Age and input in the acquisition of grammatical gender in Dutch

Sharon Unsworth

doi:10.1177/0267658308090185

Abstract

This article investigates the effect of age of first exposure and the quantity and quality of input to which non-native acquirers (L2ers) are exposed in their acquisition of grammatical gender in Dutch. Data from 103 English-speaking children, preteens and adults were analysed for gender agreement on definite determiners. It was observed that although most learners regularly overgeneralized the common gender definite determiner de to neuter nouns, there also existed child and adult L2ers who consistently produced the target neuter determiner het with these nouns ( contra Carroll, 1989; Hawkins and Franceschina, 2004; Franceschina, 2005). Participants in all three groups produced het equally frequently with non-derived nouns as with diminutives, one of the few reliable morphophonological cues for neuter gender (compare Carroll, 1999). The present findings are evaluated in light of previous research (Hulk and Cornips, 2006a) suggesting that the quality of input to which L2ers are exposed may significantly affect their ability to proceed beyond the aforementioned stage of overgeneralization. Evidence for frequency effects and the observation that targetlike performance correlated with length of exposure suggests that quantity of input is a significant factor in the acquisition of Dutch gender. This is to be expected if the acquisition of gender is for a large part word-learning (Carroll, 1989; Montrul and Potowski, 2007)

Highlights

One of the most frequent observations made about non-native (L2) adults is that they stop short, or fossilize, before reaching nativelike levels of ultimate attainment (e.g. Bley-Vroman, 1990)
Summarizing, the results indicate that children and adults consistently produced de with common nouns but, on the whole, they regularly failed to produce het with neuter nouns; when sub-divided on the basis of proficiency and length of exposure, the adults tended to be more targetlike than the children, but this difference was not always reflected in the statistics
As observed by Andersson (1992) for the acquisition of grammatical gender in Swedish and Blom et al for Dutch, the child and adult participants in the present study make the same kind of errors in their use of definite determiners: most overgeneralize de to neuter nouns, and there are a limited number who use het with common nouns

Summary

Introduction

One of the most frequent observations made about non-native (L2) adults is that they stop short, or fossilize, before reaching nativelike levels of ultimate attainment (e.g. Bley-Vroman, 1990). L2 children are observed – and to a certain extent are assumed – to regularly attain native levels of competence (for relevant discussion, see Hyltenstam and Abrahamsson, 2003). This discrepancy is often interpreted as reflecting a fundamental difference in the cognitive processes employed by children and adults in the language acquisition process. Several studies have observed that even after considerable exposure to the target language in question, L2 adults regularly fail to provide appropriately gender-marked determiners and adjectives (see, for example, on Romance languages: Carroll, 1989; Dewaele and Véronique, 2001; Bruhn de Garavito and White, 2002; Franceschina, 2005; on Swedish: Andersson, 1992; Hyltenstam, 1992; on German: Rogers, 1987)

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