarro-Fuentes, P
(2013).The linguistic competence of early Basque-Spanish bilingual children and a Spanish monolingual child. International Journal of Bilingualism, 171, 577–601. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Manterola, J., & Ezeizabarrena, M.J
(2004) La mezcla códigos (euskera-castellano) en el habla infantil: Una prueba más de la separación gramatical temprana. In C. Pastor (Ed.), Perspectivas interdisciplinares de la lingüística aplicada. Tomo I: Adquisición y aprendizaje (pp. 187–201). Valencia: Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada.Google Scholar
Mariscal, S
(2008) Early acquisition of gender agreement in the Spanish noun phrase: Starting small. Journal of Child Language, 351, 1–29.Google Scholar
McCarthy, C
(2008) Morphological variability in the comprehension of agreement: An argument for representation over computation. Second Language Research, 241, 459–486. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S
(2008) Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism: Re-examining the age factor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S., Foote, R., & Perpiñán, S
(2008) Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquition. Language Learning, 581, 503–553. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S., Davidson, J., de la Fuente, I., & Foote, R
(2014) Early language experience facilitates the processing of gender agreement in Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 171, 118–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parafita Couto, M.C., Munarriz, A., Epelde, I., Deuchar, M., & Oyharçabal, B
(2015) Gender conflict resolution in Spanish–Basque mixed DPs. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18(2), 304–323. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Pereira, M
(1991) The acquisition of gender: What Spanish children can tell us. Journal of Child Language, 181, 571–590. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pinker, S
(1999) Words and rules: The ingredients of language. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Pinker, S., & Prince, A
(1994) Regular and irregular morphology and the psychological status of rules of grammar. In S.D. Lima, R.L. Corrigan, & G.K. Iverson (Eds.), The reality of linguistic rules (pp. 321–352). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pinker, S., & Ullman, M.T
(2002) The past and the future of the past tense. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 61, 456–463. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sabourin, L., Stowe, L.A., & de Haan, G.J
(2006) Transfer effects in learning a second language grammatical gender system. Second Language Research, 221, 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sagarra, N., & Herschensohn, J
(2011) Proficiency and animacy effects on L2 gender agreement processing during comprehension. Language Learning, 611, 80–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Syndicate, U.C.L.E
(2001) Quick placement test. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taraban, R., & Kempe, V
(1999) Gender processing in native and non-native Russian speakers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 201, 119–148. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taraban, R., & Roark, B
(1996) Competition in language-based categories. Applied Psycholinguistics, 201, 119–148. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
White, L., Valenzuela, E., Kozlowska-Macgregor, M., & Leung, Y.K.I
(2004) Gender and number agreement in nonnative Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics, 251, 105–133. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by 4 other publications

Sá-Leite, A. R. & S. Lago
2024. The role of word form in gender processing during lexical access: A theoretical review and novel proposal in language comprehension. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review DOI logo
Santos Ferreira, Tânia & Graça Rio-Torto
2023. Aprendentes espanhóis de Português língua estrangeira: atribuição de género gramatical em palavras sufixadas. Estudos de Lingüística Galega DOI logo
Munarriz-Ibarrola, Amaia, Maria-José Ezeizabarrena, Varun DC Arrazola & M. Carmen Parafita Couto
2022. Gender assignment strategies and L1 effects in the elicited production of mixed Spanish-Basque DPs. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 12:6 ► pp. 778 ff. DOI logo
Pérez-Tattam, Rocío, Maria José Ezeizabarrena, Hans Stadthagen-González & Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole
2019. Gender Assignment to Spanish Pseudowords by Monolingual and Basque-Spanish Bilingual Children. Languages 4:3 ► pp. 58 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 july 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.