The morphophonological dimensions of Spanish gender marking: NP processing in Spanish bilinguals.

ABSTRACT: The processing literature provides some evidence that heritage Spanish speakers process gender like monolinguals, since gender-marking in definite articles facilitates their lexical access to nouns, albeit these effects may be reduced relative to speakers who learned the language as majority language. However, previous studies rely on slowed-down speech, which leaves open the question of how processing occurs under normal conditions. Using naturalistic speech, our study tests bilingual processing of gender in determiners, and in word-final gender vowels. Participants were 17 adult heritage speakers of Spanish (HSSs) and 21 adult Spanish-speaking immigrants (ASIs). We presented these bilinguals with questions containing either a definite article or an unmarked possessive (¿Dónde está la/

SUBMITTER: Perez-Leroux AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11672334 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature