L2 Language Acquisition in the Aspect of Grammatical Gender

L2 Language Acquisition in the Aspect of Grammatical Gender

Most of us, by the time we are growing up, are living under an environment which majority of people have fairly similar mental grammar. Under the circumstances, we have constructed an irreplaceable I-Language system so that we can excel in our native language (L1). However, when people are acquiring a second language (L2), it is unusual that they can reach perfect native-like proficiency. One reasonable speculation is that L1 grammar may have an influence to the acquisition of L2 grammar. I will support the idea in the language aspect of grammatical gender that some properties in L1 are transferred to L2 in the process of L2 acquiring. Below, I will briefly introduce the definition of grammatical gender and how can it related to L2 acquisition, then I will summarize two experiments conducted by Sabourin, Stowe, and de Haan (2006) to enhance my position.

        Not every language in the world possesses a grammatical gender system therefore some people’s I-Language systems are lack of the knowledge in terms of the existence of grammatical gender. The definition of grammatical gender is that “Grammatical gender is as a system in which the class to which a noun is assigned is reflected in the forms that are taken by other elements syntactically related to it” (Comrie, 1999, P.457). Grammatical system also must be carefully distinguished from sex. The grammatical gender does not necessarily match the sex of vocabulary itself (Comrie, 1999). In German, the word “Hund”, meaning Dog, is considered to be Maskulinum (masculine) and the word “Katze”, meaning Cat, is considered Feminimum (feminine). Different languages have different grammatical gender systems. For instance, German has 3 genders which is Maskulinum, Femininum and Neutral (masculine, feminine and neutral) while Spanish only have two genders. However, not all the languages in the world have a grammatical system. Using native English speaker who studies German as an example, grammatical gender does not exist in English but German language is based on the learning of grammatical gender. According to Tom Rankin (2014), “Patterns of (mis)interpretation of the German clauses suggest that lower-intermediate proficiency learners still access the L1 syntax in order to parse L2 input.” (P201). Spinner and Juffs also indicated in their paper that “L2 learners frequently make errors in gender marking, with advanced learners outperforming less advanced learners; and that learner performance is better on nouns that have clear morphophonological or semantic cues to gender class” (Spinner & Juffs, 2008). I will further provide evidences for the theory that L1 has influences in L2 acquisition by summarizing the experiments below.

        The investigation conducted by Sabourin, Stowe and de Haan in 2006 was aimed to seek the results of whether L1 can transfer into L2 in learning a second language grammatical gender system. In two experiments, 3 groups of L2 learners in Dutch were investigated. Those 3 groups were adults of German English and a Romance language (French, Italian or Spanish). German is the most similar to Dutch, the Romance languages have grammatical gender but the system is not congruent to the Dutch system, English does not have grammatical gender (Sabourin., Stowe & de Haan, 2006, P.1).