ISB 6. The 6th International Symposium on Bilingualism.
June 2, 2007 - University of Hamburg
Diminutives and gender awareness in bilingual acquisition
Leonie CornipsAafke HulkSusanne Brouwer
Meertens InstituteUniversity of AmsterdamMax Planck Institute
Royal Netherlands AcademyNijmegen
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1.Problems with the acquisition of neuter definite determiner het
Table 1: Dutch morphology of definite determiners
Definite determinersGender of noun / Singular / Plural
common / de / de
neuter / het / de
Production data bilingual children (Blom et al. 2006, this talk); (Hulk & Cornips 2006a,b); (Cornips & Hulk 2006); (Cornips et al. 2006):
- Age of ultimate attainment acquisition het unclear/after age 13;
- Quantity and quality of input seem to be crucial.
Production data monolingual children:
Van de Velde (2004), Policenska (p.c., control groups), Hulk & Cornips (2006a,b), Cornips et al. (2006), Blom et al. (2006):
- Initially almost only de, later massive overgeneralization of de both with neuter and common nouns;
- Het comes in slowly and late: no targetlike production before age 6 at the earliest, errors persist until a more advanced age.
This is different from what happens in the L1 acquisition process of other languages with gender morphology on the definite determiner. Especially, the difference with German is striking: in German monolingual children produce articles with the correct gender around age 3 (Mills 1986).
2. A linguistic analysis of the acquisition of grammatical gender
Hawkins & Franceschina (2004): D has an un-interpretable, grammatical gender feature which has to be erased/checked by the lexical gender feature of the noun:
-Initially children do not have this un-interpretable gender feature on D in their grammar. Their (non targetlike) use of different forms of the determiner is not based on grammatical concord with the noun, but on other strategies, related to the phonological cues;
-A point in the development comes when the grammatical u-gender feature on D is triggered – thereafter their use is targetlike.
Possible triggers according to Hawkins & Franceschina (2004):
- Paradigmatic link between definite and indefinite articles;
- Input above a certain threshold.
What about Dutch – what could be the trigger?
Not much evidence in the input:
- No paradigmatic link between definite and indefinite article wrt grammatical gender, no gender on indefinite articles, no gender on plural definite articles but gender on single definite articles and demonstratives;
- Other gender marked elements: confusing. Gender marking on pronominal elements are partially based on other features [± count, ± animate];
- Frequency differences between neuter (25%) and common (75%) nouns.
HOWEVER
One salient trigger for grammatical gender: the diminutive suffix
In Dutch any noun, regardless of its lexical gender, “becomes” neuter in taking the diminutive suffix -(t)je:
(1)a.detafel
the (common) table
b.hettafeltje
the (NEUTER) table +DIM
c.detafel-tje-s
the (PLUR) table (DIM) PLUR
(2)a.hetboek
the (NEUTER) book
b.hetboekje
the (NEUTER) book +DIM
c.deboek-je-s
the (PLUR) book (DIM) PLUR
3.Diminutives and the acquisition of grammatical gender
3.1Experimental production data
Van de Velde (2003, 2004): monolingual children
In an experiment eliciting the definite determiner, Dutch children age 3 make significantly less errors with diminutives than with other neuter nouns; for 4 and 6 year olds, this difference is clearly present but not statistically significant.
Van Ginkel (2006:49): monolingual production: similar results
Table 2: The determiner production by monolingual children, age 6;0 – 7;6, for neuter nouns and diminutives in an elicitationtask (picture description task based on Blom 2006), target in grey
production / monolingualsn=8age / 6;0-7;6
neuter nouns / diminutives
de / 3940.6 % / 1914.8 %
het / 4749 % / 10380.5 %
een ‘a’ / 1010.4 % / 64.7 %
Ø / 00 % / 00 %
total / 96100 % / 128100 %
Table 3: The determiner production by monolingual children, age 10;3 – 11;5, for neuter nouns and diminutives in an elicitationtask (picture description task based on Blom 2006), target in grey
production / monolingualsn=8age / 10;3-11;5
neuter nouns / diminutives
de / 1515.6 % / 64.7 %
het / 7679.2 % / 11791.4 %
een ‘a’ / 44.2 % / 43.1 %
Ø / 11 % / 00 %
total / 96100 % / 128100 %
HOWEVER,
Van Ginkel (2006:49): bilingual – Turkish-Dutch production results
Table 4: The determiner production by Turkish-Dutch children, age 6;0 – 7;6, for neuter nouns and diminutives in an elicitationtask (picture description task based on Blom 2006), target in grey
production / bilingual – turkish-dutchn=10age / 6;0-7;6
neuter nouns / diminutives
de / 6352.5 % / 7546.9 %
het / 5545.8 % / 7748.1 %
een ‘a’ / 10.8 % / 31.9 %
Ø / 10.8 % / 42.5 %
missing / 00 % / 10.6 %
total / 12099.9 % / 160100 %
Table 5: The determiner production by Turkish-Dutch children, age 10;0-11;10, for neuter nouns and diminutives in an elicitationtask (picture description task based on Blom 2006), target in grey
production / bilingual – turkish-dutchn=11age / 10;0-11;10
neuter nouns / diminutives
de / 5340.2% / 5833%
het / 7758.3% / 11464.8%
een ‘a’ / 21.5% / 21.1%
Ø / 00% / 10.6%
missing / 00% / 10.6%
total / 132100% / 176100.1%
The production data of the bilingual children in Table 4 & 5 differ from the monolingual results in Table 2 & 3.
QUESTIONS
Is there awareness of grammatical gender at all? More specifically, do the bilingual children recognize the ‘diminutive’ as trigger for grammatical gender?
4. Knowledge awareness experiments
4.1 Experimental design (see Brouwer 2006)
An experimental design is set up to “tap the knowledge” in monolingual and bilingual children with respect to their gender system of definite determiners of diminutives. Spoken items are paired with an identical image on the screen of a laptop monitor. The subjects have to decide as soon as possible whether the spoken item is correct or incorrect in Dutch. They responded by pressing buttons on a button box. One button had a happy smiley face that the subjects pressed to indicate they believed the sentence to be correct Dutch, and another button had a sad smiley face that the subjects pressed if they believed the sentence to be incorrect Dutch.
After the practice session, two lists with each 32 spoken experimental items, are offered (see table 6).Every experimental item consists of correct: Ik zie het hondje ‘I see theN dog-DIMN; andincorrect: Ik zie *de hondje ‘I see theC dog- DIMN. In other words, each presented diminutive is paired with a correct and an incorrect definite determiner. Moreover, a distinction is made between 8 common and 8 neuter nouns.
Table 6: Overview of all presented items
Grammatical form / Ungrammatical form / TotalPractice items / 3 / * 3 / 6
Experimental items / 16 / * 16 / 32
common noun / 8 / * 8 / 16
e.g. / Ik zie het lepeltje / * Ik zie de lepeltje
‘I see the spoonC-DIM’ / * ‘I see the spoonC-DIM’
neuter noun / 8 / * 8 / 16
e.g. / Ik zie het paardje / * Ik zie de paardje
‘I see the horseN-DIM’ / * ‘I see the horseN-DIM’
Fillers / 4 / * 4 / 8
Examples:
Ik zie het hondje; *Ik zie de hondjeIk zie het schaapje; *Ik zie de schaapje
‘I see the dog-common-DIM’‘I see the sheep-neuter-DIM’
4.2Results diminutives (Van Ginkel 2006)
Table 7: Accuracy rates (% correct) of *DE+DIM and HET+DIM by monolingual children in two age groups, target in grey
input / L1n=8 / L1
n=8
age / 6;0-7;6 / 10;3-11;5
correct judgment / incorrect judgment / correct judgment / incorrect judgment
correct
HET+DIM / 116
90.6% / 12
9.4% / 123
96.1% / 5
3.9%
incorrect
DE+DIM / 56
43.7% / 72
56.3% / 97
75.8% / 31
24.2%
Table 8: Accuracy rates (% correct) of DE+DIM and HET+DIM by bilingual Turkish-Dutch children in two age groups, target in grey
input / bilingualn=10 / bilingual
n=11
age / 6;0-7;6 / 10;3-11;5
correct judgment / incorrect judgment / correct judgment / incorrect judgment
correct
HET+DIM / 145
90.6% / 15
9.4% / 153
86.9% / 23
13.1%
incorrect
DE+DIM / 26
16.2% / 34
83.8% / 96
54.5% / 80
45.5%
•Bilinguals of both age groups reveal much lower accuracy rates for incorrect *DE+DIM than monolinguals; high accuracy rates for correct HET+DIM may be due to ‘yes’-strategy (cf Brouwer et al.); Question: is diminutive a trigger?
However:
•Bilinguals reveal development between age groups 6-7;6 and 10;3-11;5. The accuracy-rates for incorrect *DE+DIM increase from 16.2% to 54.5%, respectively.
5.Discussion
•bilingual children age 6;0 – 7;6
-do not produce more correct het with diminutives (45.8%) than non-diminutives (48.1%; see Table 4);
-are not ‘aware’ of neuter gender with respect to diminutives (accuracy rate of incorrect *de + diminutives is 16.2 %, see Table 8).
•bilingual children age 10;3 -11;5
-produce some more correct het with diminutives (64.8%) than with non-diminutives (58.3%; see Table 5);
-show some ‘awareness’ of neuter gender with respect to diminutives (accuracy rate of incorrect *de + diminutives is 54.5 %, see Table 8). Although 54.5% is around chance level, it’s a much higher percentage than in the younger bilingual group (16.2%).
JUST DELAY?
However, with respect to the acquisition of neuter gender in Dutch, even 11-13 years old bilinguals are still non-targetlike and significantly different from monolinguals of the same age both in production (see Cornips et al. 2006) and ‘awareness’ (see Brouwer et al. 2006).
QUESTION
•Do bilinguals need another trigger than diminutives? OR
•Do they fossilize?
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