Chapter 6
Grammatical gender and article use in beginning learners of German
Acquiring nouns’ grammatical gender, corresponding articles, and their morphological variants is
one of the biggest challenges for adult learners of German. In this study, we analyze determiner noun phrases (NPs)
produced orally by Spanish L1/English L2 beginning learners of German L3. We explore the extent to which L3 learners
correctly produce determiner NPs including the appropriately marked grammatical gender, the extent to which they have
become sensitive to nouns’ formal gender cues, and the factors that help them cope with the complexity of the German
article and gender systems. We pay special attention to the possibility of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in L3
learners’ article/gender choices according to predictions made by the Parasitic Model of vocabulary acquisition. The
results suggest that learners reduce the complexity of the article/gender selection task by resorting to CLI, the
adoption of gender from assumed lexical equivalents, and by over-using the most frequent forms
(ein-masc/neu and die-fem) which also are the phonologically
least complex and most similar forms to equivalents in the L1 and/or L2. Formal gender cues only have a limited effect
on article choice for the learners at this early stage of acquisition. Sensitivity to gender cues emerges only for the
most frequent cue types and in association with definite (not indefinite) article use.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Grammatical gender and articles in German
- 3.The acquisition and processing of gender and articles in German L2/L3
- 3.1Gender processing in advanced learners of German
- 3.2Gender processing in beginning learners of German
- 3.3The Parasitic Model and gender transfer
- 4.Methods
- 4.1Research questions
- 4.2Participants
- 4.3Tasks and procedure
- 4.4Statistical analyses
- 5.Results
- 5.1Gender and indefinite article use
- 5.2Gender and definite article use
- 5.3Learners’ sensitivity to gender cues
- 6.Discussion
- 6.1Accuracy of article use and sensitivity to gender cues
- 6.2CLI and other factors affecting article use and gender assignment
- 7.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgements
-
References
-
Appendix
References
Ayoun, D.
(
2018)
Grammatical
gender assignment in French: Dispelling the native speaker myth.
Journal of
French Language
Studies, 28, 113–148.
Bardel, C., & Falk, Y.
(
2007)
The
role of the second language in third language acquisition. The case of Germanic
syntax.
Second Language
Research, 23(4), 459–484.
Baten, K., & Lochtman, K.
(
2014)
Das
deutsche Kasussystem im Fremdsprachenerwerb: Ein
Forschungsüberblick.
Muttersprache, 124(1), 1–25.
Bordag, D., Opitz, A., & Pechmann, T.
(
2006)
Gender
processing in first and second languages: The role of noun termination.
Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 32(5), 1090–1101.
Bordag, D., & Pechmann, T.
(
2007)
Factors
influencing L2 gender processing.
Bilingualism: Language and
Cognition, 10(3), 299–314.
Clyne, M.
(
1987)
Constraints
on codeswitching: How universal are
they? Linguistics, 25, 739–764.
Corbett, G. G.
(
1991)
Gender. Cambridge University Press.
Corpora Collection Leipzig
University
(
2018)
German news corpus based on material crawled
in 2018 with 46,843,422 sentences. Retrieved on 10 June 2021 from:
[URL]
Delisle, H.
(
1985)
The
acquisition of gender by American students of German.
The Modern Language
Journal, 69(1): 55–63.
Diehl, E., Albrecht, H., & Zoch, I.
(
1991)
Lernerstrategien
im Fremdsprachenerwerb: Untersuchungen zum Erwerb des deutschen
Deklinationssystems. De Gruyter.
Diehl, E., Christen, H., Leuenberger, S., Pelvat, I., & Studer, T.
(
2000)
Grammatikunterricht:
alles für der Katz? Untersuchungen zum Zweitsprachenerwerb
Deutsch. Niemeyer.
Duden
(
2021)
Die
Verteilung der Artikel (Genusangaben) im Rechtschreibduden. Retrieved
on 10 June
2021 from
[URL]
Ecke, P.
(
2015)
Parasitic
vocabulary acquisition, cross-linguistic influence, and lexical retrieval in
multilinguals.
Bilingualism: Language and
Cognition, 18, 145–162.
Ecke, P., & Hall, C. J.
(
2000)
Lexikalische
Fehler in Deutsch als Drittsprache: Translexikalischer Einfluss auf drei Ebenen der mentalen
Repräsentation.
Deutsch als
Fremdsprache, 37(1), 30–36.
Ecke, P., & Hall, C. J.
(
2014)
The
Parasitic Model of L2 and L3 vocabulary acquisition: Evidence from naturalistic and experimental
studies.
Fórum
Linguístico, 11(3), 360–372.
Grauberg, W.
(
1971)
An
error analysis in German of first-year university
students. In
G. E. Perren &
J. L. M. Trim (Eds),
Applications
of
linguistics (pp. 257–263). Cambridge University Press.
Hall, C. J.
(
2002)
The
automatic cognate form assumption: Evidence for the parasitic model of vocabulary
development.
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
(IRAL), 40(2), 69–87.
Hall, C. J., & Ecke, P.
(
2003)
Parasitism
as a default mechanism in L3 vocabulary
acquisition. In
J. Cenoz,
B. Hufeisen &
U. Jessner (Eds),
The
multilingual
lexicon (pp. 71–85). Kluwer.
Hall, C. J., Newbrand, D., Ecke, P., Sperr, U., Marchand, V., & Hayes, L.
(
2009)
Learners’
implicit assumptions about syntactic frames in new L3 words: The role of cognates, typological proximity, and
L2 status.
Language
Learning, 59(1), 153–202.
Hall, C. J., & Reyes Duran, A.
(
2009)
Cross-linguistic
influence in L2 verb frames: The effects of word familiarity and language
proficiency. In
A. G. Benati (Ed.),
Issues
in language
proficiency (pp. 24–44). Continuum.
Hall, C. J., & Schultz, M.
(
1994)
Los
errores de marco sintáctico: Evidencia del modelo parasitario del léxico mental en un segundo
idioma.
Estudios en Lingüística Aplicada, Memorias del II Congreso Nacional de
Lingüística (pp. 376–389). UNAM, INAH and ECM.
Hohlfeld, A.
(
2004)
Accessing
grammatical gender in German: The impact of gender-marking
regularities.
Applied
Psycholinguistics, 27, 127–142.
Jackendoff, R.
(
2002)
Foundations
of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Oxford University Press.
Jackson, C. N.
(
2007)
The
use and non-use of semantic information, word order, and case markings during comprehension by L2 learners of
German.
The Modern Language
Journal, 91(3), 418–432.
Kempe, V., & MacWhinney, B.
(
1998)
The
acquisition of case marking by adult learners of Russian and German.
Studies in
Second Language
Acquisition, 20(4), 543–587.
Kempe, V., & MacWhinney, B.
(
1999)
Processing
of morphological and semantic cues in Russian and German.
Language and
Cognitive
Processes, 14(2), 129–171.
Köpcke, K.-M.
(
1982)
Untersuchungen
zum Genussystem der deutschen
Gegenwartssprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Köpcke, K.-M., & Zubin, D. A.
(
1983)
Die
kognitive Organisation der Genuszuweisung zu den einsilbigen Nomen der deutschen
Gegenwartssprache.
Zeitschrift für Germanistische
Linguistik, 11(2), 166–182.
Köpcke, K.-M., & Zubin, D.
(
1984)
Sechs
Prinzipien für die Genuszuweisung im Deutschen: Ein Beitrag zur natürlichen
Klassifikation.
Linguistische
Berichte, 93, 26–50.
Kraiss, A.
(
2014)
Taking
the awful out of the German language: A study of a new way to teach German gender and plural
assignment.
Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching
German, 47(1), 23–41.
Lemhöfer, K., Schriefers, H., & Hanique, I.
(
2010)
Native
language effects in learning second-language grammatical gender: A training
study.
Acta
Psychologica, 135(2), 150–158.
Lemhöfer, K., Spalek, K., & Schriefers, H.
(
2008)
Cross-language
effects of grammatical gender in bilingual word recognition and
production.
Journal of Memory and
Language, 59, 312–330.
Levelt, W. J. M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S.
(
1999)
A
theory of lexical access in speech production.
Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 22, 1–38.
Levine, G.
(
1999)
Gender
assignment to German nonsense nouns: What does the native speaker know that the non-native speaker
doesn’t? In
A. Greenhill,
H. Littlefield, &
C. Tano (Eds),
Proceedings
of the 23rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language
Development (Vol. 2, pp. 397–406). Cascadilla Press.
MacWhinney, B.
(
1978)
The
acquisition of morphophonology. University of Chicago Press.
MacWhinney, B., Bates, E., & Kliegl, R.
(
1984)
Cue
validity and sentence interpretation in English, German, and Italian.
Journal
of Verbal Learning and Verbal
Behavior, 23, 127–150.
Menzel, B.
(
2003)
Genuserwerb
im DaF-Unterricht.
Deutsch als
Fremdsprache, 40(4), 233–237.
Menzel, B., & Tamaoka, K.
(
1995)
Der?
Die?? Das??? Genuszuweisung bei Anfängern: Zufall, Pauken oder
Strategie.
Deutsch als
Fremdsprache, 1, 12–22.
Mills, A. E.
(
1986)
The
acquisition of gender: A study of English and
German. Springer.
Pfaff, C. W.
(
1984)
On
input and residual L1 transfer effects in Turkish and Greek children’s
German. In
R. W. Andersen (Ed.),
Second
languages. A cross-linguistic
perspective (pp. 271–298). Newbury House.
Presson, N., MacWhinney, B., & Tokowicz, N.
(
2014)
Learning
grammatical gender: The use of rules by novice learners.
Applied
Psycholinguistics, 35(4), 709–737.
Ritterbusch, R., LaFond, L., & Agustin, M.
(
2006)
Learner
difficulties with German case: Implications from an action research study.
Die
Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching
German, 39, 30–45.
Rogers, M.
(
1987)
Learners’
difficulties with grammatical gender in German as a foreign language.
Applied
Linguistics, 8(1), 48–74.
Rothman, J.
(
2015)
Linguistic
and cognitive motivations for the Typological Primacy Model (TPM) of third language (L3) transfer: Timing of
acquisition and proficiency considered.
Bilingualism: Language and
Cognition, 18(2): 179–190.
Salamoura, A., & Williams, J. N.
(
2007)
The
representation of grammatical gender in the bilingual lexicon: Evidence from Greek and
German.
Bilingualism: Language and
Cognition, 10(3), 257–275.
Thomoglou, P.
(
2007)
Mutterspracheinfluss
beim Genuserwerb: Beobachtungen an griechischen Lernern des Deutschen.
Deutsch
als
Fremdsprache, 44(1), 20–25.
VanPatten, B., & Borst, S.
(
2012)
The
roles of explicit information and grammatical sensitivity in processing instruction: Nominative-accusative
case marking and word order in German L2.
Foreign Language
Annals, 45(1), 92–109.
Vigliocco, G., Antonini, T., & Garrett, M. F.
(
1997)
Grammatical
gender is on the tip of Italian tongues.
Psychological
Science, 8(4), 314–317.
Walter, D., & MacWhinney, B.
(
2015)
US
German majors’ knowledge of grammatical gender.
Die Unterrichtspraxis: Teaching
German, 48(1), 25–40.
Walter, D. R., & van Compernolle, R. A.
(
2017)
Teaching
German declension as meaning: A concept-based approach.
Innovation in Language
Learning and
Teaching, 11(1), 68–85.
Wegener, H.
(
1999)
German
gender in children’s second language
acquisition. In
B. Unterbeck,
M. Rissanen,
T. Nevalainen, &
M. Saari (Eds),
Gender
in Grammar and
Cognition (pp. 511–544). Mouton de Gruyter.
Williams, S., & Hammarberg, B.
(
1998)
Language
switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model.
Applied
Linguistics, 19(3), 295–333.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Długosz, Kamil
2023.
Processing gender agreement in an additional language: The more languages the better?.
Second Language Research 39:4
► pp. 997 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 march 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.