Hostname: page-component-6b989bf9dc-mbg9n Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-14T13:43:00.930Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Whose? L2-English speakers' possessive pronoun gender errors*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2010

INÉS ANTÓN-MÉNDEZ
INÉS ANTÓN-MÉNDEZ*
Affiliation:
Utrecht University, The Netherlands & University of New England, Australia
*
Address for correspondence: Psychology, SBCSS, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australiaiantonme@une.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article reports the results of an experiment on production of his/her in English as a second language (L2) by proficient native speakers of Italian, Spanish, and Dutch. In Dutch and English, 3rd person singular possessive pronouns agree in gender with their antecedents, in Italian and Spanish possessives in general agree with the noun they accompany (possessum). However, while in Italian the 3rd person singular possessives overtly agree in gender with the possessums, in Spanish they lack overt morphological gender marking. Dutch speakers were found to make very few possessive gender errors in any condition, Spanish and Italian speakers, on the other hand, behaved like Dutch speakers when the possessum was inanimate, but made more errors when it was animate (e.g., his mother). Thus, even proficient L2 speakers are susceptible to the influence of automatic processes that should apply in their first language alone. The pattern of results has implications for pronoun production and models of bilingual language production.

Keywords

bilingualismpossessive pronounssecond language speakersgender errors
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 318 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This research was funded by a grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) to the author (VENI 275–70-019). I would like to thank my participants for their generosity with their time, my Italian informants, Anna Cavallaro, Franko Leoni, Ivano Caponigro, and Giuli Dussias for their valuable help with the preparation of the stimuli, and my research assistants, Jasmijn Claij and Mee Wun Lee, for their great work transcribing the recordings.

References

Abutalebi, J., & Green, D. W. (2008). Control mechanisms in bilingual language production: Neural evidence from language switching studies. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23, 557–582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antón-Méndez, I. (2010). Gender bender: Gender errors in L2 pronoun production. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 39, 119–139.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Antón-Méndez, I., Nicol, J., & Garrett, M. F. (2002). The relation between gender and number agreement processing. Syntax, 5, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R., & Gulikers, L. (1995). The CELEX lexical database (CD-ROM). Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Blom, E., Polišenská, P., & Weerman, F. (2008). Articles, adjectives and age of onset: The acquisition of Dutch grammatical gender. Second Language Research, 24, 297–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, L., Trofimovich, P., White, J., Cardoso, W., & Horst, M. (2009). Some input on he easy/difficult grammar question: An empirical study. The Modern Language Journal, 93, 336–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colomé, A. (2001). Lexical activation in bilinguals' speech production: Language-specific or language independent? Journal of Memory and Language, 45, 721–736.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbett, G. G. (2006). Agreement. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
De Bot, K. (1992). A bilingual production model: Levelt's ‘speaking’ model adapted. Applied Linguistics, 13, 1–24.Google Scholar
Dijkstra, T., & van Heuven, W. J. B. (2002). The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decission. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5, 175–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emmorey, K., Borinstein, H. G., Thompson, R., & Gollan, T. (2008). Bimodal bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11, 43–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Epstein, S. D., Flynn, S., & Martohardjono, G. (1996). Second language acquisition: Theoretical and experimental issues in contemporary research. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 19, 677–785.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, M. F. (1988). Processes in language production. In Newmeyer, F. J. (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge survey (vol. III), pp. 69–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, D. W. (1986). Control, activation, and resource: A framework and a model for the control of speech in bilinguals. Brain and Language, 27, 210–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, J. W. (1991). The exponence of gender in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry, 22, 27–62.Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, R. J., Pickering, M. J., & Veltkamp, E. (2004). Is syntax separate or shared between languages? Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in Spanish–English bilinguals. Psychological Science, 15, 409–414.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jescheniak, J. D., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1994). Word frequency effects in speech production: Retrieval of syntactic information and of phonological form. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 824–843.Google Scholar
Jia, G., & Fuse, A. (2007). Acquisition of English grammatical morphology by native Mandarin-speaking children and adolescents: Age-related differences. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 1280–1299.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, J. S., & Newport, E. L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 60–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S. C., Misra, M., & Guo, T. (2008). Language selection in bilingual speech: Evidence for inhibitory processes. Acta Psychologica, 128, 416–430.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, B. (1987). Theories of second-language learning. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Pickering, M. J., & Branigan, H. P. (1998). The representation of verbs: Evidence from syntactic priming in language production. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 633–651.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poulisse, N. (1999). Slips of the tongue: Speech errors in first and second language production (vol. 20). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabourin, L., & Stowe, L. (2008). Second language processing: When are first and second languages processed similarly? Second Language Research, 24 (3), 397–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slevc, L. R., Wardlow Lane, L., & Ferreira, V. S. (2007). Pronoun production: Word or world knowledge? MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 53, 191–203.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1993). Adult language acquisition: A review from child language study. In Perdue, C. (ed.), Adult language acquisition: Cross-linguistic perspectives (vol. II): The results, pp. 239–252. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tokowicz, N., & MacWhinney, B. (2005). Implicit and explicit measures of sensitivity to violations in second language grammar: An event-related potential investigation. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2, 173–204.Google Scholar
Truscott, J., & Sharwood Smith, M. (2004). Acquisition by processing: A modular perspective on language development. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ullman, M. T. (2004). Contributions of memory circuits to language: The declarative/procedural model. Cognition, 92, 231–270.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ullman, M. T. (2005). A cognitive neuroscience perspective on second language acquisition: The Declarative/Procedural Model. In Sanz, C. (ed.), Mind and context in adult second language acquisition, pp. 141–178. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
van Hout, R. (1996). Waar kwamen hun onze taal binnen? [Where did “them” enter our language?]. In van Hout, R. & Kruijsen, J. (ed.), Taalvariatie [Language variation], pp. 143–156. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Vigliocco, G., & Franck, J. (1999). When sex and syntax go hand in hand: Gender agreement in language production. Journal of Memory and Language, 40, 455–478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, J., Muñoz, C., & Collins, L. (2007). The his/her challenge: Making progress in a ‘regular’ L2 programme. Language Awareness, 16, 278–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar