L-2 acquisition of gender

[Annette Karmiloff-Smith]

I recently put out an email on the net asking about grammatical gender in
L2 adult learners.

>> It is frequently reported that L-2 adult learners have serious difficulties
>> with grammatical gender agreement.  Is this just an anecdote or are there
>> data in the literature to which I can refer?  Many thanks in anticipation,

Most of the replies are actually personal anecdotes similar to my own
experience, so this does seem to be a neglected research area. My question
is:  does grammatical gender stand out as a continuing problem in otherwise
fluent L2 speakers? Are there other cross-linguistic areas of language
which fluent speakers continue to find difficult (e.g. say, useage of
definite/indefinite articles) and children learn effortlessly?  I think
there are some important theoretical questions lurking here.  Here are all
the responses I got:

>Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 21:44:11 +0200
>From: Joseph Hilferty <hilferty at fil.ub.es>
>X-Accept-Language: en
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>To: Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith <a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk>
>Subject: Re: L-2 acquisition of gender
>X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by lingua.fil.ub.es id
>                      JAA26497
>
>Hi,
>
>You might want to get into contact with my colleague, Carme Muñoz,
>since I think she might know some of the references on L2 acquisition
>of grammatical and natural gender. I'm sure Carme wouldn't mind your
>asking her for the references. Her e-mail is:
>munoz at lingua.fil.ub.es
>Anyway, I might add that as a nonnative speaker of Spanish and Catalan,
>I find grammatical gender to be difficult at times. The main thing is
>to try to remember word endings. Words that have no gender marking are
>a real pain, because there's no morphophonology to hang onto.
>Joe
>
From: Elezar at aol.com
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 14:20:36 EDT
Subject: Re: L-2 acquisition of gender
To: a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk
MIME-Version: 1.0

I don't have any references to give, but the info about gender agreement is
not that anegdote.  I am a bilingual Russian/English speaker and can tell you
what I had most difficulties with in written and spoken modalities.
Subject-verb agreement is the worst.  But then, in English there is not much
of gender agreement going around.  Which is not the case with Russian.  All
the people I no, who took Russian as a second language, have a tremendous
amount of difficulties with gender agreement, because in Russian gender plays
an important role for suffixation and endings for cases.

If you have more questions about Russian - do not hesitate to ask.
Elena Zaretsky,  MS, CCC-SLP, ABD at BU Department of Psychology, Human
Development, Jean Berko Gleason adviser.

Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 11:28:39 -0700
To: Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith <a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk>
From: Fred Dick <fdick at cogsci.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: L-2 acquisition of gender

The best person to ask on this is Vera Kempe (as Brian MacW has probably
just told you) - I think he has her new email address.

Cheers, Fred Dick

*********************************
Frederic Dick
Center for Research in Language
Deparment of Cognitive Science
9500 Gilman Drive, Mail Code 0526
La Jolla, CA, 92093-0526
Phone: 858-534-3926
Fax: 858-534-6788


X-Sender: ys54 at postoffice.mail.cornell.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 13:48:55 -0400
To: Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith <a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk>
From: Yasuhiro Shirai <ys54 at cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: L-2 acquisition of gender
Status: RO

You might have already heard about this but,

Andersen, R. W. (1984?).  What's gender good for, anyway?  In R. W. Ansersen
(Ed.) Second Languages: A cross-linguistics perspective.  Rowley, MA:
Newbury House.

would be a good starter.
**********************************

X-Sender: jisa at mailhost.univ-lyon2.fr
Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 15:52:11 +0100
To: a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk
From: Harriet Jisa <Harriet.Jisa at univ-lyon2.fr>

Hello,
We met at dinner in St Sebastian. I was sitting on the other side of Liliana.
I saw your question over Childes about gender in L2. I've lived in France
for almost 20 years, teach in French, work in French etc. My French is
completely fluent - somewhat of an American accent, but... I write, read,
do everything in French. But if I have a bête noire in my life it is gender
!
Early on I found a technique which helps when I'm writing and have time to
worry about gender - I use the possessive determiner and see if it "sounds
right". That usually works, except for words that start with a vowel. Then
I scream out to my children or colleagues for help.
I also use  adjectives like vert/verte
I don't know why, but I have much more of a feeling/intuition with singular
possessive determiners or adjectives than with a definite or indefinite
articles.
I think that Patsy Lightbrown wrote an article a while back (maybe in the
early 80s) about gender in L2 French.
Hope to see you again sometime
Harriet


_________________________________________
Harriet JISA, Professeur
Dynamique du Langage
Maison Rhone-Alpes de Sciences de l'Homme
14, avenue Berthelot
69363 Lyon Cedex - FRANCE
Phone:  +33 O4 72 72 64 12 - +33 04 72 72 64 26 (bureau/office)
Fax: +33 04 72 72 65 90
E-Mail: Harriet.Jisa at univ-lyon2.fr
_________________________________________

_______________________________________
Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith,
Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit,
Institute of Child Health,
30 Guilford Street,
London WC1N 1EH, U.K.
tel: 0207 905 2754
fax: 0207 242 7717
_______________________________________