[Lexicog] Re: Learning neuter gender in Dutch

[Kees van Kolmeschate]

Rudolph C Troike wrote:
> I thought that this was interesting in light of some of the recent
> exchanges on gender in German and Dutch. Unfortunately, no abstract
> of the talk is given.
>
Hi Rudy,
I mailed your message to Leonie Corrips and she sent me the following 
abstract/info.
gr, Kees van Kolmeschate

====================================================================
In this talk we will consider the gender acquisition of the definite 
determiner in Dutch. Our subjects are bilingual children aged between 
3;0 and 10;5 who are born in the Netherlands and attend a Dutch (pre) 
school. They belong for the larger part to ethnic minority 
communities i.e. these children are from Moroccan, Ghanaian, Turkish 
and Surinamese families. Strictly speaking, they acquire two 
languages from birth, in the sense that they got input in both 
languages from birth onwards. However, it is not entirely clear what 
has been the quality and the quantity of this input. Sorace (2005) 
suggests that destabilizing quantitative and qualitative differences 
in the input to which bilinguals are exposed may affect grammars in 
different ways: quantitative differences may affect processing 
abilities, causing delay, whereas qualitative differences may affect 
representations, causing a qualitatively different grammar, which may 
eventually lead to language change
Our results of a sentence completion test (Zuckermann 2001) show that 
both the bilingual and the monolingual children overgeneralize the 
non-neuter definite determiner de: they use de instead of the neuter 
definite determiner het. The L1 youngest and middle age group, 
however, go through a significant development of correct use of het, 
whereas the bilingual children show no significant development of the 
acquisition of het at all. We will argue that the differences between 
the monolingual and bilingual children in our experiment are not the 
result of cross-linguistic influence, but of quantitative and 
qualitative lack of evidence for the neuter determiner het below a 
certain thresshold in the input of the bilingual children. Although 
this seems to confirm Sorace's hypothesis, the question can be raised 
whether this is necessarily a qualitative difference in the sense of 
a misrepresentation. One could also suggest that because of 
the `deficient' input, these children's access to the morphological 
spell-out of het is not optimal efficient and therefore a competition 
arises between the default (non-neuter) definite determiner de and 
the specific (neuter) definite determiner het, which is won by the 
default de, in most cases. 
These two hypotheses make different predictions with respect to the 
acquisition of other gender related (agreement) phenomena in Dutch by 
these same bilingual children.

Dr. Leonie Cornips
senior researcher
Meertens Instituut (KNAW)
Research and Documentation of Dutch Language and Culture
Joan Muyskenweg 25
PO Box 94264 
1090 GG Amsterdam, the Netherlands
tel: (31)-(020) 46.28.529
fax: (31-(020) 46.28.555
http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/medewerkers/leonie.cornips/

Syntax and Variation. Reconciling the Biological and the Social. John 
Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia. CILT 265.
Now available: http://www.benjamins.nl/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?
bookid=CILT%20265


====================================================================
> From: Bissoondial, Nishi [mailto:NBissoondial at g...]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 1:19 PM
> Subject: CUNY's Psycholinguistics Supper, Tuesday 25 October 
(Cornips)
> The next meeting of CUNY's Psycholinguistics Supper in the Fall 
2005 series
> will be held on Tuesday 25 October:
> 
>  = CUNY Graduate Center
>  = 365 Fifth Avenue (between 34th & 35th Streets)
>  = Room 7102 (Seventh Floor)
>  = 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.
> 
> The speaker will be Leonie Cornips (Meertens Instituut, Royal 
Netherlands
> Academy of Sciences), whose talk has the title "Neuter gender and 
interface
> vulnerability in child L2/2L1 Dutch: Processing or representation
> problems?".  Dr. Cornips' research is conducted in collaboration 
with Aafke
> Hulk (University of Amsterdam).
>






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