Gender assignment to lexical words and nonwords

Le résumé fourni par la source

This experiment is part of a larger project using the acquisition and maintenance of grammatical gender in bilingual adults as a lens into linguistic knowledge and processing (Modelling bottom-up and top-down linguistic knowledge across different contexts of bilingual development). Particularly, this project assesses how input frequency and age of second-language (L2) acquisition affect item-specific and rule-based aspects of lexical and grammatical development among French-German and English-German (i) simultaneous bilinguals (ii) early (child) L2 learners (iii) late (adult) L2 learners as well as (iv) child immigrants (early attriters) and (v) adult immigrants (late attriters) in non-German-speaking countries. In a range of production and comprehension experiments (e.g. eye-tracking), we test for differences in how these bilinguals rely on phonological rules versus item frequency in identifying the lexical gender of words and how they recruit grammatical rules versus non-grammatical cues in the construction of syntactic gender agreement when they use the German language. The large data set collected in different linguistic environments will allow us to delineate the scope of cross-linguistic influence and model the contributions of age of acquisition, frequency of use and language dominance as continuous variables. The gender assignment experiment described here focuses specifically on the interaction of these internal and external factors when identifying the lexical gender of German words and non-words that are presented on a screen.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.