Gender and number agreement in nonnative Spanish

TLDR

The study situates its findings within theories of parameter resetting in nonnative acquisition, contrasting the failed functional features hypothesis with the full transfer full access hypothesis. The study investigates how Spanish gender and number are acquired by adult learners whose first languages either have or lack gender. The experiment involved adult learners at three proficiency levels and native speakers, eliciting oral production and an interpretation task that required selecting pictures based on gender and number contrasts. Results show proficiency effects, with low‑proficiency learners differing from natives while intermediate and advanced groups do not; L1 and prior gender‑language exposure had no effect, supporting the full transfer full access hypothesis.

Abstract

This paper reports on an experiment investigating the acquisition of Spanish, a language that has a gender feature for nouns and gender agreement for determiners and adjectives, by speakers of a first language (L1) that also has gender (French), as well as an L1 that does not (English). Number (present in all three languages) is also investigated. Subjects were adult learners of Spanish, at three levels of proficiency, as well as a control group of native speakers. Oral production data were elicited. Subjects were also tested on an interpretation task, in which the selection of pictures corresponding to particular sentences depends on number and gender contrasts. The results from both tasks show significant effects for proficiency; low proficiency groups differ significantly from native speakers, but advanced and intermediate groups do not. There were no significant effects for L1 or for prior exposure to another second language with gender. The findings are discussed in the context of two different theories as to the possibility of parameter resetting in nonnative acquisition, namely, the failed functional features hypothesis and the full transfer full access hypothesis. The results are consistent with the latter hypothesis.