Gender marking in written L2 French

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this study was to examine how a group of 20 learners of second-language French express gender marking in three written tasks administered over the course of 21 months, including an academic year abroad. All full nouns modified by either a determiner or an adjective overtly marked for gender were analyzed (n = 1,601), and each token was coded for a set of extralinguistic and linguistic features identified in previous literature as playing a role in gender marking. The analysis reveals that targetlike rates of use increased between pre-stay testing and in-stay testing, and that levels were maintained at post-stay. In addition, three factors – time, noun gender, and syllable distance – were found to significantly characterize behavior with respect to gender marking.