Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T22:40:04.218Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

EXPLORING CROSSLINGUISTIC INFLUENCE IN GENDER MARKING IN SPANISH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2021

Aarnes Gudmestad Open the ORCID record for Aarnes Gudmestad [Opens in a new window]  and
Amanda Edmonds Open the ORCID record for Amanda Edmonds [Opens in a new window]
Aarnes Gudmestad*
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA
Amanda Edmonds
Affiliation:
Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, FR
*
*Corresponding author E-mail: agudmest@vt.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the current study, we examined the role of first-language (L1) influence on the additional-language development of grammatical gender marking in Spanish. The participants were L1 speakers of English or French (N = 215), who were learning Spanish and who were at three instructional levels. The data came from their use of gender marking in noun-modifier pairs in an argumentative essay. We adopted the unified methodological framework developed by Scott Jarvis and we applied insights from variationist second language acquisition to contribute to the discussion about whether learners’ L1 impacts variability in targetlike gender marking in additional-language Spanish. Specifically, we designed our study to investigate four types of evidence that Jarvis identified (intragroup homogeneity, intergroup heterogeneity, cross-language congruity, and intralingual contrasts), and we used variationist methods to account for other factors that are known to impact variable use of gender marking. The quantitative analyses supported each type of evidence, consequently demonstrating that these learners’ L1 influenced their variable use of gender marking in Spanish. We concluded by reflecting on the contributions that the current study has made to the understanding of gender marking in additional-language Spanish and to research on L1 influence more generally.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , September 2022 , pp. 998 - 1019
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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

A Global Partnership Project Award (College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) supported this research.

References

REFERENCES

Ågren, M. (2008). A la recherche de la morphologie silencieuse: sur le développement du pluriel en français L2 écrit. (Doctoral dissertation). Lund University.Google Scholar
Alarcón, I. (2010). Gender assignment and agreement in L2 Spanish: The effects of morphological marking, animacy, and gender. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 3, 267–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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, 14, 332–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alarcón, I. (2014). Grammatical gender in second language Spanish. In Geeslin, K. L. (Ed.), The handbook of Spanish second language acquisition (pp. 202–218). Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Alhawary, M. T. (2009). Speech processing prerequisites or L1 transfer? Evidence from English and French L2 learners of Arabic. Foreign Language Annals, 42, 367–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alonso, R. A. (Ed.). (2016). Crosslinguistic influence and second language acquisition. Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayley, R. (2005). Second language acquisition and sociolinguistics. Intercultural Communication Studies, 14, 1–13.Google Scholar
Bosque, I., & Demonte, V. (Eds.). (1999). Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española. Espasa.Google Scholar
Bruhn de Garavito, J., & White, L. (2002). The second language acquisition of Spanish DPs: The status of grammatical features. In Pérez-Leroux, A. T. & Liceras, J. M. (Eds.), The acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax: The L1/L2 connection (pp. 143–160). Bilingual Press.Google Scholar
Cenoz, J. (2001). The effect of linguistic distance, L2 status and age on cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition. In Cenoz, J., Hufeisen, B., & Jessner, U. (Eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 8–20). Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbett, G. G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Douglas Fir Group. (2016). A transdisciplinary framework for SLA in a multilingual world. The Modern Language Journal, 100, 19–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, C., Conradie, S., & Huddlestone, K. (2012). The acquisition of grammatical gender in L2 German by learners with Afrikaans, English or Italian as their L1. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, 41, 17–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, N. C., & Collins, L. (2009). Input and second language acquisition: The roles of frequency, form, and function: Introduction to the special issue. The Modern Language Journal, 93, 329–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, N. C., & Sagarra, N. (2011). Learned attention in adult language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33, 589–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández-García, M. (1999). Patterns of gender agreement in the speech of second language learners. In J. Gutiérrez-Rexach & F. Martínez-Gil (Eds.), Advances in Hispanic linguistics: Papers from the 2nd Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 3–15). Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Finnemann, M. D. (1992). Learning agreement in the noun phrase: The strategies of three first-year Spanish students. International review of Applied Linguistics in Teaching, 30, 121–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franceschina, F. (2001). Against an L2 morphological deficit as an explanation for the differences between native and non-native grammars. In Foster-Cohen, S. & Nizegorodcew, A. (Eds.), EUROSLA yearbook (Vol. 1, pp. 143–158). John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Franceschina, F. (2002). Case and ϕ-feature agreement in advanced L2 Spanish grammars. In Foster-Cohen, S., Ruthenberg, T., & Poschen, M.-L. (Eds.), EUROSLA yearbook (Vol. 2, pp. 71–86). John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Geeslin, K. L., & Gudmestad, A. (2010). An exploration of the range and frequency of occurrence of forms in potentially variable structures in second-language Spanish. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 32, 433–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golden, A., Jarvis, S., & Tenfjord, K. (Eds.). (2017). Crosslinguistic influence and distinctive patterns of language learning: Findings and insights from a learner corpus. Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Gries, S. Th. (2015). Statistics for learner corpus research. In Granger, S., Gilquin, G., & Meunier, F. (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of learner corpus research (pp. 159–181). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gudmestad, A. (2020). On the relationship between epistemology and methodology: A reanalysis of grammatical gender in additional-language Spanish. In Edmonds, A., Leclercq, P., & Gudmestad, A. (Eds.), Interpreting language-learning data (Eurosla Studies 4) (pp. 111–137). Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Gudmestad, A. (2021). Variationist approaches. In N. Tracy-Ventura & M. Paquot (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and corpora (pp. 230–241). Routledge.Google Scholar
Gudmestad, A., Edmonds, A., & Metzger, T. (2019). Using variationism and learner corpus research to investigate grammatical gender marking in additional-language Spanish. Language Learning, 69, 911–949.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gudmestad, A., Edmonds, A., & Metzger, T. (2021). Moving beyond the native-speaker bias in the analysis of variable gender marking. Frontiers in Communication, 6, 165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gujord, A-K. H. (2021). Crosslinguistic influence. In Tracy-Ventura, N. & Paquot, M. (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and corpora (pp. 345–357). Routledge.Google Scholar
Gurzynski-Weiss, L., Geeslin, K. L., Daidone, D., Linford, B., Long, A. Y., Michalski, I., & Solon, M. (2018). Examining multifaceted sources of input: Variationist and usage-based approaches to understanding the L2 classroom. In Tyler, A. E., Ortega, L., Uno, M., & Park, H. I. (Eds.), Usage-inspired L2 instruction: Researched pedagogy (pp. 291–311). John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hemmert, G. A. J., Schons, L. M., Wieseke, J., & Schimmelpfenning, H. (2018). Log-likelihood-based pseudo-R 2 in logistic regression: Deriving sample-sensitive benchmarks. Sociological Methods & Research, 47, 507–531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jach, D. (2018). A usage-based approach to preposition placement in English as a second language. Language Learning, 68, 271–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarvis, S. (2000). Methodological rigor in the study of transfer: Identifying L1 influence in the interlanguage lexicon. Language Learning, 50, 245–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarvis, S. (2010). Comparison-based and detection-based approaches to transfer research. In Roberts, L., Howard, M., Laoire, M. Ó., & Singleton, D. (Eds.), EUROSLA yearbook (pp. 169–192). John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Jarvis, S. (2016). The scope of transfer research. In Yu, L. & Odlin, T. (Eds.), New perspectives on transfer in second language learning (pp. 17–47). Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Jarvis, S., & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lado, R. (1957). Linguistics across cultures: Applied linguistics for language teachers. University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
McManus, K. (2021). Crosslinguistic influence and second language learning. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchel, R., Myles, F., & Marsden, E. (2019). Second language learning theories. 4th ed. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, R., Tracy-Ventura, N., & McManus, K. (2017). Anglophone students abroad: Identity, social relationships, and language learning. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle 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 acquisition. Language Learning, 58, 503–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Odlin, T. (1989). Language transfer. Cross-linguistic influence in language learning. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortin, R., & Fernandez-Florez, C. (2019). Transfer of variable grammars in third language acquisition. International Journal of Multilingualism, 16, 442–458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paquot, M. (2017). L1 frequency in foreign language acquisition: Recurrent word combinations in French and Spanish EFL learning. Second Language Research, 33, 13–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Picoral, A., & Carvalho, A. M. (2020). The acquisition of preposition + article contractions in L3 Portuguese among different L1-speaking learners: A variationist approach. Languages, 5, 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ragnhildstveit, S. (2017). Gender assignment and L1 transfer in Norwegian second language learners’ written performance. In Golden, A., Jarvis, S., & Tenfjord, K. (Eds.) Crosslinguistic influence and distinctive patterns of language learning: Findings and insights from a learner corpus (pp. 110–154). Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
R Core Team (2020). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/ Google Scholar
Rehner, K. (2002). The development of aspects of linguistic and discourse competence by advanced second language learners of French. (Doctoral dissertation). Dissertation Abstracts International, 63, 12.Google Scholar
Ringbom, H. (1987). The role of the first language in foreign language learning. Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Sabourin, L. (2001). L1 effects on the processing of grammatical gender in L2. EUROSLA Yearbook, 1, 159–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabourin, L., Stowe, L. A., de Haan, G. J. (2006). Transfer effects in learning a second language grammatical gender system. Second Language Research, 22, 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spinner, P., & Juffs, A. (2008). L2 grammatical gender in a complex morphological system: The case of German. IRAL, 46, 315–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tokowicz, N. & MacWhinney, B. (2005). Implicit and explicit measures of sensitivity to violations in second language grammar. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 173–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, L., Valenzuela, E., Kozlowska-Macgregor, M., & Leung, Y-K. I. (2004). Gender and number agreement in nonnative Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 105–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yu, L., & Odlin, T. (Eds.). (2016). New perspectives on transfer in second language learning. Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Gudmestad and Edmonds supplementary material

Gudmestad and Edmonds supplementary material

Download Gudmestad and Edmonds supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 69.1 KB