Gender in Unilingual and Mixed Speech of Spanish Heritage Speakers in The Netherlands

Abstract

This study examines heritage speakers of Spanish in The Netherlands regarding their production of gender in both their languages (Spanish and Dutch) as well as their gender assignment strategies in code-switched constructions. A director-matcher task was used to elicit unilingual and mixed speech from 21 participants (aged 8 to 52, mean = 17). The nominal domain consisting of a determiner, noun, and adjective was targeted in three modes: (i) Unilingual Spanish mode, (ii) unilingual Dutch mode, and (iii) code-switched mode in both directions (Dutch to Spanish and Spanish to Dutch). The production of gender in both monolingual modes was deviant from the respective monolingual norms, especially in Dutch, the dominant language of the society. In the code-switching mode, evidence was found for the gender default strategy (common in Dutch, masculine in Spanish), the analogical gender strategy (i.e., the preference to assign the gender of the translation equivalent) as well as two thus far unattested strategies involving a combination of a default gender and the use of a non-prototypical word order. External factors such as age of onset of bilingualism, amount of exposure and use of both languages had an effect on both gender accuracy in the monolingual modes and assignment strategies in the code-switching modes.

Adjective position in the code-switched speech of Spanish and Papiamento heritage speakers in the Netherlands: Individual differences and methodological considerations

“…Variation at the individual level has been observed by Boers et al (2020) andvan Osch et al (2022), who demonstrate that differences between speakers with respect to gender agreement strategies in code-switching are related to differences in dominance, in terms of proficiency, use and exposure. Similarly, Liceras et al (2008) and Munarriz-Ibarrola et al (2022) report differences in code-switching patterns between groups of bilinguals that seem to be related to the order of acquisition of the languages in the particular bilingual group.…”

“…Nevertheless, "no clear evidence has emerged concerning the structural regularities that underlie mixed speech across language pairs, or even within the same language pair in different communities" (Parafita Couto et al, 2023). Recent studies suggest that different codeswitching strategies may be used between members of the same community (e.g., Boers et al, 2020) and also that there are crosscommunity differences between communities that share the same language combinations, suggesting that sociolinguistic variables may in some cases override structural constraints. However, to date, we still do not have a clear picture of how the interaction of different linguistic and extralinguistic components shapes code-switching outcomes (Stell and Yakpo, 2015).…”

“… 3 Some participants used non-standard gender agreement in unilingual Spanish or Dutch utterances, which is discussed in both Boers et al, 2020 and van Osch et al, 2022 . Gender assignment in code-switched nominal constructions is discussed in these publications as well.…”

A triangulation study on gender agreement in Spanish by native Basque speakers

“…Another important factor to explain the production of N-SGA in this study is the use of the masculine default gender, an important variable in other previous studies (e.g., Balam et al, 2021). However, it was interesting to note that, contrary to other studies analyzing N-SGA in other language contact situations (e.g., Alarcón, 2011;Bianchi, 2012;Boers et al, 2020;Goebel-Mahrle and Shin, 2020;Ramírez Cruz, 2009), the majority of the antecedents with which speakers produced N-SGA ended with their corresponding canonical vowel.…”

Eyetracking evidence for heritage speakers’ access to abstract syntactic agreement features in real-time processing

“…Various work has found that HS children tend to over-extend the default gender more so than do their monolingual peers (Sanchez-Sadek et al, 1975;Anderson, 1999;Montrul and Potowski, 2007;Cuza and Pérez-Tattam, 2015). These patterns persist into adulthood, and manifest in divergent production and comprehension of gender agreement, as mentioned above (Montrul et al, 2008;Alarcón, 2011;Boers et al, 2020;Hur et al, 2020). Although a substantial portion of the literature on gender in heritage languages has focused on the heritage gender system in the environment of a dominant language that lacks grammatical gender (i.e., English; cf.…”