Session 2E

Previous research has demonstrated that L2 learners whose L1 encodes grammatical gender process gender agreement more efficiently than those whose L1 lacks gender, particularly when agreement rules are similar in L1 and L2 (e.g., Sabourin & Stowe 2008; Foucart & Frenck-Mestre 2011). However, the question of whether knowledge of two gendered languages can be beneficial for learners when processing gender agreement in an additional language (L3/Ln) has not yet been addressed.
To bridge this research gap, the present study asks whether knowledge of German in addition to native Polish (both are gendered languages) can facilitate gender agreement processing in Swedish as L3/Ln. To address this question, 60 adult L1 Polish learners of Swedish as either L3 or L4 (in terms of chronology) were recruited. All of them had English as their L2. Half of them additionally learned German as their L3 before Swedish. Learners at intermediate (B1/B2) and advanced (C1) proficiency levels in Swedish participated (while keeping constant proficiency in German and English) to test whether the facilitative effect of German, if any, could depend on proficiency in Swedish. 
A timed judgment task was developed, in which learners evaluated correctness of indefinite article-noun pairs in Swedish, which either agreed (n = 22) or did not agree in gender (n = 22). Half of them included nouns of uter gender, e.g., "en gitarr" (a guitar), while the other half included nouns of neuter gender, e.g., "ett nyckel" (a key). All nouns were inanimate, and their gender could not be predicted by their morphophonological shape. The nouns were balanced across genders and phrase types in terms of length, frequency in Swedish, and cognate status with respect to Polish, English, and German. In addition, participants took part in an untimed gender assignment task to control for their lexical knowledge of gender.
Judgment accuracy and response time data were submitted to Generalized Linear Models with the factors Group (L4 Swedish, L3 Swedish), Proficiency (intermediate, advanced), Noun Gender (uter, neuter), Phrase Correctness (concord, discord), and Gender Assignment Accuracy (accurate, inaccurate). To evaluate the effect of proficiency in Swedish, the interaction between Group and Proficiency was included in the model.
For both judgment accuracy and response time, the analysis revealed significant effects of Proficiency, Phrase Correctness, and Gender Assignment Accuracy. Gender concord was processed more easily than gender discord, advanced learners outperformed intermediate learners, and gender assignment knowledge benefited gender agreement. Most importantly, intermediate learners from the L4 Swedish group processed article-noun pairs faster than intermediate learners from the L3 Swedish group, arguably due to transfer of the similar gender agreement rules. This study thus shows that knowledge of an additional gendered language beyond the L1 can facilitate gender agreement processing in an additional language.


References
Foucart, A. & Frenck-Mestre, C. (2011) Grammatical gender processing in L2: Electrophysiological evidence of the effect of L1-L2 syntactic similarity. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14(3), 379–399.
Sabourin, L. & Stowe, L. A. (2008). Second language processing: when are first and second languages processed similarly? Second Language Research, 24(4), 397–430.

Research in L2 morphology shows that gender agreement between nouns and adjectives/determiners can be successfully acquired at advanced proficiency levels (e.g., Hopp, 2013; Sagarra & Herschensohn, 2013), but less is known about gender agreement between nouns and verbs (e.g., Alamary, 2019). Therefore, this study investigates gender agreement within the verbal domain in L2 Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) by L2ers from different L1 backgrounds. 
Nouns in MSA show two grammatical genders (masculine and feminine). While the masculine noun form is morphologically unmarked (1a), the feminine gender on nouns is often overtly marked by the suffix (-ah) (1b). In verbal constructions, the verb should show gender agreement with the subject noun whether in pre-verbal or postverbal positions. With imperfective verb forms, the prefix (ta-) is realized on the verb with feminine 3rd person singular nouns (1b). 
a. ya-ktubu al-muʕallim ʕlə as-sabura
3SM-write.IPFV the-teacher.SM on the-board
b. ta-ktubu al-muʕallim-ah ʕlə as-sabura
3SF-write.IPFV the-teacher-SF on the-board
'The teacher writes/is writing on the blackboard'
This study was conducted with 94 L1 Arabic controls, and 59 L2 Arabic learners (27 English, 5 Europeans, 6 Filipinos, 6 Africans, and 15 Indians). Testing for L1 effects, the L2ers were grouped based on absence/presence of gender in their L1s (39 [-gender] and 20 [+gender]). Based on self-reported proficiency, there were 13 advanced, 26 intermediates, and 20 novices. 
An online grammaticality judgment task was designed to measure accuracy and reaction time (RT) to 64 sentences exemplifying gender (dis)agreement between verbs and subject nouns in postverbal position, as (1). The participants' task was to judge each sentence as accurately/quickly as possible by pressing one of three options (possible, impossible, not sure). The stimuli were constructed in 4 minimal pairs crossing 3 factors: gender (masculine vs. feminine), noun class (human vs. animal), and agreement (matched vs. mismatched). There were 16 multiple lexicalizations for subject nouns (all 3rd person singular) and another 16 for imperfective verbs. The lexical items were among the 5000 most frequent Arabic lemmas (Buckwalter & Parkinson, 2011). The 64 stimuli were distributed in 4 lists, yielding 16 target items per list (8 matched agreements and 8 mismatched agreements), along with 32 fillers per list. 
Unlike the L1 Arabic controls, the L2ers from (+/- gender) L1 groups gave significantly less accurate judgments on the mismatched gender agreements compared to the matched ones. However, regardless of L1, the L2ers with increased proficiency levels showed increased comparable accuracy on (mis)matched paired conditions. Like the L1 controls, the performance of L2ers from all L1 groups was significantly affected by noun class but not by gender. While they performed alike on masculine and feminine paired conditions, they gave higher accuracy and shorter RTs on human nouns than animals, where both correspond to biological sex. Taken together, these results suggest that Arabic grammatical gender in the verbal domain is acquirable by adult L2ers with increased proficiency, even among L2ers who don't mark gender in their L1. 

This study focused on the acquisition of generic references with 160 Saudi-Arabic learners of English. The generic references in English have two types: 1) NP generic, which use the definite article with singular contexts (e.g., 'the dinosaur is extinct') and plural -s with plural contexts (e.g., 'Dinosaurs are extinct') and 2) sentence generic, which use the indefinite article with singular contexts (e.g., 'a potato contains vitamin C') and plural -s with plural contexts (e.g., 'potatoes contain vitamin C'). The Arabic language only uses the definite article (al-) [the] with generic references with singular and plural contexts. Generic reference acquisition in English consists of both interpretable (articles a and the) and uninterpretable (numbering characteristics related to the noun of the article) features. This study tested two hypotheses: the Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova, 2019) and the Representational Deficit Hypothesis (Hawkins & Chan, 1997). The former posits that learners can map features between L1 and L2 and that similarities and differences between languages affect acquisition. The latter hypothesis postulates that learners can acquire the interpretable features but cannot acquire a new uninterpretable feature if it is already set in their L1. This research used two acceptability judgement tasks obtained from Snape (2013) and a forced-choice elicitation task also developed by Snape (2008).  
The results showed that the Saudi-Arabic learners were more accurate with the NP generic singular than the NP plural because they tended to overuse the definite article. For the sentence generic, the learners showed low accuracy with both singular and plural contexts, displaying a tendency to overuse the definite article. The learners' low accuracy with generic references was found to be due to the difference between L1 and L2, supporting Slabakova (2019), and not because the learners could not acquire a new uninterpretable feature, as stated by Hawkins & Chan (1997).
Reference
Hawkins, R., & Chan, C. (1997). The partial availability of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition: The 'failed functional features hypothesis. Second Language Research, 13(3), 187–226. https://doi.org/10.1191/026765897671476153
Slabakova, R. (2019). The Bottleneck Hypothesis updated. In Three streams of generative language acquisition research (pp. 319–345). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.63.16sla
Snape, N. (2008). Resetting the Nominal Mapping Parameter in L2 English: Definite article use and the count–mass distinction. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11(1), 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728907003215
Snape, N. (2013). Japanese and Spanish adult learners of English: L2 acquisition of generic reference. Studies in Language Sciences: Journal of the Japanese Society for Language Sciences, 12, 70–94.

The varied economic, political, and sociocultural processes collectively known as globalisation have triggered new patterns of immigration, diasporic arrangements, forms of work, and pathways of movement. This has resulted in a growing number of transcultural marriages and partnerships characterised by multilingualism and dynamic language configurations. These families often face challenges in managing language diversity in the home, including issues of language choice and values and beliefs ascribed to particular languages, which impact children's linguistic development. An emerging field that bridges the gap between language policy and child language acquisition and investigates how language is perceived and managed at the family level is Family Language Policy (FLP). 
Given the increased number of UK citizens living in Poland and the sparse number of studies on FLP in the Polish context, my PhD research seeks to understand how these binational families negotiate multilingualism in the home, with an emphasis on the maintenance of both languages. Specifically, I will investigate (1) how parents negotiate, develop and manage language use across time and space, and (2) how children experience bilingualism and act as agents in (re)shaping language use within the family.
Based on the tripartite model of FLP (Spolsky 2004) and a triangulation of methods, my research will be divided into three stages. The obtained data will be transcribed verbatim and analysed according to the Grounded Theory approach. Rich points and recurrent themes will be noted and conceptualised through constant comparison.
The first stage, based on an online survey, is expected to provide preliminary information on approximately 100 families, such as their socioeconomic status (SES), language choice patterns, parents' discourse strategies, language ideologies and beliefs. 
In the second stage, I will delineate in-depth case studies of 3 families selected from stage I. To this end, I will conduct semi-structured interviews to capture the respondents' reflections on their lived experiences and behaviours in various contexts and trace the trajectory of their linguistic identities and satisfaction with the children's language development. Additionally, I will supplement the interviews with language portraits to help depict children's views of their languages, including what linguistic resources they have at their disposal, and how they relate affectively to their languages. Finally, audio-recorded observations will provide a broader perspective on participants' language socialisation practices and implicit ideologies, and allow for a comparison of reported and observed language management.
The third stage will involve follow-up observations conducted over the period of 2 years in 6-month intervals. I will compare the data with the earlier results to explore the nature of child agency and FLP dynamics of the researched families.
To provide a diverse research perspective, the three families will be selected based on their approaches to FLP and different language choice patterns. All families will be of similar SES. The researched children will be above 9 years of age, which will ensure insightful interviews and allow for investigating the role of schooling and peers in their language choices and agency.