ERIC Number: EJ1460353
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Mar
Pages: 33
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0023-8333
EISSN: EISSN-1467-9922
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Morphological Markedness and the Temporal Dynamics of Gender Agreement Processing in Spanish as a Majority and a Heritage Language
Language Learning, v75 n1 p146-178 2025
For Spanish nouns, masculine gender is unmarked and feminine is marked. Effects of markedness on gender agreement processing are inconsistent, possibly owing to differences between online methods. This study presents a reanalysis of eye-tracking data from Keating's (2022) study on the processing of noun-adjective gender agreement in speakers of Spanish as a majority and a heritage language. Pairwise comparisons by noun class showed that both groups displayed sensitivity to gender violations with masculine nouns earlier in the time course of agreement processing than they did to violations with feminine nouns, although sensitivity to errors with both classes emerged later for heritage speakers. The time course advantage for detecting gender violations with masculine nouns disappeared when a word occurred between nouns and adjectives. In sum, the native Spanish parser utilizes markedness information during online computation of gender agreement dependencies, even when exposure to native language input is significantly reduced.
Descriptors: Spanish, Morphology (Languages), Form Classes (Languages), Native Language, Grammar, Language Processing, Nouns, Eye Movements, Error Patterns, Linguistic Input
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Data File: URL: https://oasis-database.org
Author Affiliations: N/A