Second language learners of English sometimes establish gender agreement between a possessive determiner and the local noun that follows it, rather than with its target antecedent (*“Maryi loves hisi brother”). The production and understanding profiles of adult Mandarin second language learners of English and monolingual English-speaking children were explored to establish (a) if such errors result from an inherent tendency to establish agreement locally within the noun phrase or rather from transfer of first language agreement procedures, and (b) if these errors are production specific or rather reflect nontarget grammatical representations, thus also influencing understanding. The results of the elicited production portion of the inquiry support the hypothesis that gender agreement errors in learners’ production of possessives result from a generalized tendency to establish local agreement. The results of the understanding portion of the study propose that the observed bent for local agreement within the noun phrase is production specific and does not characterize learners’ grammatical representations as a whole.