Effects of markedness in gender processing in Italian as a heritage language: A speed accuracy tradeoff.

ABSTRACT: This study examined potential sources of grammatical gender variability in heritage speakers (HSs) of Italian with a focus on morphological markedness. Fifty-four adult Italian HSs living in Germany and 40 homeland Italian speakers completed an online Self-Paced Reading Task and an offline Grammaticality Judgment Task. Both tasks involved sentences with grammatical and ungrammatical noun-adjective agreement, manipulating markedness. In grammatical sentences, both groups showed a markedness effect: shorter reading times (RTs) and higher accuracy for sentences containing masculine nouns as compared to sentences with feminine nouns. In ungrammatical sentences, although both groups were sensitive to ungrammaticality, only HSs showed a markedness effect, that is, they had significantly longer R

SUBMITTER: Di Pisa G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9596986 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature