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Cross-linguistic Influence in Bilingualism: In honor of Aafke Hulk
Edited by Elma Blom, Leonie Cornips and Jeannette Schaeffer
[Studies in Bilingualism 52] 2017
► pp. 127–152

Cross-lectal influence and gender marking in bilectal Venetan-Italian acquisition

| University of Konstanz
| University of Hamburg
We study dialectal influence and gender marking in 25 bilectal children and 11 adults speaking Italian and Venetan, based on an elicited production task (EPT) in each of the two varieties. The children are between 5 and 11 years old and vary with respect to their reported use of the dialect at home. The results of the EPT show that the children produce only Italian DPs in the Italian experiment, while producing Italian, Venetan and mixed DPs in the Venetan experiment. However, regardless of the amount of dialect use, children follow the gender assignment rules of Italian and Venetan in both monolingual and mixed DPs.
Keywords: bilectal acquisition, Venetan, Italian, nominal gender, mixing
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Gender in Italian and Venetan
  • 3.Research questions and expectations
  • 4.Participants
    • 4.1Self-reported use of the dialect
    • 4.2Language choice in a picture description task
  • 5.Study of gender assignment and gender agreement
    • 5.1Stimuli and method
    • 5.2Results
      • 5.2.1Italian
      • 5.2.2Venetan
      • 5.2.3Summary
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.52.07kup
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