The aim of this study is to determine whether Spanish-like gender agreement causes interference in speakers of Papiamentu (a Western Romance-lexified creole language) who also speak Spanish.... Show moreThe aim of this study is to determine whether Spanish-like gender agreement causes interference in speakers of Papiamentu (a Western Romance-lexified creole language) who also speak Spanish. Papiamentu and Spanish are highly cognate languages in terms of their lexicons. However, Papiamentu lacks grammatical gender assignment and agreement, leading to cognate words with major morpho-syntactic differences. A total of 41 participants with different linguistic profiles (Papiamentu-dominant, Dutch-dominant, Spanish-dominant, and Spanish heritage speaker-Papiamentu bilinguals) listened to 82 Papiamentu sentences, of which 40 contained a Spanish-like gender-agreeing element on the Determiner, Adjective, or Determiner + Adjective and with half of the experimental items marked with overtly masculine (i.e., -o) or feminine (i.e., -a) gender morphology. Participants performed a forced-choice acceptability task and were asked to repeat each sentence. Results showed that Spanish-dominant speakers experienced the greatest interference of Spanish gender features in Papiamentu. This suggests that in cases where speakers must suppress gender in their second language (L2), this is not easy to do. This is especially the case in highly cognate languages that differ in whether they realize gender features. Show less
In this commentary, I would like to support Goad and White’s (2019, henceforth G&W) claim that the morphosyntactic feature system in the L2 does not have to be defective due to certain... Show moreIn this commentary, I would like to support Goad and White’s (2019, henceforth G&W) claim that the morphosyntactic feature system in the L2 does not have to be defective due to certain syntactic features not being activated in the L1. I will base my point on the example of grammatical gender. Moreover, I would like to stress the importance of developing processing models for lexico-syntactic features in bilingual speakers. Processing models may be able to account for why L2 learners behave in a particular way. For instance, G&W (p. 791) refer to a study by Goad et al. (2011), suggesting that “beginners fluctuate between deletion of the plural and resorting to the structure for verbal inflection”. However, they do not provide an answer as to why L2 learners behave in that way. In other words, a processing account is missing. A comprehensive (neuro-)cognitive model of grammatical feature representation and processing may help understand error patterns in L2 production. Show less
