L2 learners' sensitivity to semantic and morphophonological information on Swahili nouns

Spinner, Patti; Thomas, Jamie A.

doi:10.1515/iral-2014-0013

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Alarcón (2009Alarcón ( , 2010; see also Belacchi & Cubelli, 2012) further suggests that in pronoun resolution native speakers take equal advantage of morphological and semantic cues, while nonnative speakers favor semantic cues rather than morphological cues, with the latter being less available for automatic access. Indeed, animacy has been confirmed to have a privileged status for transfer to nonnative processing, which is accessible outside of the L1 linguistic system (semantic core hypothesis, Spinner & Thomas, 2014). If the gender biases in our data can only be observed with animate noun referents, it would confirm prior findings that the semantic gender component allows for an easier, more transparent mapping between biological gender and formal gender, leading to the misinterpretation of the grammatical gender as semantic.…”

Section: Present Studysupporting

confidence: 82%

“…Sagarra & Herschensohn, 2008), larger mismatch effects in sentences with violations (Deustch, Bentin & Katz, 1999), are more resistant to the attractions errors due to the adjacent location (Deutsch & Bentin 2001), and evoke fewer agreement production errors (Antón-Méndéz, 1999;Vigliocco & Franck, 1999). Advanced L2 speakers also show the same tendencies for the processing preference of the animate nouns (Alarcón, 2009(Alarcón, , 2010Spinner & Thomas, 2014). The superior status of animate nouns have been associated with the fact that the semantic component of gender in animate referents associated with biological gender reduces the processing demands for establishing agreement and coreference with other parts of the sentence (Deutsch et al, 1999).…”

Section: Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gender matters: From L1 grammar to L2 semantics

Cook

2016

Bilingualism

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The study investigates the effects of grammatical gender on bilingual processing. Native speakers of Russian (a gendered language) learning English and monolingual English controls performed a self-paced reading task in English (a non-gendered language). As predicted, bilingual speakers showed delayed latencies to gendered pronouns (he or she) that were incongruent with the noun's grammatical gender in Russian, indicating that first language (L1) grammatical gender assignment can be interpreted as biological gender in nonnative (L2) processing. The L1 gender bias was only found in sentences containing animate, but not inanimate, nouns. These results speak against the syntactic mechanism being solely responsible for gender biases, but rather support a semantic transfer account due to coactivation of linguistic and conceptual features as proposed in the sex and gender hypothesis (SAGH, Vigliocco, Vinson, Paganelli & Dworzynski, 2005). Overall, the study provides clear evidence for the L1 grammatical gender bias in bilingual processing, albeit constrained by animacy.

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Section: Present Studysupporting

confidence: 82%

Section: Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender matters: From L1 grammar to L2 semantics

Cook

2016

Bilingualism

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“…In this instance, Rodríguez found that the English-speaking learners of Spanish were sensitive to morphological mismatches during a reading test. Similarly, Spinner and Thomas (2014) found that English-speaking learners of Swahili (elementary to intermediate L2 Swahili) attend to morphophonological features when determining grammatical gender, even though English itself does not typically mark for gender. Addressing a wider range of L1s, Wu (2016) also uncovered priming differences between advanced learners of English with different L1s ranging from morphologically-rich Turkish to morphologically-poor Chinese.…”

Section: Learner Language and Productivitymentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Taking the position that learners do not decompose complex word forms, Neubauer and Clahsen (2009) conclude from their research on advanced Polish-speaking learners of German, that L2 learners do not decompose inflected forms, instead relying on whole-word processing. However, while there is evidence that adults make less use of syntactic structures, most research refutes the strong claim that learners are not at all sensitive to L2 morphology (e.g., Bosch et al, 2017;Langman & Bayley, 2002;Rodríguez, 2013;Rehak & Juffs, 2010;Spinner & Thomas, 2014).…”

Section: Learner Language and Productivitymentioning

confidence: 95%

A Corpus Study of the English Suffixes -ness and -acy: Productivity, Genre, and Implications for L2 Learning

Naismith

Kanwit

2021

CJAL

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Despite substantial scholarship relating to word structure (Anderson, 2018), for English affixes the relationship between productivity, genre, and second language (L2) learning remains unclear. Analysis of the existing literature reveals that deadjectival noun suffixes (i.e., nouns derived from adjectives such as appropriacy or goodness) have been underexamined. To address this gap, we examine two rival suffixes, -acy and -ness, through the lens of Construction Morphology (Booij, 2010), considering numerous factors which might condition their varying usage. Critically, corpus data in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus (Davies, 2008-) reveal the importance of considering these affixes’ productivity in relation to genre, since -acy is especially frequent in academic texts, principally within certain social sciences. The implications for learners and teachers of English as a second language are discussed, particularly higher-level learners building communicative competence in academic contexts, along with a preliminary learner corpus comparison of the two variants.

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“…Juose klausiama, kuriais giminės požymiais -semantiniais ar morfologiniaisremiasi mokiniai tada, kai atpažįsta semantiškai motyvuotą daiktavardžio giminę, ar kai su juo derina kitas kalbos dalis (plg. Oliphant 1997; Dewaele, Véronique 2001;Franceschina 2005;Menzel 2005, Spinner, Thomas 2014, arba kurias giminės reikšmės (vyriškosios ar moteriškosios) formas mokiniai vartoja taisyklingiau (plg.…”

Section: įVadasunclassified

On the assignment of natural gender in Lithuanian as a second language

Bružaitė-Liseckienė

2017

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The present study investigates how beginner adult students of Lithuanian as a foreign language assign natural gender to nouns. The grammatical category of gender is a complex phenomenon which belongs to the domains of syntax, morphology and semantics. As far as this paper is concerned, the assignment of grammatical gender is recognised as an academically challenging task to foreign language learners; however, the issue is still under-researched in the studies of Lithuanian as a foreign language.The aim of this study is to examine whether the beginner adult learners of Lithuanian as a foreign language rely on semantic or morphological clues when assigning natural gender, to identify the difficulties they encounter and the reasons for the difficulties. The paper analyses how learners assign natural gender to the nouns when their morphological and semantic clues conform, how they deal with gender conflict and how they assign indefinite gender to nouns.15 Vilnius University students, who attended courses on Lithuanian as a foreign language, were asked to participate in an experimental task, which consisted of assigning a masculine or feminine pronoun to 50 different nouns. The participants were provided with both morphological form of a noun and its visual representation, i.e. the students were given pictures reflecting a biological sex of the referents. The empirical analysis of the material was based on the method of error analysis.The results of the study have revealed that the beginner learners of Lithuanian as a foreign language tended to rely more on semantic than morphological clues when assigning natural gender. As expected, most errors were made when the learners had to deal with gender conflict. It was also established that the participants of the experimental task performed worse on marked plural forms of nouns than on unmarked singular forms. Finally, it turned out that the learners made more errors when they had to assign gender to unknown nouns, which showed that they had not been prepared to use semantic or morphological clues for the purpose of identifying the gender of unknown words. Since a relatively small number of learners were involved in the study, its insights should be confirmed by further research. The study might be relevant to researchers of foreign language acquisition and foreign language teachers.

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L2 learners' sensitivity to semantic and morphophonological information on Swahili nouns

Cited by 4 publications

References 26 publications

Gender matters: From L1 grammar to L2 semantics

Gender matters: From L1 grammar to L2 semantics

A Corpus Study of the English Suffixes -ness and -acy: Productivity, Genre, and Implications for L2 Learning

On the assignment of natural gender in Lithuanian as a second language

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