Affiliation:
1. University of Konstanz | UiT The Arctic University of Norway
2. University of Calgary
Abstract
We present a case study of a heritage speaker of German, Luisa, who is growing up in an English-speaking part of Canada, focussing on the acquisition of grammatical gender in German. While German has cues to gender assignment, the acquisition of gender in this setting is compromised by the magnitude of gender cues and form syncretism, and the absence of gender in English. We present longitudinal, naturalistic data from three periods: age 1–2, age 4–5, and age 7. We ask whether Luisa develops grammatical gender akin to monolingual children or whether there are indications of delay, stagnation, or attrition, as observed for heritage speakers of other languages. The results show monolingual-like development despite a shift in dominance from German to English.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company