The role of differential cross-linguistic influence and other constraints in predictive L2 gender processing

Abstract

Previous studies on the use of morphosyntactic gender cues for linguistic prediction show that non-native speakers’ use of grammatical gender information is influenced by various factors. In the present study, we examined the influence of differential cross-linguistic influence (DCLI), knowledge of L2 lexical gender, gender congruency, and L2 fluency. To this end, we investigated L1 Oromo L2 Amharic speakers as well as L1 Amharic speakers, using the Visual World Paradigm (VWP) and supplementary offline experiments. We investigated two groups of L2 Amharic speakers, i.e., L1 Eastern Oromo L2 Amharic and L1 Western Oromo L2 Amharic speakers. The Eastern Oromo dialect patterns with Amharic in terms of gender agreement unlike the Western Oromo dialect which does not have grammatical gender. Analyses of the participants’ proportion of eye fixations show that early exposure to the gendered Eastern Oromo dialect facilitates predictive L2 gender processing. L2 fluency, the speakers’ knowledge of L2 lexical gender, and specific properties of the gender cues modulate predictive L2 gender processing. However, there is no significant influence of lexical gender congruency. The study has ecological significance as it presents empirical data from understudied languages.