Doctoral Dissertation Research: Lexical Links and Anticipatory Processing: Psycholinguistic Investigations of Multiple Factors in Learning and Using Grammatical Gender

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation project aims to examine native English speakers' acquisition of a second language with noun classes defined in terms of grammatical gender. Fluent multilingualism has become an increasingly important skill; and whereas children seem to attain fluency with relative ease, adults experience persistent difficulty becoming proficient in a second language. Though instruction helps, its effectiveness is ultimately limited by our understanding of why learning a second language is so difficult for adults. Mastering grammatical gender, in particular, has proven a great challenge. Unlike English, some language cannot use determiners like "the" with any noun. Spanish, for example, uses the definite determiner "el" for "sun" but "la" for "moon"; using the wrong determiner with a noun is considered a grammatical error. For second language speakers, learning to use words like "el" and "la" with the right nouns when speaking and comprehending poses a great challenge. This can lead to misunderstandings, sometimes embarrassing ones, like telling someone that you met "la papa" (the potato) when you really meant to say that you met "el Papa" (the Pope). Research also shows that native speakers use grammatical gender information to help make comprehension easier. Second language learners, on the other hand, have difficulty using grammatical gender in this manner. In order to identify ways to make learning a second language more successful in general, we must first determine what makes learning specific features like grammatical gender so challenging. This project aims to understand why adult second language learners suffer persistent difficulty with grammatical gender. It has two primary goals: 1) to determine how different ways of learning a second language can make adults more or less successful at using grammatical gender, and 2) to understand if and when adults can use grammatical gender information to ease comprehension in a second language. Two experiments will be conducted to address these goals. The first will examine the brainwaves of native and second language speakers of German while they read sentences. The second experiment will teach native speakers of English and German an artificial language that uses grammatical gender. Nouns and their gender words (like "el" and "la") will be learned in two different ways. After learning, the researchers will record participants' eye movements while they comprehend sentences. Together, these experiments will allow the researchers to determine if and when adult language learners use gender information to ease comprehension; the research will also identify whether particular ways of learning lead to better and more effective use of grammatical gender information, like native speakers. The outcomes of this research will therefore not only help identify the source of second language learners' problems, but will also provide clear and direct practical evidence for language teaching, with the ultimate goal of providing sustained societal gains in multilingualism and its associated social and economic benefits.