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The development of gender in simultaneous and successive bilingual acquisition of French – Evidence for AOA and input effects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2016

JONAS GRANFELDT
JONAS GRANFELDT*
Affiliation:
Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University
*
Address for correspondence: Prof. Jonas Granfeldt, Lund University, Centre for Languages and Literature, Box 201, 221 00 Lund, Sweden, jonas.granfeldt@rom.lu.se
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Abstract

This study investigates the effects of Age of Onset of Acquisition (AOA) and the quality and quantity of input on the longitudinal development of gender in the acquisition of French by simultaneous (2L1) and successive bilinguals (cL2). Three aspects of French gender are studied: the abstract GENDER feature, gender assignment and gender concord. The findings show that amount and quality of input correlate significantly with the rate of development of gender assignment. Group-level analyses on gender concord show that there is no significant difference between the L1 and the 2L1 groups and that error patterns are different in the 2L1 and cL2 groups. We conclude that while it is clear from the data that the development of gender assignment is primarily dependent on input conditions the question is more open with respect to gender concord. For concord a combination of AOA, the L1 acquisitional timetable, and input are important factors.

Keywords

Frenchgenderage of onset of acquisitioninputsimultaneous bilingualssuccessive bilinguals
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 21 , Special Issue 4: Recent developments in child bilingualism: Cross-linguistic influence, incomplete acquisition, critical periods and the advantages of bilingualism , August 2018 , pp. 674 - 693
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*I owe a lot to my colleagues Anita Thomas and Malin Ågren at the Centre for Languages and Literature in Lund. The input profile score that I am using in this paper was really their idea to begin with, while I am solely responsible for the empirical analysis in this work. Some of the results on gender assignment are based on student work by Azize Günes who is hereby acknowledged. A previous version of this paper was presented at the Language Learning Seminar at Lund University and at EuroSLA 25 in Aix-en-Provence. I thank the audiences present. I also acknowledge the comments from three BLC reviewers and from Tanja Kupisch who helped to considerably improve the manuscript. All remaining errors are mine. The study was funded by a grant from the Swedish Research Council, grant number 2008–2086, to the project Age of Onset of Acquisition and Linguistic Development in French.

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