Spanish-Dutch bilingual children in Amsterdam and Mallorca: evidence for the importance of input and context in the acquisition of grammatical gender in Spanish

Abstract

This study examines Spanish gender in two groups of Spanish-Dutch bilingual children who share the same languages but differ in which one is their heritage language: a group of 10 Spanish heritage speaking children (ages 8-10) and 10 Dutch heritage speaking children (ages 8-11). These two languages have a binary grammatical gender system: while Spanish distinguishes between masculine and feminine gender, Dutch distinguishes between common and neuter. Results from an elicitation task show that the Dutch heritage speaking children performed better and that the Spanish heritage speaking children tended to extend the masculine form, and they also had more problems with feminine and non-canonical nouns. The study highlights the important role of both input and linguistic context, both essential factors in the acquisition of linguistic features, in this case, grammatical gender.