The acquisition of grammatical gender in L2 German by learners with Afrikaans, English or Italian as their L1

Carla Ellis,Kate Huddlestone,Simone Conradie

doi:10.5774/41-0-131

Abstract

In recent years there has been an increase in research on the acquisition of morphological aspects of a second language (L2). Specifically, a number of studies have been conducted on the acquisition of grammatical gender in the L2. The study reported in this paper investigated the adult L2 acquisition of grammatical gender in German by first language (L1) speakers of Afrikaans, English and Italian, respectively. The aim of the study was to determine how similarities and differences between the L1 and L2 in terms of grammatical gender affect the acquisition of this aspect of the target L2. Two experimental tasks – a picture naming task and a sentence completion task – were designed to determine to what extent the grammatical gender of nouns is accurately reflected on determiners and adjectives. Throughout, the L1 Italian group outperformed the other two groups. Since Italian (like German) expresses grammatical gender on determiners and nouns, while neither English nor Afrikaans does, the results indicate that the acquisition of grammatical gender in an L2 is easier for learners whose L1 also expresses grammatical gender. Specifically, the results provide evidence for so-called "deep transfer" (transfer of abstract grammatical properties) from the L1 to the L2 in this area of L2 acquisition: since the grammatical gender systems of Italian and German are not congruent, the Italian speakers' advantage over the other two L1 groups cannot be the result of simple "surface transfer" (transferring knowledge of the grammatical gender of specific nouns in the L1 to the L2) and must be attributed to deep transfer.

Highlights

Throughout the past few decades a wealth of research on second language (L2) acquisition has focused on the role of the learner's first language (L1) (Clahsen and Muysken 1986; White 1989; Schwartz and Sprouse 1996; Vainikka and Young-Scholten 1996; Slabakova 2000; Sabourin 2001; Juffs 2005)
In recent years there has been an increase in research on the acquisition of morphological aspects of the target L2; a number of studies have been conducted on the acquisition of grammatical gender in the L2 – see, for example, Hawkins and Franceschina 2004; White, Valenzuela, Kozlowska-MacGregor and Leung 2004; Franceschina 2005; Sabourin, Stowe and De Haan 2006; Blom, Polišenská and Unsworth 2008; Blom, Polišenská and Weerman 2008; Cornips and Hulk 2008; and Unsworth 2008
Several studies suggest that transfer from the L1 can assist in L2 acquisition when the L1 and L2 are similar in terms of the relevant property and that this is true for grammatical gender (Sabourin et al 2006:2)

Summary

Introduction

Throughout the past few decades a wealth of research on second language (L2) acquisition has focused on the role of the learner's first language (L1) (Clahsen and Muysken 1986; White 1989; Schwartz and Sprouse 1996; Vainikka and Young-Scholten 1996; Slabakova 2000; Sabourin 2001; Juffs 2005). This paper is based on Carla Ellis' (2011) Master's thesis, supervised by Simone Conradie and Kate Huddlestone. 18 Carla Ellis, Simone Conradie & Kate Huddlestone reported in this paper investigated the acquisition of grammatical gender in L2 German by adult L1 speakers of Afrikaans, English and Italian, respectively. Several studies suggest that transfer from the L1 can assist in L2 acquisition when the L1 and L2 are similar in terms of the relevant property and that this is true for grammatical gender (Sabourin et al 2006:2). Surface transfer is possible when the grammatical gender system of the L1 is congruent to that of the target L2; for example, when both the L1 and the L2 have two grammatical genders – masculine and feminine – and all/most of the nouns that are feminine in the L1 are feminine in the L2, and all/most of the nouns that are masculine in the L1 are masculine in the L2

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion