Phonological vs. natural gender cues in the acquisition of German by simultaneous and sequential bilinguals (German–Russian)

• Published in: Journal of child language Vol. 49; no. 4; pp. 661 - 683
• Main Authors: KUPISCH, Tanja, MITROFANOVA, Natalia, WESTERGAARD, Marit
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.07.2022
• Subjects: Adults; Age differences; Anvendt språkvitenskap: 012; Applied linguistics: 012; Artificial Languages; Bilingual Students; Bilingualism; Children; Children & youth; Cues; Evidence; Form Classes (Languages); German; German language; German language: 021; Grammar; Grammatical gender; Humaniora: 000; Humanities: 000; Language; Language Acquisition; Linguistics: 010; Monolingualism; Native language acquisition; Natural phonology; Nonce words; Nouns; Phonological rules; Phonology; Romance Languages; Russian; Russian language; Russian language: 028; Russisk språk: 028; Semantics; Semiotics; Språkvitenskapelige fag: 010; Stimuli; Syntax; Tysk språk: 021; VDP; gender assignment; nonce words; cue mismatch; crosslinguistic influence; transparency
• ISSN: 0305-0009; 1469-7602; 1469-7602
• DOI: 10.1017/S0305000921000039

We investigate German–Russian bilingual children's sensitivity to formal and semantic cues when assigning gender to nouns in German. Across languages, young children have been shown to primarily rely on phonological cues, whereas sensitivity to semantic and syntactic cues increases with age. With its semi-transparent gender assignment system, where both formal and semantic cues are psycho linguistically relevant, German has weak phonological cues compared to other languages, and children have been argued to acquire semantic and phonological rules in tandem. German–Russian bilingual children face the challenge of acquiring two different gender assignment systems simultaneously. We tested 45 bilingual children (ages 4–10 years) and monolingual controls. Results show that the children are clearly sensitive to phonological cues, while semantic cues play a minor role. However, monolingual and bilingual children have different defaulting strategies, with monolinguals defaulting to neuter and bilinguals to feminine gender.