Language Mixing in the Nominal Phrase: Implications of a Distributed Morphology Perspective

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Article
Language Mixing in the Nominal Phrase:
Implications of a Distributed Morphology
Perspective †
Michèle Burkholder
Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa, 70 Laurier Ave. E., Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada;
mburk048@uottawa.ca
† Some of the ideas and data that are discussed here were presented at the 14th Generative Approaches to
Second Language Acquisition (GASLA) Conference, Southampton, UK, 7–9 April 2017.
Received: 14 January 2018; Accepted: 9 April 2018; Published: 12 April 2018


Abstract:
This paper investigates a pattern found in Spanish–English mixed language corpora
whereby it is common to switch from a Spanish determiner to an English noun (e.g., la house,
‘the house’), but rare to switch from an English determiner to a Spanish noun (e.g., the casa, ‘the
house’). Unlike previous theoretical accounts of this asymmetry, that which is proposed here follows
assumptions of the Distributed Morphology (DM) framework, specifically those regarding the
relationship between grammatical gender and nominal declension class in Spanish. Crucially, and
again in contrast to previous accounts, it is demonstrated that this approach predicts no such
asymmetry for French–English. This hypothesis is tested experimentally using an acceptability
judgment task with self-paced reading, and as expected, no evidence is found for an asymmetry.
This experiment is also used to test predictions regarding how English nominal roots in mixed
nominal phrases are assigned grammatical gender, and the impact of language background factors
such as age of acquisition. Evidence is found that bilinguals attempt to assign analogical gender
if possible, but that late sequential bilinguals have a stronger preference for this option than do
simultaneous bilinguals.
Keywords:
Distributed Morphology; language mixing; nominal phrase; Spanish–English;
French–English; analogical criterion; age of acquisition; language dominance; bilingualism
1. Introduction
Current mainstream linguistic theory has been built upon language data obtained from native
speakers of a large sample of the world’s diverse languages. What is often overlooked, however,
is that most people in the world speak more than one language, and that such speakers often
combine elements from both of their languages within a single utterance, and sometimes even
within a single word. This type of language mixing is spontaneous in that it is not possible to
predict when a switch or insertion will occur; however, it is also highly constrained (Lipski 1978;
Pfaff 1979
;Poplack 1980;Woolford 1983).
1
Considerable research has consequently been dedicated to
understanding the formal linguistic principles that underlie such language mixing (e.g.,
Poplack 1980
,
1981
;
Sankoff and Poplack 1981
;Joshi 1985;Di Sciullo et al. 1986;Mahootian 1993;Belazi et al. 1994;
MacSwan 2000;Liceras et al. 2008).
1
The term “language mixing” will be used to refer to a phenomenon termed “intra-sentential code-switching” by some (e.g.,
MacSwan 2005), and “nonce borrowing” by others (e.g., Poplack and Dion 2012).
Languages 2018,3, 10; doi:10.3390/languages3020010 www.mdpi.com/journal/languages

Languages 2018,3, 10 2 of 28
Within the framework of the minimalist program (Chomsky 1993,1995,2005), a productive
line of research has assumed that the principles that govern bilingual language mixing are the same
as those that govern monolingual unmixed language; that there should be no specific constraints
that apply only to language mixing (MacSwan 2000). For example, if linguistic competence involves
choosing and combining lexical items via operations such as select and merge to form convergent
syntactic derivations, then the simple difference between unilingual unmixed language and bilingual
mixed language is that the latter operates over lexical items from two languages rather than one.
Consequently, mixed-language data can provide a unique testing ground for linguistic theory and, in
turn, it can offer important insights into the nature of the underlying linguistic system(s) a bilingual
has acquired.
While investigations within this line of research have often taken a lexicalist view of
morphosyntax (e.g., Cantone and Müller 2008;Van Gelderen and MacSwan 2008;Van Dulm 2009;
Moro Quintanilla 2014
), other researchers (e.g., González-Vilbazo and López 2011;Grimstad et al. 2014;
Alexiadou et al. 2015;
Riksem 2017
) have also been exploring the predictions and explanatory power
of non-lexicalist frameworks such as Distributed Morphology (DM;
Halle and Marantz 1993
;Marantz
1997;Embick and Noyer 2007). As such, the first goal of this paper is to focus on a particular language
mixing pattern that has been reported in the literature, and to re-examine it within the theoretical
framework of DM. Specifically, the object of investigation is a fairly robust asymmetry whereby
switches between a Spanish determiner (D) and an English noun (N), such as (1a), are considered to
be grammatical, but those between an English D and a Spanish N, as in (1b), are not (Jake et al. 2005;
MacSwan 2005;Liceras et al. 2008,2016).2
Languages 2018, 3, 10 2 of 27
those that govern monolingual unmixed language; that there should be no specific constraints that
apply only to language mixing (MacSwan 2000). For example, if linguistic competence involves
choosing and combining lexical items via operations such as select and merge to form convergent
syntactic derivations, then the simple difference between unilingual unmixed language and bilingual
mixed language is that the latter operates over lexical items from two languages rather than one.
Consequently, mixed-language data can provide a unique testing ground for linguistic theory and,
in turn, it can offer important insights into the nature of the underlying linguistic system(s) a bilingual
has acquired.
While investigations within this line of research have often taken a lexicalist view of
morphosyntax (e.g., Cantone and Müller 2008; van Gelderen and MacSwan 2008; van Dulm 2009;
Moro Quintanilla 2014), other researchers (e.g., González-Vilbazo and López 2011; Grimstad et al.
2014; Alexiadou et al. 2015; Riksem 2017) have also been exploring the predictions and explanatory
power of non-lexicalist frameworks such as Distributed Morphology (DM; Halle and Marantz 1993;
Marantz 1997; Embick and Noyer 2007). As such, the first goal of this paper is to focus on a particular
language mixing pattern that has been reported in the literature, and to re-examine it within the
theoretical framework of DM. Specifically, the object of investigation is a fairly robust asymmetry
whereby switches between a Spanish determiner (D) and an English noun (N), such as (1a), are
considered to be grammatical, but those between an English D and a Spanish N, as in (1b), are not
(Jake et al. 2005; MacSwan 2005; Liceras et al. 2008, 2016).2
1.
a.
la
house
the.DF.SG.F
house
b.
* the
casa
the.DF
house
In previous minimalist accounts of this asymmetry, some have argued that it is a consequence
of an underlying asymmetry in the morphosyntactic features of the two languages; specifically, that
Spanish has grammatical gender features whereas English does not (e.g., MacSwan 2005; Liceras et
al. 2008; Moro Quintanilla 2014). While the account that will be proposed here also attributes a central
role to the gender feature asymmetry, it will be argued that it is the relationship between gender and
nominal declension classes in Spanish that is the true source. Interestingly, the proposed theoretical
account makes the prediction that not all language pairs with a gender feature asymmetry will exhibit
a mixed determiner phrase (DP) asymmetry. It will be argued that this is the case for French–English.
It is important to note that this account will assume that the bilinguals in question have the same
underlying linguistic system in their two languages as do monolingual native speakers of each of
their respective languages. Indeed, this may be the case for individuals who acquired both of their
languages from birth, and who are perfectly balanced with respect to proficiency and frequency of
use.3 An important issue with this assumption, however, is that most bilinguals do not fit these
“ideal” characteristics. As such, the theoretical proposal will also be discussed with respect to the
different predictions it makes for bilinguals who have acquired their two languages under different
learning conditions (e.g., simultaneous versus late sequential bilinguals). The second goal of this
paper is then to present an experiment investigating some of these predictions for French–English
mixed DPs. Experimental data, however, are not directly reflective of a bilingual’s underlying
linguistic competence, but may also reflect performance factors related to language processing. For
bilinguals, the relative ease with which they process and access words from their two languages can
depend on external factors such as language proficiency and dominance (i.e., whether they use one
language preferentially). As such, the impact of these factors will also be taken into consideration
when forming hypotheses.
2 The following abbreviations for features will be used throughout the text: plural = [PL]; singular = [SG];
definite = [DF]; feminine = [F] or [+FEM]; masculine = [M] or [-FEM]; neuter = [N].
3 Although it is often argued that even such bilinguals are not necessarily “two monolinguals in one” (e.g.,
González-Vilbazo and López 2011), this can be an adequate initial hypothesis.
In previous minimalist accounts of this asymmetry, some have argued that it is a consequence of an
underlying asymmetry in the morphosyntactic features of the two languages; specifically, that Spanish
has grammatical gender features whereas English does not (e.g., MacSwan 2005;
Liceras et al. 2008
;
Moro Quintanilla 2014). While the account that will be proposed here also attributes a central role to
the gender feature asymmetry, it will be argued that it is the relationship between gender and nominal
declension classes in Spanish that is the true source. Interestingly, the proposed theoretical account
makes the prediction that not all language pairs with a gender feature asymmetry will exhibit a mixed
determiner phrase (DP) asymmetry. It will be argued that this is the case for French–English.
It is important to note that this account will assume that the bilinguals in question have the same
underlying linguistic system in their two languages as do monolingual native speakers of each of
their respective languages. Indeed, this may be the case for individuals who acquired both of their
languages from birth, and who are perfectly balanced with respect to proficiency and frequency of
use.
3
An important issue with this assumption, however, is that most bilinguals do not fit these
“ideal” characteristics. As such, the theoretical proposal will also be discussed with respect to the
different predictions it makes for bilinguals who have acquired their two languages under different
learning conditions (e.g., simultaneous versus late sequential bilinguals). The second goal of this paper
is then to present an experiment investigating some of these predictions for French–English mixed
2
The following abbreviations for features will be used throughout the text: plural = [PL]; singular = [SG]; definite = [DF];
feminine = [F] or [+FEM]; masculine = [M] or [-FEM]; neuter = [N].
3
Although it is often argued that even such bilinguals are not necessarily “two monolinguals in one” (e.g.,
González-Vilbazo and López 2011), this can be an adequate initial hypothesis.

Languages 2018,3, 10 3 of 28
DPs. Experimental data, however, are not directly reflective of a bilingual’s underlying linguistic
competence, but may also reflect performance factors related to language processing. For bilinguals,
the relative ease with which they process and access words from their two languages can depend on
external factors such as language proficiency and dominance (i.e., whether they use one language
preferentially). As such, the impact of these factors will also be taken into consideration when
forming hypotheses.
The remainder of this paper will be organized as follows. Section 2will provide the necessary
background, including a more detailed look at the mixed DP asymmetry in Spanish–English (2.1),
a brief overview of the DM framework (2.2), and the particular view on gender that will adopted
(2.3). This view will be demonstrated in the context of unmixed Spanish DPs. In Section 3, this
framework will be extended to account for Spanish–English mixed DPs (3.1), and to make predictions
for French–English mixed DPs (3.2). This proposal will then be discussed with respect to the predictions
that such a model makes for bilinguals with a late age of acquisition (3.3), and with respect to
how language proficiency and language dominance might influence the patterns observed in actual
mixed-language data (3.4). Section 4will then present the details of an experimental study designed to
test the predictions made for different types of French–English bilinguals. Results will be presented in
Section 5and discussed in Section 6. Section 7will conclude.
2. Background
2.1. The Mixed Determiner Phrase Asymmetry in Spanish–English
The claim that it is ungrammatical to switch between an English D and a Spanish N is based
on the observation that such constituents are quite rare in the speech of Spanish–English bilinguals.
For example, in Liceras et al.’s (2006) analysis of the Moyer’s (1993) Spanish–English corpus, they
found that only two of the 215 mixed DPs consisted of an English D and a Spanish N; and in
the corpus reported on in Jake et al. (2002), there are no reported instances of such mixed DPs
(Jake et al. 2005).
4
Further, Liceras et al. (2016) report a similar pattern found in the spontaneous
productions of simultaneous bilingual children, based on corpus data from from the FerFuLice corpus
(Fernández Fuertes and Liceras 2009) available in CHILDES MacWhinney (2000).
MacSwan (2005) accounts for this asymmetry based on Moro’s (2001) analysis, which takes a
minimalist point of view with lexicalist assumptions. They propose that mixed DPs such as the casa
crash because a Spanish N cannot successfully value and delete the uninterpretable features of an
English D “in one fell swoop”. This is because the Spanish N has PERSON, NUMBER and GENDER
features, but there is no corresponding GENDER feature on an English D. In contrast, mixed DPs such
as la house converge because the English N’s features, PERSON and NUMBER, are a subset of those of
the Spanish D. These can therefore be valued and deleted, leading to convergence (MacSwan 2005).
Liceras et al. (2008,2016), however, argue that this proposal is too categorical, and as such,
it is not able to account for the fact that this asymmetry has not been replicated in acceptability
judgment tasks. For example, they present data showing that adult L1-Spanish L2-English sequential
bilinguals (Liceras et al. 2008;Liceras 2014), as well as both sequential and simultaneous bilingual
children (Fernández Fuertes et al. 2011), evaluate mixed DPs with an English D to be as acceptable as
those with a Spanish D, as long as the Spanish D matches in gender with the English N’s translation
equivalent.
5
In order to account for this data as well as the patterns found in the corpus data, they
propose the grammatical features spell-out hypothesis. This hypothesis is based on the theoretical
assumptions of Pesetsky and Torrego (2001) regarding feature checking, and those of Kihm (2005)
4
Note that these researchers expect that mixed DPs with English Ds are possible and would be more frequent in a corpus
where the speakers’ dominant language is English, as there would be a greater tendency towards English providing the
morphosyntactic frame (i.e., the “matrix language”), which they argue is the source of functional items such as determiners.
5Note that “L1” refers to an individual’s native language, and “L2” to their second language.

Languages 2018,3, 10 4 of 28
regarding gender as a feature on the nominalizing head, n. Importantly, it provides a solution to the
conflicting experimental and naturalistic data by suggesting that in processing, but not in production,
the gender valuation mechanism between an N and a D can be cancelled in order to be more economical
with processing resources.
What these two accounts have in common, however, is that they predict a similar mixed DP
asymmetry for any language pair that has an underlying gender feature asymmetry. Indeed, this
asymmetry has been reported for other language pairs, such as Welsh–English (
Deuchar 2006
) and
German–English (Jorschick et al. 2011). On the other hand, there is evidence from a Norwegian–English
mixed language corpus that switches in both directions are attested (Alexiadou et al. 2015;
Riksem 2017
). Further, there is little in the literature reporting on French–English mixed DPs, and it
does not appear that the mixed DP asymmetry has been investigated here. As such, it is unclear if it
exists for this language pair. The DM-based theoretical account that will be proposed aims to reconcile
these conflicting observations. Crucially and in contrast with previous accounts, it does not predict
such an asymmetry for French–English.
2.2. The Distributed Morphology Framework
From a traditional lexicalist perspective of minimalist syntax, the lexicon includes items that
are specified for phonological form, word category information, and morphosyntactic features such
as PERSON, NUMBER and GENDER (e.g., Lieber 1992;Chomsky 1995;Müller and Wechsler 2014).
Morphologically complex words are derived in the lexicon and enter the derivation with their features.
Syntactic structure is then projected from those features. This “lexicalist” approach has been extended
to account for bilingual language mixing, where it has been proposed to operate in exactly the same
way, the only difference being that items from either of a bilingual’s two lexicons can be selected into
the numeration (MacSwan 1999,2000). MacSwan (1999, p. 235) explicitly makes reference to such
lexicalist assumptions when he defines borrowing from one language into another as “an operation
whereby a new stem is introduced into a specific lexicon where morphologically complex items are
formed before entering the numeration”.
In contrast, the DM framework (Halle and Marantz 1993;Marantz 1997;
Embick and Noyer 2007
),
as a non-lexicalist approach, assumes not a single lexicon, but one that is divided up into three
separate “lists”. Each of these lists is accessed at different points in the derivation. List 1 consists
of bare lexical roots and abstract morphemes, which are the elements that can be selected to form
a numeration. Roots (e.g.,
√
HOUSE,
√
BOOK) have no morphosyntactic features and they are not
specified for word categories. It has also been argued that they are not specified for phonological
forms (e.g., Siddiqi 2009), nor even for semantics (e.g., Harley 2014). Abstract morphemes, on the
other hand, consist of morphosyntactic features (e.g., [SG], [DF], n
[+FEM]
). List 1 elements that are
selected into the numeration combine with each other in the computational syntactic component to
form morphologically complex words via the same operations as those which combine words to form
syntactic structures (i.e., merge, agree). For example, bare roots can become nouns by combining with
the nominalizing head, n.
Syntactic terminal nodes at spell-out therefore consist of roots fused together with the abstract
morphemes that have merged above them (Siddiqi 2009), and still lack phonological and semantic
information. This brings us to the vocabulary items (VIs) of List 2, which are the mappings of these
root and feature bundles to their corresponding phonological forms. List 3 items are the mapping of
terminal nodes to their semantic exponents.
6
Crucially, VIs are morphologically underspecified and
compete for insertion into the fully specified syntactic terminal nodes, such that the exponent with the
most compatible features (but no incompatible features) is selected. This selection process is known as
6
This is somewhat of a simplification; however, because List 3 is not relevant to the topic of this paper, it will not be
discussed further.

Languages 2018,3, 10 5 of 28
the subset principle (Halle 1997). For example, of the Spanish VIs that compete at a D terminal node
with [M], [SG] and [DF] features, (2d) provides the best match and so is inserted.
Languages 2018, 3, 10 4 of 27
English mixed language corpus that switches in both directions are attested (Alexiadou et al. 2015;
Riksem 2017). Further, there is little in the literature reporting on French–English mixed DPs, and it
does not appear that the mixed DP asymmetry has been investigated here. As such, it is unclear if it
exists for this language pair. The DM-based theoretical account that will be proposed aims to
reconcile these conflicting observations. Crucially and in contrast with previous accounts, it does not
predict such an asymmetry for French–English.
2.2. The Distributed Morphology Framework
From a traditional lexicalist perspective of minimalist syntax, the lexicon includes items that are
specified for phonological form, word category information, and morphosyntactic features such as
PERSON, NUMBER and GENDER (e.g., Lieber 1992; Chomsky 1995; Müller and Wechsler 2014).
Morphologically complex words are derived in the lexicon and enter the derivation with their
features. Syntactic structure is then projected from those features. This “lexicalist” approach has been
extended to account for bilingual language mixing, where it has been proposed to operate in exactly
the same way, the only difference being that items from either of a bilingual’s two lexicons can be
selected into the numeration (MacSwan 1999, 2000). MacSwan (1999, p. 235) explicitly makes
reference to such lexicalist assumptions when he defines borrowing from one language into another
as “an operation whereby a new stem is introduced into a specific lexicon where morphologically
complex items are formed before entering the numeration”.
In contrast, the DM framework (Halle and Marantz 1993; Marantz 1997; Embick and Noyer
2007), as a non-lexicalist approach, assumes not a single lexicon, but one that is divided up into three
separate “lists”. Each of these lists is accessed at different points in the derivation. List 1 consists of
bare lexical roots and abstract morphemes, which are the elements that can be selected to form a
numeration. Roots (e.g., √HOUSE, √BOOK) have no morphosyntactic features and they are not
specified for word categories. It has also been argued that they are not specified for phonological
forms (e.g., Siddiqi 2009), nor even for semantics (e.g., Harley 2014). Abstract morphemes, on the
other hand, consist of morphosyntactic features (e.g., [SG], [DF], n[+FEM]). List 1 elements that are
selected into the numeration combine with each other in the computational syntactic component to
form morphologically complex words via the same operations as those which combine words to form
syntactic structures (i.e., merge, agree). For example, bare roots can become nouns by combining with
the nominalizing head, n.
Syntactic terminal nodes at spell-out therefore consist of roots fused together with the abstract
morphemes that have merged above them (Siddiqi 2009), and still lack phonological and semantic
information. This brings us to the vocabulary items (VIs) of List 2, which are the mappings of these
root and feature bundles to their corresponding phonological forms. List 3 items are the mapping of
terminal nodes to their semantic exponents.6 Crucially, VIs are morphologically underspecified and
compete for insertion into the fully specified syntactic terminal nodes, such that the exponent with
the most compatible features (but no incompatible features) is selected. This selection process is
known as the subset principle (Halle 1997). For example, of the Spanish VIs that compete at a D
terminal node with [M], [SG] and [DF] features, (2d) provides the best match and so is inserted.
2.
List 2 Spanish VIs competing for D[M.SG.DF]
a.
F.PL.D
F
→
las
b.
PL.DF
→
los
c.
F.DF
→
la
d.
M.DF
→
el
e.
DF
→
lo
6 This is somewhat of a simplification; however, because List 3 is not relevant to the topic of this paper, it will
not be discussed further.
2.3. A Distributed Morphology Account of Unmixed Spanish Determiner Phrases
Inanimate nouns in Spanish are arbitrarily assigned one of two grammatical genders, feminine
and or masculine, and typically fall into one of three declension classes (I, II, III), which are each
associated with a particular declension class suffix (
−
o,
−
a, or
−
e, respectively). However, while
declension classes are strongly correlated with gender, such as in (3a) and (3b), they are indeed distinct
from gender as there are exceptions, for example (3c). Also, while some nouns take no overt suffix,
such as established loanwords, for example (3d), nouns that do take a declension class suffix never
surface bare; they are bound roots.
Languages 2018, 3, 10 5 of 27
2.3. A Distributed Morphology Account of Unmixed Spanish Determiner Phrases
Inanimate nouns in Spanish are arbitrarily assigned one of two grammatical genders, feminine
and or masculine, and typically fall into one of three declension classes (I, II, III), which are each
associated with a particular declension class suffix (−o, −a, or −e, respectively). However, while
declension classes are strongly correlated with gender, such as in (3a) and (3b), they are indeed
distinct from gender as there are exceptions, for example (3c). Also, while some nouns take no overt
suffix, such as established loanwords, for example (3d), nouns that do take a declension class suffix
never surface bare; they are bound roots.
3.
a.
la
cas-a
the.F
house.F-II
b.
el
libr-o
the.M
book.M-I
c.
la
man-o
the.F
hand.F-I
d.
el
béicon
the.M
bacon.M
Turning now to how unmixed Spanish DPs are derived from a DM perspective (see Figure 1a),
it will assumed that bare lexical roots must merge with a nominalizing head, n, in order to surface as
a noun. In languages without grammatical gender, such as English, n is plain; however, in Spanish,
n is bundled together with either an uninterpretable u[+FEM] or u[-FEM] feature (Kihm 2005; Kramer
2015).7 Spanish roots are licensed under one or the other, and this is what ensures that nouns
consistently surface with the correct gender, feminine or masculine, respectively.8 Importantly,
Kramer (2015) proposes that, for Spanish, there are also “theme nodes” which are adjoined to n after
spell-out. This is done in accordance with theme node insertion rules, such as those in (4). The rules
in (4a) capture all the listed exceptions, such as (3c) above, and those in (4b) and (4c) ensure that,
aside from those exceptions, declension class is indeed dependent on the underlying gender feature.
4.
Theme node insertion rules for Spanish
a.
(i)
Insert [THEME, III] in the context of √ESTANT-, √CARN- ...
(ii)
Insert [THEME, II] in the context of √DI- ...
(iii)
Insert [THEME, I] in the context of √MAN- ...
b.
Insert [THEME, II] in the context of n[+FEM]
c.
Insert [THEME, I] in the context of n[-FEM]
d.
Insert Ø elsewhere.
7 See Kramer (2015) and also Kučerová (2017) for a more complete view on the different types of gender that
are involved, for example, in the derivation of animate nouns with biological gender.
8 Nouns that surface with masculine gender could alternatively be licensed under a plain n as default, as
assumed by Kramer (2015); however, it will be assumed here that there is an uninterpretable [-FEM] for
inanimate nouns just as there is an interpretable [-FEM] feature for animate nouns with male biological gender.
Turning now to how unmixed Spanish DPs are derived from a DM perspective (see Figure 1a),
it will assumed that bare lexical roots must merge with a nominalizing head, n, in order to surface
as a noun. In languages without grammatical gender, such as English, nis plain; however, in
Spanish, nis bundled together with either an uninterpretable u[+FEM] or u[-FEM] feature (Kihm
2005;
Kramer 2015
).
7
Spanish roots are licensed under one or the other, and this is what ensures that
nouns consistently surface with the correct gender, feminine or masculine, respectively.
8
Importantly,
Kramer (2015) proposes that, for Spanish, there are also “theme nodes” which are adjoined to nafter
spell-out. This is done in accordance with theme node insertion rules, such as those in (4). The rules
in (4a) capture all the listed exceptions, such as (3c) above, and those in (4b) and (4c) ensure that,
aside from those exceptions, declension class is indeed dependent on the underlying gender feature.
7
See Kramer (2015) and also Kuˇcerová(2017) for a more complete view on the different types of gender that are involved, for
example, in the derivation of animate nouns with biological gender.
8
Nouns that surface with masculine gender could alternatively be licensed under a plain nas default, as assumed by Kramer
(2015); however, it will be assumed here that there is an uninterpretable [-FEM] for inanimate nouns just as there is an
interpretable [-FEM] feature for animate nouns with male biological gender.

Languages 2018,3, 10 6 of 28
Languages 2018, 3, 10 5 of 27
2.3. A Distributed Morphology Account of Unmixed Spanish Determiner Phrases
Inanimate nouns in Spanish are arbitrarily assigned one of two grammatical genders, feminine
and or masculine, and typically fall into one of three declension classes (I, II, III), which are each
associated with a particular declension class suffix (−o, −a, or −e, respectively). However, while
declension classes are strongly correlated with gender, such as in (3a) and (3b), they are indeed
distinct from gender as there are exceptions, for example (3c). Also, while some nouns take no overt
suffix, such as established loanwords, for example (3d), nouns that do take a declension class suffix
never surface bare; they are bound roots.
3.
a.
la
cas-a
the.F
house.F-II
b.
el
libr-o
the.M
book.M-I
c.
la
man-o
the.F
hand.F-I
d.
el
béicon
the.M
bacon.M
Turning now to how unmixed Spanish DPs are derived from a DM perspective (see Figure 1a),
it will assumed that bare lexical roots must merge with a nominalizing head, n, in order to surface as
a noun. In languages without grammatical gender, such as English, n is plain; however, in Spanish,
n is bundled together with either an uninterpretable u[+FEM] or u[-FEM] feature (Kihm 2005; Kramer
2015).7 Spanish roots are licensed under one or the other, and this is what ensures that nouns
consistently surface with the correct gender, feminine or masculine, respectively.8 Importantly,
Kramer (2015) proposes that, for Spanish, there are also “theme nodes” which are adjoined to n after
spell-out. This is done in accordance with theme node insertion rules, such as those in (4). The rules
in (4a) capture all the listed exceptions, such as (3c) above, and those in (4b) and (4c) ensure that,
aside from those exceptions, declension class is indeed dependent on the underlying gender feature.
4.
Theme node insertion rules for Spanish
a.
(i)
Insert [THEME, III] in the context of √ESTANT-, √CARN- ...
(ii)
Insert [THEME, II] in the context of √DI- ...
(iii)
Insert [THEME, I] in the context of √MAN- ...
b.
Insert [THEME, II] in the context of n[+FEM]
c.
Insert [THEME, I] in the context of n[-FEM]
d.
Insert Ø elsewhere.
7 See Kramer (2015) and also Kučerová (2017) for a more complete view on the different types of gender that
are involved, for example, in the derivation of animate nouns with biological gender.
8 Nouns that surface with masculine gender could alternatively be licensed under a plain n as default, as
assumed by Kramer (2015); however, it will be assumed here that there is an uninterpretable [-FEM] for
inanimate nouns just as there is an interpretable [-FEM] feature for animate nouns with male biological gender.
Figure 1.
(
a
) Syntactic structure for the unmixed Spanish determiner phrase (DP) la casa ‘the house’;
(
b
) Syntactic structure for the mixed Spanish–English DP la house ‘the house’. Numbers indicated by
arrows show which insertion rules apply in the given syntactic context.
Then, when vocabulary insertion applies, List 2 theme vowels are inserted into the
theme nodes. This is done in accordance with the rules in (5). Crucially, it will be
proposed here that theme node insertion only applies in contexts where there is a bound
root.
9
This ensures that athematic nouns, such as established loanwords (e.g., 3d), do not
get a declension class suffix. It also captures the idea that the purpose of declension class
suffixes is to render bound roots pronounceable by completing their phonological form.
9
Kramer (2015) also proposes that theme vowels are only inserted when the theme node is left-adjacent to the number (Num)
head in order to account for the fact that roots do not have theme vowels inserted when there is another affix (such as the
diminutive) directly following the root.

Languages 2018,3, 10 7 of 28
Languages 2018, 3, 10 6 of 27
Figure 1. (a) Syntactic structure for the unmixed Spanish determiner phrase (DP) la casa ‘the house’;
(b) Syntactic structure for the mixed Spanish–English DP la house ‘the house’. Numbers indicated by
arrows show which insertion rules apply in the given syntactic context.
Then, when vocabulary insertion applies, List 2 theme vowels are inserted into the theme nodes.
This is done in accordance with the rules in (5). Crucially, it will be proposed here that theme node
insertion only applies in contexts where there is a bound root.9 This ensures that athematic nouns,
such as established loanwords (e.g., 3d), do not get a declension class suffix. It also captures the idea
that the purpose of declension class suffixes is to render bound roots pronounceable by completing
their phonological form.
5.
List 2 vocabulary insertion rules for theme nodes
a.
[THEME, III]
→
-e/√X- __ Num
b.
[THEME, II]
→
-a/√X- __ Num
c.
[THEME, I]
→
-o/√X- __ Num
d.
[THEME]
→
Ø
3. Proposed Distributed Morphology Account of Mixed Determiner Phrases
Extending the DM model to language mixing in general, we can make the following two
assumptions. First, it will be assumed that bilinguals have functionally separate distributed lexicons,
such that in unilingual language mode they can access the set of lists associated to one language with
limited interference from the other.10 Second, during language mixing, neither language is inhibited.
9 Kramer (2015) also proposes that theme vowels are only inserted when the theme node is left-adjacent to the
number (Num) head in order to account for the fact that roots do not have theme vowels inserted when there
is another affix (such as the diminutive) directly following the root.
10 It is assumed that language membership is a psychologically emergent property that allows for the
functional separation of a bilingual’s two languages, such that activation (of one, the other, or both) is
managed via cognitive control mechanisms. Importantly, the computational system does not see language
membership as a formal feature.
3. Proposed Distributed Morphology Account of Mixed Determiner Phrases
Extending the DM model to language mixing in general, we can make the following two
assumptions. First, it will be assumed that bilinguals have functionally separate distributed lexicons,
such that in unilingual language mode they can access the set of lists associated to one language with
limited interference from the other.
10
Second, during language mixing, neither language is inhibited.
As such, List 1 elements from either language can be selected into the numeration, and List 2 VIs from
both languages can compete for insertion after spell-out.
By applying these assumptions to the above account for unmixed Spanish DPs, an analysis for
Spanish–English mixed DPs can now be proposed. This will then be extended to make predictions for
French–English. As mentioned in the introduction, this proposal will assume that the bilinguals in
question have “perfect” competence in each of their two languages. It will also assume that their innate
knowledge is reflected in mixed language data. As such, the discussion of the theoretical proposal will
focus on the impact that age of acquisition (AoA) and factors related to language processing may have
on the expected patterns.
3.1. Analysis for Spanish–English
With respect to the specific structure involved in DPs, it will be assumed that English differs from
Spanish in two relevant ways. First, because English has no grammatical gender system, it has only a
plain n, and the definite determiner, the, has only a [DF] feature. Second, like established loanwords in
Spanish, it will be assumed that English nominal roots are free, not bound.
3.1.1. The Mixed Determiner Phrase Asymmetry
Looking first at how mixed DPs such as la house are derived, Figure 1b shows that when an English
root merges with a Spanish n, this operates in exactly the same way as with unmixed Spanish DPs. The
crucial difference occurs during vocabulary insertion. Because the theme node is not right adjacent
to a bound root in this case, rule (5d) applies, and no theme vowel is inserted. Because D values its
uninterpretable
ϕ
-features (PERSON, NUMBER and GENDER) against a feature bundle containing a
feminine gender feature, the Spanish determiner la (6c) wins the competition for insertion, resulting in
la house. Note that an important question in this case is whether an English root will merge an nwith
the u[+FEM] feature or that with the u[-FEM] feature. This will be addressed below in Section 3.1.2.
We turn now to the case of the casa, where a Spanish root merges with an English n. Because
nhas no gender feature, theme node insertion rule (4d) applies and so nothing is inserted. As
such, the bound root cannot get a theme vowel to complete its phonological form. In order to
get a theme node inserted and thus a theme vowel, the Spanish root has to merge with a Spanish
nwith a gender feature; however, if that is the case, then the D terminal node will also have a
feminine feature by virtue of agree, and so the feminine Spanish determiner la (6c) is the VI that
10
It is assumed that language membership is a psychologically emergent property that allows for the functional separation of
a bilingual’s two languages, such that activation (of one, the other, or both) is managed via cognitive control mechanisms.
Importantly, the computational system does not see language membership as a formal feature.

Languages 2018,3, 10 8 of 28
wins the competition for insertion, not the (6f). As such, the casa is blocked via the subset principle.
Languages 2018, 3, 10 7 of 27
As such, List 1 elements from either language can be selected into the numeration, and List 2 VIs from
both languages can compete for insertion after spell-out.
By applying these assumptions to the above account for unmixed Spanish DPs, an analysis for
Spanish–English mixed DPs can now be proposed. This will then be extended to make predictions
for French–English. As mentioned in the introduction, this proposal will assume that the bilinguals
in question have “perfect” competence in each of their two languages. It will also assume that their
innate knowledge is reflected in mixed language data. As such, the discussion of the theoretical
proposal will focus on the impact that age of acquisition (AoA) and factors related to language
processing may have on the expected patterns.
3.1. Analysis for Spanish–English
With respect to the specific structure involved in DPs, it will be assumed that English differs
from Spanish in two relevant ways. First, because English has no grammatical gender system, it has
only a plain n, and the definite determiner, the, has only a [DF] feature. Second, like established
loanwords in Spanish, it will be assumed that English nominal roots are free, not bound.
3.1.1. The Mixed Determiner Phrase Asymmetry
Looking first at how mixed DPs such as la house are derived, Figure 1b shows that when an
English root merges with a Spanish n, this operates in exactly the same way as with unmixed Spanish
DPs. The crucial difference occurs during vocabulary insertion. Because the theme node is not right
adjacent to a bound root in this case, rule (5d) applies, and no theme vowel is inserted. Because D
values its uninterpretable ϕ-features (PERSON, NUMBER and GENDER) against a feature bundle
containing a feminine gender feature, the Spanish determiner la (6c) wins the competition for
insertion, resulting in la house. Note that an important question in this case is whether an English root
will merge an n with the u[+FEM] feature or that with the u[-FEM] feature. This will be addressed
below in Section 3.1.2.
We turn now to the case of the casa, where a Spanish root merges with an English n. Because n
has no gender feature, theme node insertion rule (4d) applies and so nothing is inserted. As such, the
bound root cannot get a theme vowel to complete its phonological form. In order to get a theme node
inserted and thus a theme vowel, the Spanish root has to merge with a Spanish n with a gender
feature; however, if that is the case, then the D terminal node will also have a feminine feature by
virtue of agree, and so the feminine Spanish determiner la (6c) is the VI that wins the competition for
insertion, not the (6f). As such, the casa is blocked via the subset principle.
6.
List 2 VIs for Spanish (a–e) and English (f) competing for D[DF.SG.F]
a.
F.PL.DF
→
las
b.
PL.DF
→
los
c.
F.DF
→
la
d.
M.DF
→
el
e.
DF
→
lo
f.
DF
→
the
It is therefore not so much the case that mixed DPs consisting of an English D and a Spanish N
violate any morphosyntactic requirements of the computational system. Rather, they are blocked by
the availability of a more highly specified Spanish VI. Interestingly, such an account is not
incompatible with the grammatical features spell-out hypothesis of Liceras et al. (2008), which also
assigns a preference to the more grammaticalized functional element, but leaves room for the
acceptability of the less grammaticalized option (the English D) in situations where it is more efficient
with respect to processing resources.
It is therefore not so much the case that mixed DPs consisting of an English D and a Spanish N
violate any morphosyntactic requirements of the computational system. Rather, they are blocked by
the availability of a more highly specified Spanish VI. Interestingly, such an account is not incompatible
with the grammatical features spell-out hypothesis of Liceras et al. (2008), which also assigns a
preference to the more grammaticalized functional element, but leaves room for the acceptability of
the less grammaticalized option (the English D) in situations where it is more efficient with respect to
processing resources.
3.1.2. The Analogical Criterion
As it is assumed that Spanish has two possible ns, (n
u[-FEM]
/n
u[+FEM]
), there is an option with
respect to which Spanish nan English root will be licensed under in mixed DPs. Indeed, there are three
possible outcomes for root licensing. First, it could be entirely arbitrary; because such English roots
are combined spontaneously with Spanish elements and not repeatedly, it is unlikely that licensing
conditions exist for these roots in the same way that they do for Spanish roots, whose licensing
conditions would have been established during lexical acquisition via cues in the input. This would
predict that all the options presented in (7) would be equally acceptable. Second, there could be a
preference for licensing all English roots under the n
u[-FEM]
by default, leading to preferences for (7b)
and (7d). Finally, there could be a preference for licensing English roots under the nof their translation
equivalent, leading to preferences for (7a) and (7d).
Languages 2018, 3, 10 8 of 27
3.1.2. The Analogical Criterion
As it is assumed that Spanish has two possible ns, (nu[-FEM]/nu[+FEM]), there is an option with respect
to which Spanish n an English root will be licensed under in mixed DPs. Indeed, there are three
possible outcomes for root licensing. First, it could be entirely arbitrary; because such English roots
are combined spontaneously with Spanish elements and not repeatedly, it is unlikely that licensing
conditions exist for these roots in the same way that they do for Spanish roots, whose licensing
conditions would have been established during lexical acquisition via cues in the input. This would
predict that all the options presented in (7) would be equally acceptable. Second, there could be a
preference for licensing all English roots under the nu[-FEM] by default, leading to preferences for (7b)
and (7d). Finally, there could be a preference for licensing English roots under the n of their
translation equivalent, leading to preferences for (7a) and (7d).
7.
a.
la
house
the.DF.F
house (c.f. house = casa.F)
b.
el
house
the.DF.M
house
c.
la
book
the.DF.F
book (c.f. book = libro.M)
d.
el
book
the.DF.M
book
This third option is known as the “analogical criterion”, and Liceras et al. (2008) found strong
evidence for this with the L1-Spanish L2-English sequential bilinguals that they tested using an
acceptability judgment task. Data from the corpora, however, suggest that the analogical criterion
may be more of a tendency than a rule. For example, in the Spanish–English corpus-based studies
presented in Table 1, it is clear that an English N with a masculine translation equivalent almost
categorically appeared with a masculine Spanish D; whereas an English N with a feminine translation
equivalent had considerably more optionality in terms of the gender of the Spanish D with which it
appeared. This suggests that, in production, analogical gender is applied to all English Ns if it can be
easily retrieved from memory. If it is not retrieved, then masculine gender is applied as default.11
Table 1. The analogical criterion in Spanish–English corpora.
Study
Gender of Translation = M
Gender of Translation = F
Matching D
Mismatching D
Matching D
Mismatching D
e.g., el book
e.g., la book
e.g., la house
e.g., el house
Poplack et al. (1982)
97%
3%
78%
22%
Clegg and Waltermire (2009)
96%
4%
21%
79%
Jake et al. (2002)
97%
3%
19%
81%
Experimental results from a study employing eye-tracking with the visual world paradigm
support this pattern. Kroff et al. (2016) found that lexical access to English Ns with a feminine Spanish
translation was facilitated by the presence of a feminine D, indicating that this was a useful cue during
comprehension. This could be because feminine Ds rarely co-occur in the input with English Ns that
have a masculine translation (i.e., only about 3–4%). On the other hand, they found that lexical access
11 Note that, of the three groups, the bilinguals in Poplack et al.’s (1982) corpus appear to be much better at
retrieving the analogical gender of English Ns, as they do so for 78% of those with a feminine translation. It
can be assumed that they do so at a similar rate for those with a masculine translation, though this is
obscured by the correspondence between analogical gender and the default gender.
This third option is known as the “analogical criterion”, and Liceras et al. (2008) found strong
evidence for this with the L1-Spanish L2-English sequential bilinguals that they tested using an
acceptability judgment task. Data from the corpora, however, suggest that the analogical criterion may
be more of a tendency than a rule. For example, in the Spanish–English corpus-based studies presented
in Table 1, it is clear that an English N with a masculine translation equivalent almost categorically
appeared with a masculine Spanish D; whereas an English N with a feminine translation equivalent
had considerably more optionality in terms of the gender of the Spanish D with which it appeared.

Languages 2018,3, 10 9 of 28
This suggests that, in production, analogical gender is applied to all English Ns if it can be easily
retrieved from memory. If it is not retrieved, then masculine gender is applied as default.11
Table 1. The analogical criterion in Spanish–English corpora.
Study Gender of Translation = M Gender of Translation = F
Matching D Mismatching D Matching D Mismatching D
e.g., el book e.g., la book e.g., la house e.g., el house
Poplack et al. (1982) 97% 3% 78% 22%
Clegg and Waltermire (2009) 96% 4% 21% 79%
Jake et al. (2002) 97% 3% 19% 81%
D: determiner.
Experimental results from a study employing eye-tracking with the visual world paradigm
support this pattern. Kroff et al. (2016) found that lexical access to English Ns with a feminine Spanish
translation was facilitated by the presence of a feminine D, indicating that this was a useful cue during
comprehension. This could be because feminine Ds rarely co-occur in the input with English Ns that
have a masculine translation (i.e., only about 3–4%). On the other hand, they found that lexical access
to English Ns that have a masculine translation was not facilitated by the presence of a masculine
D, suggesting that the masculine D is not a useful cue. Again, this is perhaps because masculine Ds
co-occur in the input with English Ns that have either a masculine translation (96–97%) or a feminine
translation (22–81%), which appears to be due to the default masculine status.
3.2. Predictions for French–English
French and Spanish have very similar gender systems, with two grammatical genders,
masculine and feminine, that are assigned arbitrarily to inanimate nouns. It will therefore
be assumed that inanimate roots in French are also licensed under either n
u[+FEM]
or n
u[-FEM]
.
Unlike Spanish, however, French has no declension class suffixes. As such, roots in French are
typically free as opposed to bound. While French has both feminine and masculine singular
definite determiners, as does Spanish, there are some differences with respect to the VIs that
French–English bilinguals have available for insertion into D, as shown in (8). Importantly, the
feature specification of le (8c) is the same as that of the (8d), because unlike in Spanish, there is no
other gender-unspecified determiner (i.e., Spanish lo). These properties of French sometimes lead
to different predictions with respect to the mixed DP asymmetry and the analogical criterion.
Languages 2018, 3, 10 9 of 27
to English Ns that have a masculine translation was not facilitated by the presence of a masculine D,
suggesting that the masculine D is not a useful cue. Again, this is perhaps because masculine Ds co-
occur in the input with English Ns that have either a masculine translation (96–97%) or a feminine
translation (22–81%), which appears to be due to the default masculine status.
3.2. Predictions for French–English
French and Spanish have very similar gender systems, with two grammatical genders,
masculine and feminine, that are assigned arbitrarily to inanimate nouns. It will therefore be assumed
that inanimate roots in French are also licensed under either nu[+FEM] or nu[-FEM]. Unlike Spanish,
however, French has no declension class suffixes. As such, roots in French are typically free as
opposed to bound. While French has both feminine and masculine singular definite determiners, as
does Spanish, there are some differences with respect to the VIs that French–English bilinguals have
available for insertion into D, as shown in (8). Importantly, the feature specification of le (8c) is the
same as that of the (8d), because unlike in Spanish, there is no other gender-unspecified determiner
(i.e., Spanish lo). These properties of French sometimes lead to different predictions with respect to
the mixed DP asymmetry and the analogical criterion.
8.
List 2 VIs for French (a–c) and English (d) competing for D[DF.SG.F]
a.
PL.DF
→
les
b.
F.DF
→
la
c.
DF
→
le
d.
DF
→
the
3.2.1. The Mixed Determiner Phrase Asymmetry
Since French nouns do not have obligatory affixes that are dependent on a gender feature (c.f.
declension class suffixes in Spanish), this means that there is nothing prohibiting French roots from
combining with a genderless English n. As such, one of the main predicted differences between
French–English and Spanish–English mixed DPs is that combinations of an English D and a French
N, as in (9a), are expected to be grammatical, as well as those involving a French D and an English
N, as in (9b). In other words, no mixed DP asymmetry is expected.
In support of this prediction is data from a Norwegian–English mixed language corpus
(Alexiadou et al. 2015; Riksem 2017), which suggest that the mixed DP asymmetry is not present in
this language pair despite their having a similar underlying gender feature asymmetry; both DPs in
(10) are attested (see (Burkholder et al. 2017) for more details). Importantly, Norwegian roots, like
French roots and unlike Spanish roots, are free.12
9.
a.
the
maison
the.DF
house
b.
la
house
the.DF.F
house
10.
a.
det
andre
crew-et
the.DF.N
other
crew-DF.SG.N
b.
the
by
the.DF
city
12 Note that even though Norwegian nouns can take definite suffixes that have been argued to mark declension
class rather than gender (Lohndal and Westergaard 2016), these nouns can surface without any suffixes,
such as in indefinite constructions. This is evidence that Norwegian nouns involve free roots. It should also
be noted that overt definite determiners are only present under certain conditions, such as when there is an
adjective (e.g., see Julien 2005).
3.2.1. The Mixed Determiner Phrase Asymmetry
Since French nouns do not have obligatory affixes that are dependent on a gender feature (c.f.
declension class suffixes in Spanish), this means that there is nothing prohibiting French roots from
combining with a genderless English n. As such, one of the main predicted differences between
French–English and Spanish–English mixed DPs is that combinations of an English D and a French N,
11
Note that, of the three groups, the bilinguals in Poplack et al.’s (1982) corpus appear to be much better at retrieving the
analogical gender of English Ns, as they do so for 78% of those with a feminine translation. It can be assumed that they do
so at a similar rate for those with a masculine translation, though this is obscured by the correspondence between analogical
gender and the default gender.

Languages 2018,3, 10 10 of 28
as in (9a), are expected to be grammatical, as well as those involving a French D and an English N, as
in (9b). In other words, no mixed DP asymmetry is expected.
In support of this prediction is data from a Norwegian–English mixed language corpus
(
Alexiadou et al. 2015
;Riksem 2017), which suggest that the mixed DP asymmetry is not present
in this language pair despite their having a similar underlying gender feature asymmetry; both DPs
in (10) are attested (see (Burkholder et al. 2017) for more details). Importantly, Norwegian roots, like
French roots and unlike Spanish roots, are free.12
Languages 2018, 3, 10 9 of 27
to English Ns that have a masculine translation was not facilitated by the presence of a masculine D,
suggesting that the masculine D is not a useful cue. Again, this is perhaps because masculine Ds co-
occur in the input with English Ns that have either a masculine translation (96–97%) or a feminine
translation (22–81%), which appears to be due to the default masculine status.
3.2. Predictions for French–English
French and Spanish have very similar gender systems, with two grammatical genders,
masculine and feminine, that are assigned arbitrarily to inanimate nouns. It will therefore be assumed
that inanimate roots in French are also licensed under either nu[+FEM] or nu[-FEM]. Unlike Spanish,
however, French has no declension class suffixes. As such, roots in French are typically free as
opposed to bound. While French has both feminine and masculine singular definite determiners, as
does Spanish, there are some differences with respect to the VIs that French–English bilinguals have
available for insertion into D, as shown in (8). Importantly, the feature specification of le (8c) is the
same as that of the (8d), because unlike in Spanish, there is no other gender-unspecified determiner
(i.e., Spanish lo). These properties of French sometimes lead to different predictions with respect to
the mixed DP asymmetry and the analogical criterion.
8.
List 2 VIs for French (a–c) and English (d) competing for D[DF.SG.F]
a.
PL.DF
→
les
b.
F.DF
→
la
c.
DF
→
le
d.
DF
→
the
3.2.1. The Mixed Determiner Phrase Asymmetry
Since French nouns do not have obligatory affixes that are dependent on a gender feature (c.f.
declension class suffixes in Spanish), this means that there is nothing prohibiting French roots from
combining with a genderless English n. As such, one of the main predicted differences between
French–English and Spanish–English mixed DPs is that combinations of an English D and a French
N, as in (9a), are expected to be grammatical, as well as those involving a French D and an English
N, as in (9b). In other words, no mixed DP asymmetry is expected.
In support of this prediction is data from a Norwegian–English mixed language corpus
(Alexiadou et al. 2015; Riksem 2017), which suggest that the mixed DP asymmetry is not present in
this language pair despite their having a similar underlying gender feature asymmetry; both DPs in
(10) are attested (see (Burkholder et al. 2017) for more details). Importantly, Norwegian roots, like
French roots and unlike Spanish roots, are free.12
9.
a.
the
maison
the.DF
house
b.
la
house
the.DF.F
house
10.
a.
det
andre
crew-et
the.DF.N
other
crew-DF.SG.N
b.
the
by
the.DF
city
12 Note that even though Norwegian nouns can take definite suffixes that have been argued to mark declension
class rather than gender (Lohndal and Westergaard 2016), these nouns can surface without any suffixes,
such as in indefinite constructions. This is evidence that Norwegian nouns involve free roots. It should also
be noted that overt definite determiners are only present under certain conditions, such as when there is an
adjective (e.g., see Julien 2005).
3.2.2. The Analogical Criterion
Because it is assumed that French and Spanish have ns with the same gender features
(n
u[-FEM]
/n
u[+FEM]
), this leads to the prediction that French–English, like Spanish–English, has an
option with respect to which French nan English root will be licensed under in mixed DPs. There is
indeed evidence of this from French–English corpus data (Poplack et al. 1982). After controlling for
biological gender, it was determined that 78% of English Ns with masculine translation equivalents
took analogical gender (e.g., 11d), compared to only 42% of those with feminine translation equivalents
(e.g., 11a). While this pattern is very similar to what they found in the Spanish–English corpora (see
Table 1), it is notable that the application of analogical gender for masculine Ns was not as categorical
in this French–English corpus. The authors note that this increased variability could be due to a higher
number of cases where it was unclear to them which analogical gender should be assigned, which
may have been partly related to their own lesser familiarity with French compared to Spanish.
Languages 2018, 3, 10 10 of 27
3.2.2. The Analogical Criterion
Because it is assumed that French and Spanish have ns with the same gender features (nu[-
FEM]/nu[+FEM]), this leads to the prediction that French–English, like Spanish–English, has an option with
respect to which French n an English root will be licensed under in mixed DPs. There is indeed
evidence of this from French–English corpus data (Poplack et al. 1982). After controlling for biological
gender, it was determined that 78% of English Ns with masculine translation equivalents took
analogical gender (e.g., 11d), compared to only 42% of those with feminine translation equivalents
(e.g., 11a). While this pattern is very similar to what they found in the Spanish–English corpora (see
Table 1), it is notable that the application of analogical gender for masculine Ns was not as categorical
in this French–English corpus. The authors note that this increased variability could be due to a higher
number of cases where it was unclear to them which analogical gender should be assigned, which
may have been partly related to their own lesser familiarity with French compared to Spanish.
11.
a.
la
house
the.DF.F
house (c.f. house = maison.F)
b.
le
house
the.DF.M
house
c.
la
sun
the.DF.F
sun (c.f. sun = soleil.M)
d.
le
sun
the.DF.M
sun
There is also evidence that L1-French speakers may apply different strategies than L1-Spanish
speakers with respect to the analogical criterion. While Liceras et al. (2008) found strong evidence for
the analogical criterion with their L1-Spanish L2-English sequential bilinguals, they found that L1-
French L2-Spanish bilinguals (with English as a second L1) tended to prefer applying masculine as
default, at least in Spanish–English mixed DPs.
3.3. Impact of Age of Acquisition
The DM-based analysis suggests that there may be different mixed DP patterns for simultaneous
versus late sequential bilingual acquisition. For bilinguals acquiring two L1s simultaneously, it could
be expected that new Spanish/French roots encountered in nominal contexts would become licensed
under the appropriate gender-bearing n (either nu[+FEM] or nu[-FEM]), whereas new English roots would
become licensed under the plain n. As such, in language mixing contexts, both gender-bearing ns and
the plain n would be available to these bilinguals when selecting the numeration. This is what has
been assumed in the above theoretical analyses. In contrast, if it is assumed that after a particular age,
functional features not present in the L1 are no longer available to L2 learners (e.g., Hawkins and
Chan 1997), then it is possible that late L2 learners may not have all three ns in their repertoire.
For late L1-Spanish/L1-French L2-English bilinguals, this may mean that they do not have a plain
n. If so, this predicts that both English and French/Spanish roots can only merge with a gender-
bearing n. This has several possible consequences.
First, in Spanish–English mixed DPs, when Spanish roots merge with a plain English n, this
already creates issues due to declension classes. As such, not having an English n in the repertoire of
abstract morphemes does not change anything for Spanish roots. On the other hand, this possibility
would mean that English roots (e.g., √HOUSE) appearing in Spanish–English mixed language
contexts would always have to merge with either nu[+FEM] or nu[-FEM]. This predicts that such English Ns
should only appear with Spanish Ds. This is because el and la are both more specified than the,
meaning that they would be preferentially chosen at vocabulary insertion if available, as per the
12
Note that even though Norwegian nouns can take definite suffixes that have been argued to mark declension class rather than
gender (Lohndal and Westergaard 2016), these nouns can surface without any suffixes, such as in indefinite constructions.
This is evidence that Norwegian nouns involve free roots. It should also be noted that overt definite determiners are only
present under certain conditions, such as when there is an adjective (e.g., see Julien 2005).

Languages 2018,3, 10 11 of 28
There is also evidence that L1-French speakers may apply different strategies than L1-Spanish
speakers with respect to the analogical criterion. While Liceras et al. (2008) found strong evidence
for the analogical criterion with their L1-Spanish L2-English sequential bilinguals, they found that
L1-French L2-Spanish bilinguals (with English as a second L1) tended to prefer applying masculine as
default, at least in Spanish–English mixed DPs.
3.3. Impact of Age of Acquisition
The DM-based analysis suggests that there may be different mixed DP patterns for simultaneous
versus late sequential bilingual acquisition. For bilinguals acquiring two L1s simultaneously, it could
be expected that new Spanish/French roots encountered in nominal contexts would become licensed
under the appropriate gender-bearing n(either n
u[+FEM]
or n
u[-FEM]
), whereas new English roots
would become licensed under the plain n. As such, in language mixing contexts, both gender-bearing
ns and the plain nwould be available to these bilinguals when selecting the numeration. This is
what has been assumed in the above theoretical analyses. In contrast, if it is assumed that after
a particular age, functional features not present in the L1 are no longer available to L2 learners
(e.g.,
Hawkins and Chan 1997
), then it is possible that late L2 learners may not have all three ns in
their repertoire.
For late L1-Spanish/L1-French L2-English bilinguals, this may mean that they do not have a plain
n. If so, this predicts that both English and French/Spanish roots can only merge with a gender-bearing
n. This has several possible consequences.
First, in Spanish–English mixed DPs, when Spanish roots merge with a plain English n, this
already creates issues due to declension classes. As such, not having an English nin the repertoire of
abstract morphemes does not change anything for Spanish roots. On the other hand, this possibility
would mean that English roots (e.g.,
√
HOUSE) appearing in Spanish–English mixed language contexts
would always have to merge with either n
u[+FEM]
or n
u[-FEM]
. This predicts that such English Ns should
only appear with Spanish Ds. This is because el and la are both more specified than the, meaning that
they would be preferentially chosen at vocabulary insertion if available, as per the subset principle.
13
There is actually good evidence for this prediction. In the Spanish–English corpora presented in Table 1,
full English DPs (e.g., the book) are extremely rare compared to those consisting of a Spanish D and an
English N (e.g., el book).
Second, for DPs with French roots appearing in mixed language contexts, not having a plain
English ncould mean that D will always have a gender feature obtained from agreeing with a
gender-bearing French n. As such, mixed DPs with a feminine noun, such as the maison, should be
blocked in favour of unmixed DPs, such as la maison, because the more specified French VI la (8b) will
always win over the English the (8d). However, because le (8c) has the same specification as the (8d),
optionality is expected for mixed DPs such as the soleil and unmixed DPs such as le soleil (11a). In
other words, a partial mixed DP asymmetry would actually be expected for a group of late L1-French
L2-English bilinguals, whereby only feminine French Ns cannot appear with English Ds.
Finally, for English roots appearing in French–English mixed language contexts, no preference
would be expected for a French D to be inserted. Consequently, full English DPs would be considered
acceptable, unlike in Spanish–English. This is because the is assumed to have the same feature
specification as le, and because English roots can be merged with n
u[-FEM]
by default regardless of the
gender of its translation.
With respect to late L1-English L2-French/L2-Spanish bilinguals, they may not have gendered
ns in their repertoire of functional features. These bilinguals would also not likely have any gender
features specified on the VIs for determiners, and therefore Spanish la and el, as well as French la and
13 Note that el/la would not be available in unilingual English mode, allowing for full English DPs in that case.

Languages 2018,3, 10 12 of 28
le, would all have the same feature specifications as English the.
14
This would predict that, in mixed
language contexts, English roots would be acceptable with all three of the available determiners, and
as such, there would be considerable optionality. This prediction is consistent with the acceptability
judgment data for L1-English L2-Spanish bilinguals presented by Liceras et al. (2008), which indicated
that English nouns were found to be equally acceptable with either Spanish determiner, regardless of
the gender of the noun’s Spanish translation equivalent.
For such late L1-English bilinguals, it would also be expected that they would not represent
Spanish declension classes in the same way as L1-Spanish speakers, because they would not have
the gendered ns on which declension class suffixes are dependent. As such, this also predicts that
such bilinguals would not display mixed DP asymmetry. Indeed, the L1-English bilinguals in the
Liceras et al. (2008)
study show a strong preference for mixed DPs consisting of an English D and a
Spanish N (e.g., the casa) over those consisting of a Spanish D and an English N (e.g., la house), and
rated them considerably higher than the L1-Spanish group.
3.4. Effects of Language Dominance and Proficiency on Processing
Experimental data collected using methods other than acceptability judgment tasks have actually
found that there may be greater language switch costs associated with mixed DPs such as la house, for
example using a picture naming task (Fairchild and Van Hell 2017), self-paced reading (Litcofsky and
Hell 2017), as well as event-related potentials combined with rapid serial visual presentation (idem.).
In Fairchild and Van Hell’s picture naming task, it was proposed that this cost was associated with
difficulty retrieving the appropriate gender-marked Spanish D rather from difficulty retrieving the
English N, as even though participants were L1-Spanish, they were currently dominant in English.
They hypothesize that balanced or Spanish-dominant bilinguals might not exhibit the same processing
asymmetry. However, in the experiments conducted by Litcofsky and Hell (2017), also with L1-Spanish
L2-English bilinguals, they found that that switch costs were related to language dominance such
that they were greater in the dominant-to-weak direction, regardless of the L1. In other words, it was
Spanish-dominant bilinguals who had greater processing costs when reading mixed DPs such as la
house. This is what was found in the Fairchild and Van Hell study for English-dominant bilinguals.
These different results could reflect the fact that the former study tested production, while the latter
tested reading.
Relative language proficiency may also impact the extent to which the analogical criterion is
applied in language use. In order for an English noun to surface with the gender of its translation
equivalent, the mental representation of that translation must be accessed from memory. The ease
with which this is done may depend on the way in which translations are stored, which may in turn
depend on the bilingual’s language proficiency. For example, one of the most prominent models of the
bilingual mental lexicon, Kroll and Stewart (1994) revised hierarchical model (RHM), suggests that L1
words are learned in direct association with their concepts, whereas L2 words (i.e., in sequential L2
acquisition) tend to be learned by directly associating them to their L1 translation. As such, L2 links to
concepts are only indirect, mediated through the L1. As learners become more proficient in their L2, the
direct links between L2 words and concepts become stronger. Assuming this type of psycholinguistic
model, it is possible that unbalanced sequential bilinguals who have these strong lexical links between
L2 and L1 words might have a stronger tendency to transfer the licensing conditions of the L1 (French
or Spanish) root to that of the L2 (English) root than would balanced simultaneous bilinguals who do
not have such strong associations between L2 and L1 lexical representations.
14
That which would ensure that French/Spanish nouns typically appear with the appropriate gender-marked determiner is
not licensing conditions under the appropriate n, but proceduralized lexical associations between nouns and the particular
determiners with which they frequently co-occur in the input.

Languages 2018,3, 10 13 of 28
The following section presents a study designed to test some of the predictions and issues
presented in the previous sections. Two primary research questions are addressed: first, whether there
is evidence of a French–English mixed DP asymmetry; and second, how the analogical criterion is
applied in mixed DPs with an English lexical root. In particular, the impact of language background
factors such as AoA and language dominance will be investigated by comparing the results of
simultaneous bilinguals to those of late sequential L1-French L2-English bilinguals. The specific
hypotheses will be presented in Section 4.4.
4. Methods and Materials
The experiment combines two methodologies: an acceptability judgment task (AJT) and self-paced
reading (SPR). The SPR paradigm was chosen as it was expected to elicit more implicit grammaticality
assessments of targeted structures. This paradigm is typically used to measure the processing load of
words during reading comprehension, where reading times (RTs) are correlated with lexical properties
such as frequency and word length (Haberlandt 1994). Importantly, the processing load can also be
increased due to the presence of a morphosyntactic violation (e.g., subject–verb agreement error).
Indeed, previous studies using this methodology have demonstrated that morphosyntactic violations
lead to increased RTs at the point of the anomaly (e.g., De Vincenzi et al. 2003). This effect has also been
correlated with the P600 event-related potential (ERP) component, which indexes morphosyntactic
violations (Ditman et al. 2007). In the context of language mixing, it is expected that RTs in an SPR will
be longer at points of illicit or less preferred switches between languages. Increased RTs, however, may
also reflect increased processing effort due to factors other than the implicit detection of grammatical
anomalies. For example, it could be more costly to switch to a less activated language (Litcofsky and
Hell 2017). Having participants also judge the acceptability of each sentence allows for the results of
two dependent measures to be directly compared, and for the results of this study to be more easily
related to those of previous studies that employed an AJT.
4.1. Participants
A total of 49 French–English bilinguals participated in this study. Of these, 10 were excluded for
the following reasons: (1) not being a native speaker of just French, or French and English; (2) having
early exposure to a language other than French or English; (3) having a high level of proficiency in a
language other than French or English; and (4) not being a self-described language mixer.
15
This was
determined by their responses to a detailed language background questionnaire (
Sabourin et al. 2016
)
and a language-mixing questionnaire (adapted from (Byers-Heinlein 2013)). One additional participant
was later excluded for rating sentences significantly lower than all other participants (see Section 5).
The remaining 38 participants (30 female) were all between the ages of 18 and 35 (mean = 20.5,
SD = 4.1
). They were divided into groups based on their age of immersion (AoI) in English, which was
operationalized at the age at which their daily exposure to English reached 20%. Table 2shows the
linguistic profiles of each of the three resulting groups: simultaneous bilinguals (AoI = 0), early L2
learners (AoI < 7), and late L2 learners (AoI > 7).
15
Being a native speaker was defined as having acquired that language from a primary caregiver during infancy (i.e., between
birth and the age of two) in an immersive environment (daily exposure > 20%).

Languages 2018,3, 10 14 of 28
Table 2. Language background of participants. Means are shown with standard deviations (SD).
Simultaneous Early L2 English Late L2 English
(n= 18) (n= 7) (n= 13)
1. Age of Acquisition (AoA)
Age of first exposure to French 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)
Age of Immersion (AoI) in French 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)
Age of first exposure to English 0 (0) 1.3 (1.3) 6.9 (3.3)
Age of Immersion (AoI) in English
0 (0) 3.0 (1.4) 14.6 (6.2)
2. Language exposure < age 2
French 55% (22%) 87% (6%) 91% (11%)
English 47% (24%) 13% (5%) 7% (11%)
3. Current self-reported language proficiency16
French Total Proficiency/29 27.8 (1.7) 28.4 (1.1) 27.5 (4.0)
English Total Proficiency/29 28.0 (2.5) 27.7 (1.1) 19.3 (6.7)
French Reading Proficiency/6 5.9 (0.2) 5.9 (0.4) 5.7 (0.6)
English Reading Proficiency/6 5.8 (0.3) 6.0 (0.0) 4.5 (1.4)
4. Frequency of Language Mixing17
General mixing 2.5 (1.4) 1.9 (1.1) 2.6 (1.6)
English to French switches 4.1 (1.6) 3.1 (2.2) 3.8 (1.5)
French to English switches 3.3 (1.3) 2.1 (1.1) 3.1 (1.6)
English borrowing 2.4 (1.2) 2.1 (1.1) 2.0 (1.3)
French borrowing 2.6 (1.5) 1.6 (0.5) 3.3 (1.9)
4.2. Stimuli
4.2.1. Critical Stimuli
Forty-eight nouns were selected to form part of the critical DPs. All were mono-morphemic
and commonly known non-cognates, and approximately half had feminine gender in French (23/48).
Nouns beginning with vowels were generally excluded in order to avoid élision between the definite
determiner and the noun, which neutralizes the overtly marked gender of the determiner. No
established loan words (such as the English words job, fun, which are commonly used in French)
were included. The properties of these critical nouns in both languages are compared in Table 3.
A two-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted for both word
frequency and word length, using Language (English vs. French) as the within-item independent
variable, and Gender (masculine vs. feminine) as the between-item independent variable. For word
frequency, there were no significant main effects or interaction, indicating that word frequency was
matched across language and gender. In terms of word length, neither Gender nor the interaction
between Language and Gender were determined to be significant; however, the main effect of Language
was determined to be significant (F(1,46) = 10.497, MSE = 10.109, p= 0.002), indicating that French
nouns were significantly longer on average than English nouns overall. Little impact, however, is
expected, as the magnitude of the difference is quite small (0.7 graphemes), and the words in French
and English are all relatively short (both have a maximum of seven graphemes).
17
On a scale of 1–7, where 1 means ‘very true’ and 7 means ‘not true at all’ with respect to statements such as “In general, I
often mix English and French” and “I often start a sentence in English then switch to French”.
16
Measured with respect to five skill areas—reading, writing, listening, speaking, and pronunciation—with the first four
given on a scale of 1–6 (very low to native) and the last on a scale of 1–5 (very accented to native).

Languages 2018,3, 10 15 of 28
Table 3. Lexical properties of critical nouns.
Mean SD Min. Max.
Word Frequency18 French 72.0 123.0 0.7 570.3
(words per million) English 65.7 87.8 2.2 514.0
Word Length French 5.4 1.1 4 7
(graphemes) English 4.7 1.0 3 7
To create the critical DPs, nearly all of these nouns were paired with a singular definite determiner
(43/48). The remaining five appeared with a singular indefinite determiner, either due to a better
fit with the sentence context, or to avoid élision, as mentioned above. No differences were expected
between the results for definite and indefinite determiners, as their features are comparable in both
languages. One sentence was created for each of the 48 critical DPs, and three dependent variables
were manipulated in order to produce six conditions for each sentence (see Table 4for an example
and the Supplementary Materials for a complete list). First, the language of the determiner in the
critical DP was either French or English. Second, the language of the noun was either the same as the
determiner (unmixed DP), or the opposite (mixed DP). Finally, for conditions with French determiners,
the gender of the determiner either matched or mismatched the gender of the noun or its translation
equivalent. Sentences were also coded for the gender of the noun or its translation equivalent.
The critical DP was always the third DP of the sentence, where the first was a language neutral
proper name, and the second was a fully switched DP. This was done to establish the language mixing
of the sentence before the critical DP was encountered, potentially reducing the processing cost of the
critical language switch by priming it with a previous language switch. Also, the words preceding the
critical determiner were always in the same language as that determiner, and the words following the
critical noun were always in the same language as that noun. This was done in order to ensure that
the language switch between the determiner and the noun was more along the lines of a multi-word
“code-switch” as opposed to a single word “nonce borrowing” or insertion. Finally, the critical noun
was never the last constituent in the sentence in order to avoid any sentence wrap-up effects.
Table 4. Conditions for critical stimuli (critical Determiner Phrase (DP) bolded). *
D DP Type Congruence Example
FR Mixed Matched Paul bought trois livres pendant le month of May.
Mismatched Paul bought trois livres pendant la month of May.
Unmixed Matched Paul bought trois livres pendant le mois de mai.
Mismatched Paul bought trois livres pendant la mois de mai.
EN Mixed N/A Paul a achetéthree books during the mois de mai.
Unmixed N/A Paul a achetéthree books during the month of May.
* All sentences mean ‘Paul bought three books during the month of May’.
4.2.2. Filler Items
Three types of filler sentences were included as stimuli (see Table S1). First, 15 sentences were
created such that they contained a morphosyntactic mismatch between constituents belonging to the
same language, such as number and verb tense violations. A control condition was created for these
sentences by repairing the mismatch. This type of filler was included in order to determine whether
both measures of the experimental task, ratings and RTs, were able to elicit the expected distinctions
between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. Similarly, another 15 sentences were created
18
French and English word frequencies were determined using the Lexique 2 database (New et al. 2004) and the SUBTlexUS
database (Brysbaert and New 2009), respectively. As they are very similar in nature—both based on subtitle corpora—it is
possible to compare frequencies across languages.

Languages 2018,3, 10 16 of 28
such that they contained a type of language switch that is commonly considered in the literature to
be ungrammatical, such as between an auxiliary and a main verb, between a pronoun and a verb,
or between a noun and a post-posed adjective (which produces a word-order conflict). Again, a
control condition was created for these sentences by repairing the mismatch. This type of filler was
included in order to determine whether language switch violations were treated in the same way as
the within-language morphosyntactic violations with respect to both dependent measures. Finally, 10
mixed-language sentences were created that were completely grammatical, with language switches
occurring at uncontroversial sites, such as between a noun and a verb, or between a noun and a
prepositional phrase.
4.3. Procedure
All participants were recruited through the University of Ottawa’s Integrated System of
Participation in Research (ISPR), and were awarded one point towards their course grade. All subjects
gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. The study was
conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Board of the University of Ottawa (REB# 02-16-26).
The entire testing session lasted approximately 60 min for each participant. Participants were first
asked to complete the consent form, language background questionnaire and language-mixing
questionnaire. They were then seated in a sound-attenuated room in front of a computer screen
for the experimental task.
Participants were instructed that they would be reading mixed-language sentences one word at a
time on the computer screen. They were told that the words of each sentence would be first covered in
dashes, and to see each successive word, they were to press the space bar (as per the “moving window
paradigm” of SPR). After each sentence, they would be asked to rate how acceptable it was to them on
a scale from 1 to 4 by pressing the corresponding number key on the keyboard. They were instructed
that a rating of “1” meant that the sentence “sounded terrible, it was not acceptable”; a rating of “2”
meant that it “sounded pretty bad”; a rating of “3” meant that it “sounded ok, but not very natural;
and a rating of “4” meant that is “sounded good, it was perfectly acceptable”. This 4-point scale was
visible on the computer screen each time they were asked to make a rating, with the “1” marked as
“Terrible” and the “4” marked as “Fine”.
Each participant saw a total of 88 experimental sentences, presented using the Linger software
program (version 2.94, http://tedlab.mit.edu/~dr/Linger), plus eight practice sentences. All words
were displayed in black 20-point font on a light grey background. Spaces between words were not
covered in dashes, and a period marked the end of each sentence. They saw each critical (n= 48) and
filler (n= 40) sentence once, counterbalanced across conditions such that they saw an equal number of
sentences in each condition. Sentences were presented in a semi-randomized order, and separated
into six blocks such that each block began with a filler sentence and no more than two sentences of
the same condition appeared consecutively. Participants were given a self-regulated break between
each block. One third of both critical and filler sentences were followed by a yes/no question that was
entirely in English.
4.4. Hypotheses
The first set of hypotheses that were tested pertained to the mixed DP asymmetry. Based on the
arguments presented in Section 3.2.1, it was expected that there should be no directional asymmetry
for language switches between English and French determiners and nouns. This was expected to
be the case at least for the simultaneous bilinguals. In contrast, and as discussed in Section 3.3, late
L1-French L2-English bilinguals were expected to possibly show a partially-mixed DP asymmetry;
DPs such as the soleil
.M
should be acceptable, but not those such as the maison
.F
. Finally, this group of
late bilinguals may also show reduced processing costs for mixed DPs consisting of an English D and

Languages 2018,3, 10 17 of 28
a French N, because this language switch goes in the direction of the weak to the dominant language
(see Section 3.4).
The second set of hypotheses tested predictions regarding gender assignment for English roots in
mixed DPs, and the extent to which the analogical criterion applied. Based on the arguments presented
in Section 3.2.2, it was expected that there would be considerable variability for English roots whose
translation equivalents are licensed under n
u[+FEM]
(i.e., sentences containing le house and la house
should have similar acceptability ratings and similar RTs for the critical nouns), but no variability for
roots whose translation equivalents are licensed under n
u[-FEM]
(i.e., only le soleil should be acceptable,
not la soleil).
It was further expected that the late bilinguals would have a greater tendency to apply analogical
gender to English nouns whereas the simultaneous bilinguals were expected to possibly show a greater
tendency to apply the masculine gender as default. This is because the direct lexical connections
between translations in the L2-to-L1 direction translation equivalents were expected to be stronger for
the late bilinguals, as per the RHM, and thus easier to activate (see Section 3.4).
5. Results
The accuracy of participants’ responses to the comprehension questions was first calculated in
order to determine whether they were paying sufficient attention to the reading task. It was determined
that all participants responded with high accuracy to the comprehension questions, with a mean of
95.9% (SD = 4.8%), and a range of 77.4–100%.
Acceptability ratings were collected for each sentence, and the mean and standard deviation were
calculated for each participant across all conditions in order to identify any outliers. One participant’s
mean rating was indeed more than 2.5 standard deviations from the group’s overall mean, and so was
excluded from the data analysis.
19
For the 38 remaining participants, mean ratings were calculated for
each participant by condition, and this was used as the first dependent variable.
RTs were time-locked to participants’ button press on the critical word in each sentence, that is,
the word where the language switch or morphosyntactic violation became apparent (or not, for their
respective control conditions). Mean RTs were calculated for each participant, and data points that
were 2.5 standard deviations above (4.9% of the data) or below (none) each participant’s mean were
replaced by their mean value. Mean RTs were then re-calculated based on this trimmed data for each
participant across conditions in order to identify outliers; one participant’s mean was greater than
2.5 standard deviations from the group mean (a simultaneous bilingual), and so this participant’s RT
data was excluded from the statistical analyses; however, their acceptability judgment data were still
analyzed. For each of the remaining 37 participants, mean RTs were calculated by condition, and this
was used as the second dependent variable.
5.1. Grammaticality Violations in Filler Items
The two types of filler items involving within-language morphosyntactic violations and
uncontroversial language switch violations were analyzed using a three-way repeated measures
ANOVA for each dependent variable (ratings and RTs). Filler Type (language switch violation vs.
morphosyntactic violation), Grammaticality (violation vs. control), and Group (simultaneous vs. early
vs. late) were the independent variables.
Results for the ratings revealed a significant main effect of Grammaticality (F(1,35) = 188.437,
MSE = 32.352
,p< 0.001), indicating that both types of violations received significantly lower ratings
than their grammatical counterparts. There was also a significant main effect of Filler Type
19
This participant was the oldest of the group (age at testing = 35), and was also one of the less frequent language mixers
(her reported overall tendency to mix language was rated as 5/7, where 7 is “never”). Her low ratings in the experiment
(
mean = 1.31/4, SD = 0.63
) suggest that she did not find the mixed language sentences natural, something that was not
typical of the rest of the group.

Languages 2018,3, 10 18 of 28
(
F(1,35) = 6.548
, MSE = 1.480, p= 0.015), which was likely driven by the significant interaction
between Filler Type and Grammaticality (F(1,35) = 7.772, MSE = 1.585, p= 0.009). This interaction
indicates that, while both types of violations were rated significantly lower than their grammatical
counterparts, as confirmed by planned paired-sample t-tests (t(37) = 11.963, p< 0.001; and t(37) = 7.969,
p< 0.001, respectively), the magnitude of this difference was significantly larger for the within-language
morphosyntactic violations (mean difference = 1.25 compared to 0.73). This likely reflects the fact that
the participants have more metalinguistic knowledge of grammatical errors than they do of language
switch violations. The main effect of Group did not reach significance (p= 0.897), nor was its three-way
interaction with Filler Type and Grammaticality, suggesting that all groups showed similar effects.
Results for RTs mirrored those of the ratings. There was a significant main effect of Grammaticality
(F(1,34) = 22.750, MSE = 527,233.974, p< 0.001), indicating that both language switch violations and
morphosyntactic violations were read significantly more slowly than their grammatical counterparts.
The main effect of filler type was only marginally significant (p= 0.067), as was the interaction between
Filler Type and Grammaticality (p= 0.093). This interaction suggests that, while both within-language
morphosyntactic violations and language switching violations were read significantly more slowly than
their grammatical counterparts, as confirmed by planned paired-sample t-tests (t(36) = 5.590,
p< 0.001
;
and t(36) = 3.685, p= 0.001, respectively), the magnitude of this difference was marginally larger for
the within-language morphosyntactic violations. There was also a significant main effect of Group
(F(2,34) = 5.550, MSE = 787,180.376, p= 0.008), indicating that the simultaneous bilinguals were overall
slower than the early and late groups (p= 0.027 and p= 0.032, respectively).
20
There was, however, no
three-way interaction between Group, Filler Type, and Grammaticality (p= 0.596), suggesting again
that all groups showed similar effects of grammaticality on both types of filler sentence.
5.2. The Mixed Determiner Phrase Asymmetry
A three-way repeated measures ANOVA was conducted for each dependent variable (ratings
and RTs) with Determiner Language (French
21
vs. English), DP Type (unmixed vs. mixed) and Group
(simultaneous vs. early vs. late) as independent variables. Results for ratings (Figure 2a) revealed a
significant main effect of DP Type (F(1,35) = 62.703, MSE = 17.851, p< 0.001), indicating that participants
preferred unmixed over mixed DPs overall (mean difference = 0.69).
22
The main effect of Determiner
Language was not significant (p= 0.343), and crucially, neither was the interaction between Determiner
Language and DP Type (p= 0.457), indicating that there was indeed no preference for mixed DPs
with French determiners over English determiners. The main effect of Group was not determined to
be significant (p= 0.897), nor did it significantly interact with any other variable, suggesting that all
groups shared the same pattern.
The patterns for ratings are mirrored in Figure 2b, which shows the mean RTs for critical nouns in
the same four conditions. Indeed, statistical analyses confirm these patterns. There was a significant
main effect of DP Type (F(1,34) = 22.799, MSE = 486,233.390, p< 0.001), indicating that participants
preferred unmixed over mixed DPs (mean difference = 135 ms). The main effect of Determiner
Language was not significant (p= 0.519), and again, neither was the interaction between Determiner
Language and DP Type (p= 0.318). Interestingly, the numerical trend was in the opposite direction than
would be expected for the Spanish–English mixed DP asymmetry, with the English nouns following
French determiners (e.g., la house) being read more slowly than French nouns following English
20
A similar effect was also found in another study conducted with the same population (Sabourin et al. 2014). The authors
attributed this effect to the idea that simultaneous bilinguals have a larger, more intimately integrated bilingual mental
lexicon from which to activate and retrieve words during processing.
21
These comparisons were only made with the gender congruent conditions with French determiners. This decision was based
on previous results (e.g., Liceras et al. 2008) that indicated that this is the likely overall preference. Results in Section 5.3
support this decision.
22
This preference could be a consequence of the fact that sentences with mixed DPs had two language switch points, compared
to sentences with unmixed DPs, which only had one language switch point.

Languages 2018,3, 10 19 of 28
determiners (e.g., the maison; mean difference = 59 ms). There was a significant main effect of Group
(F(2,34) = 3.694, MSE = 422,112.890, p= 0.035) suggesting that the simultaneous bilinguals were again
the slowest overall. The factor Group did not interact with any other factor, again suggesting that the
patterns were similar across all three participant groups. Because, however, the hypotheses were made
a priori regarding differences between the simultaneous and late bilingual groups, these were further
investigated in order to identify any potential patterns or tendencies.
Figure 2.
Results for the mixed determiner (D) phrase asymmetry: (
a
) Mean global acceptability ratings
(N= 38); (b) Mean reading times of the critical noun in milliseconds (N= 37).
5.2.1. Between-Group Differences: The Maison vs. The Soleil
It was hypothesized that there might be a partial mixed DP asymmetry for the late bilinguals,
whereby they might have only a dispreference for mixed DPs consisting of an English D paired with a
feminine French N (e.g., the maison
.F
) and not one for those paired with a masculine French N (e.g., the
soleil
.M
). In order to further investigate this possibility, a closer look was taken at the conditions
including an English D. The ratings data are shown in Table 5.
23
The raw means alone suggest that
both groups seem to have a slight preference for mixed DPs with a masculine N over those with a
feminine N, and that the preference is greater for the late bilinguals (0.19 compared to 0.07). This
pattern is consistent with the hypothesis, but of course the magnitudes of the differences are very
small (though not nearly as small as for their unmixed counterparts, where the differences are very
near null).
23
Note that inspection of the RT data in the same conditions revealed no interpretable patterns whatsoever, and so this was
not explored any further.

Languages 2018,3, 10 20 of 28
Table 5. Mean ratings for determiner phrases (DPs) with an English determiner.
Unmixed DP Mixed DP
Translation = F Translation = M Difference Noun = F Noun = M Difference
“the house” “the sun” “the maison” “the soleil”
SimBil 3.19 3.18 0.01 2.65 2.72 0.07
LateBil 3.21 3.21 0.00 2.33 2.52 0.19
An exploratory two-way ANOVA was conducted just for the late bilinguals, with DP Type
(unmixed vs. mixed) and Noun Gender as the independent variables. While there was a marginally
significant effect of DP Type (F(1,12) = 4.437, MSE = 165,983.554, p= 0.057), neither the effect of Noun
Gender nor the interaction were significant (p= 0.674 and p= 0.645, respectively). Exploratory planned
pair-wise comparisons confirmed that the difference in ratings between mixed DPs with English D
did not differ significantly depending on the gender of the French N (p= 0.840). As such, there is no
evidence here that late bilinguals demonstrate any type of mixed DP asymmetry, despite the faint
indication of the expected pattern in Table 5.
5.2.2. Between-Group Differences: Processing Costs
It was also hypothesized that the group of late bilinguals (but not the simultaneous bilinguals)
would show a greater processing cost for mixed DPs where the switch direction was from the stronger
(French) to the weaker (English) language (e.g., la house) compared to the opposite direction (e.g., the
maison). Table 6presents the relevant data.
Table 6. Language switch costs: Reading times of the critical noun by condition.
French Determiner English Determiner
Unmixed Mixed
Difference
Unmixed Mixed
Difference
“la maison/
“le soleil”
“la house”/
“le sun”
“the house”/
“the sun”
“the maison”/
“the soleil”
SimBil 624.4 823.1 198.7 576.0 686.5 110.5
LateBil 448.8 611.3 162.5 491.3 616.3 125.0
Looking at the patterns alone, it appears that both groups have a greater language switch cost in
the French-to-English direction compared to the English-to-French direction. An exploratory two-way
ANOVA was conducted for each of the two participant groups, with DP Type (unmixed vs. mixed)
and Determiner Language as the independent variables. While there was a significant effect of DP
Type for both the late and simultaneous groups (F(1,12) = 10.073, MSE = 268,640.337, p= 0.008; and
F(1,16) = 19.891, MSE = 406,207.887, p< 0.001, respectively), this factor did not significantly interact
with Determiner Language for either group (p= 0.439 and p= 0.227, respectively). As such, there is
no robust evidence of greater processing costs for either group, and contrary to the hypothesis, both
groups shared the same pattern. The reason for this similar, but a non-significant pattern will become
clearer in the analysis investigating the analogical criterion, presented in the next section.
5.3. The Analogical Criterion in Mixed Determiner Phrases with English Nouns
Looking only at experimental conditions with critical DPs containing a French D, a four-way
repeated measures ANOVA was conducted for each dependent variable, with DP Type (unmixed vs.
mixed), Gender Congruence (congruent vs. incongruent), Noun Gender (feminine vs. masculine), and
Group (simultaneous vs. early vs. late) as independent variables.
Results for ratings (Figure 3) showed a significant main effect of Gender Congruence
(
F(1,35) = 95.228
, MSE = 51.487,
p< 0.001
) as well as of Gender (F(1,35) = 14.794, MSE = 2.230,
p< 0.001
),
but not of DP Type (p= 0.150). The interaction between DP Type and Gender Congruence was

Languages 2018,3, 10 21 of 28
significant (F(1,35) = 65.262, MSE = 23.218, p< 0.001), indicating that the difference between DPs with
congruent vs. incongruent gender was much larger in unmixed French DPs compared to mixed DPs.
Crucially, there was also a very strong trend towards significance for the three-way interaction between
DP Type, Gender Congruence and Noun Gender (F(1,35) = 4.065, MSE = 0.510, p= 0.051). Planned
pairwise comparisons indicated that for unmixed DPs there was a significant gender congruence
effect for nouns with both masculine and feminine gender (t(37) = 9.520, p< 0.001; t(37) = 12.166,
p< 0.001); however, for mixed DPs the congruence effect was significant only when the gender
of the translation equivalent was masculine (t(37) = 4.545, p< 0.001), and not when it was feminine
(
t(37) = 1.357
,
p= 0.183
). There was no significant main effect of Group (p= 0.601), nor did it participate
in a significant interaction with the other three variables (p= 0.138).
Figure 3.
Ratings results for gender congruence in mixed determiner phrases with French determiner
(N= 38).
Even though the factor Group did not interact with any of the other independent variables,
separate two-way repeated measures ANOVA were conducted for the simultaneous and late bilinguals.
This was done because it was hypothesized a priori that these two groups might have different
preferences with respect to gender assignment for English nouns. Specifically, it was expected that
Late L2-English bilinguals would have a greater tendency to apply analogical gender to English
nouns in mixed DPs. As such, these two ANOVAs looked only at mixed DPs with French Ds, and
the independent variables were Gender and Congruence. For the late bilinguals, the main effect of
Congruence was significant (F(1,12) = 12.600, MSE = 1.942, p= 0.004), but the interaction between
Gender and Gongruence was not (p= 0.496), suggesting that the effect of congruence was the same
regardless of the translation’s gender. Indeed, planned pair-wise comparisons indicated that nouns
with both feminine and masculine translations were significantly preferred with analogical gender
(t(12) = 2.758, p= 0.017 and t(12) = 2.485, p= 0.029, respectively). For the simultaneous bilinguals, the
main effect of Congruence was significant (F(1,17) = 5.316, MSE = 2.067, p= 0.034) and the interaction
between Gender and Congruence was marginally significant (F(1,27) = 4.048, MSE = 0.467, p= 0.060).
Planned pair-wise comparisons indicated that the effect of congruence was only significant when
the noun’s translation equivalent had masculine gender (t(17) = 2.990, p= 0.008), but not when it
had feminine gender (t(17) = 1.061, p= 0.303). This supports the hypothesis that the late bilinguals
have a stronger preference for assigning analogical gender to English nouns in mixed DPs than do
simultaneous bilinguals.

Languages 2018,3, 10 22 of 28
In terms of the four-way ANOVA using RT as the dependent variable (Figure 4), there was a
significant main effect of DP Type (F(1,34) = 5.783, MSE = 247,550.451, p= 0.022), but no significant
effect of Gender (p= 0.386) or of Gender Congruence (p= 0.181). There was, however, a significant
interaction between DP Type and Gender Congruence (F(1,34) = 13.904, MSE = 386,115.394, p= 0.001).
Planned pairwise comparisons suggested that this was again the result of a different pattern for
unmixed compared to mixed DPs. For unmixed DPs, gender incongruence between a French N and
a French D resulted in significantly slower RTs (t(36) =
−
4.729, p< 0.001), as expected; however, for
mixed DPs, the RTs were significantly slower when the French determiner was congruent in gender
with the English noun’s translation equivalent (t(36) = 2.690, p= 0.011). This is the opposite of the
expected result. While the three-way interaction between DP Type, Gender Congruence and Noun
Gender was not significant (p= 0.536), planned pair-wise comparisons were conducted in order to
further investigate the surprising pattern. The results of these comparisons suggest that it was only in
cases where the English N’s translation equivalent was feminine that the RTs were significantly slower
in the congruent (e.g., la house) compared to the incongruent (e.g., le house) condition (t(36) = 2.661,
p= 0.012). When the English noun’s translation equivalent was masculine (e.g., sun), there was no
significant gender congruency effect (t(36) = 0.147, p= 0.884). Further, this effect for English Ns with a
feminine translation was statistically significant for the late bilinguals (t(12) = 2.478, p= 0.029), but
only marginally significant for the simultaneous bilinguals (t(16) = 1.944, p= 0.070), despite the greater
statistical power of the latter group due to the larger group size. These results will be interpreted and
further discussed in the next section.
Figure 4.
Reading time (RT) results for gender congruence in mixed determiner phrases with French
determiner (N= 37).
6. Discussion
The two primary research questions that the experimental study sought to address were first,
whether there was evidence of a French–English mixed DP asymmetry, and second, how the analogical
criterion is applied in mixed DPs with an English lexical root. Secondary goals were to investigate
the impact of language background factors such as AoA, and to take into account factors that affect
processing, such as L2 proficiency and dominance.
With respect to the mixed DP asymmetry, the results for both dependent measures indicated
that, overall, there was no preference for switching between a French D and an English N (e.g., la
house) compared to the reverse (e.g., the maison). These results thus support the theoretically motivated
hypothesis that there should be no mixed DP asymmetry for French–English.

Languages 2018,3, 10 23 of 28
It must, of course, be conceded that even in Spanish–English language mixing, where the mixed
DP asymmetry is expected based on corpora data, AJTs have not provided corroborative evidence of its
existence (Liceras et al. 2008,2016). The experimental task used in the present study, however, differs
from those of previous studies in several ways. First, several things were done in order to decrease the
saliency of the mixed DPs being investigated—critical DPs were embedded in sentences that had other
language-switch points; no unilingual sentences were included, in either critical or filler conditions;
and several other types of within- and between-language morphosyntactic anomalies were included
in filler items. Second, combining the AJT with SPR might also have had the benefit of reducing
the participants’ tendency to be prescriptive or to apply metalinguistic knowledge when making
these judgments for two reasons—having comprehension questions after one third of the sentences
encouraged participants to focus a significant part of their attention on meaning as opposed to just
grammatical structure; and, because the sentences were presented only one word at a time and never
in their entirety, participants could not go back and reread sentences. As such, they might not have the
same opportunity to deconstruct and consciously analyze their grammatical structure, thus relying
more on their intuition as opposed to their metalinguistic knowledge. It is perhaps the application of
metalinguistic knowledge that allowed Spanish–English bilinguals to accept DPs such as the casa in
previous studies; the DM-based analysis in Section 3.1 predicts that such DPs are not ungrammatical
per se, but are blocked by the availability of those with a more highly specified determiner (i.e., la
casa). Intuitively, bilinguals might not like such a DP, but if given time to consider it, they might not
know why. Mixed DPs such as the casa might even be in their input if there are L1-English L2-Spanish
speakers in their environment, for whom the mixed DP asymmetry is not expected. Of course, the only
way to determine whether the more implicit methodology used here is capable of detecting a mixed
DP asymmetry would be to use it to test a language pair where it is expected, i.e., Spanish–English.
One indication that it might be able to do so is that there was robust evidence from the filler items
that other uncontroversial language switch violations were indeed rated significantly lower and read
significantly more slowly.
It was also hypothesized that late L1-French L2-English bilinguals may show a partial mixed
DP asymmetry, specifically a dispreference for mixed DPs consisting of an English D and a feminine
French N (e.g., the maison
.F
). This was hypothesized because such bilinguals may not have a plain
nin their repertoire of abstract morphemes due to their late AoA, and because the English D the is
expected to have the same feature specification as the French D le. No evidence, however, was found
of any asymmetry. This suggests that late bilinguals may have a plain n, which could be because plain
nis a subset of an nwith a gender feature. Consequently, no “new” morphosyntactic feature actually
needs to be acquired by the late learners. It is also possible that such a partial asymmetry could still
be found using this methodology with participants having an even later age of L2 immersion, as
others assume a later end to the sensitive period for morphosyntax, such as around puberty (e.g.,
Johnson and Newport 1989;DeKeyser 2000).
The group of late bilinguals was also hypothesized to show increased processing costs for mixed
DPs consisting of a French D and an English N because this language switch goes from the dominant
to the weak language, following the results of Litcofsky and Hell (2017). Unexpectedly, both the late
and simultaneous groups demonstrated this pattern despite the latter group being very balanced. It
was later determined that this was because mixed DPs such as la house were read significantly more
slowly than any other mixed DP with a French D, even those which violated both the analogical
criterion and default licensing under the masculine n(e.g., la sun). This result was also unexpected. It
suggests, however, that participants might not have too much difficulty reading/assessing English
nouns that appear following the masculine determiner (e.g., le house,le sun) because any English
noun can appear with the default masculine determiner. Likewise, they seem to have little difficulty
reading/assessing (and later rejecting) English nouns with masculine translations following a feminine
determiner (e.g., la sun), suggesting that the issue is not in accessing the licensing conditions of the
corresponding French translation equivalent. Rather, it seems that this may be a result of variability

Languages 2018,3, 10 24 of 28
in the input for English nouns with feminine translations (le/la house), which is shown to be a robust
pattern in Spanish–English corpora (Poplack et al. 1982;Jake et al. 2002;Clegg and Waltermire 2009),
and likely also for French (Poplack et al. 1982). Because participants do not have a strong intuition
regarding such mixed DPs, this may result in a slower reading time when they encounter one due to
the uncertainty. This appears to be particularly so with the late bilinguals, for whom the effect was the
most statistically robust. Interestingly, this was also the group who tended to more strongly prefer
the analogical criterion, as indicated by their results for acceptability ratings. While this preference
was expected for this group, the RT results suggest that its cause is not related to the predictions of
the RHM, whereby translations were expected to be more easily accessed by unbalanced sequential
bilinguals due to their stronger direct lexical connections. If this were the case, they would have also
shown extra processing effort when attempting to access the translation equivalent of masculine nouns
following feminine determiners (e.g., la sun). Rather, the late bilinguals’ preference for analogical
gender might reflect a difference in their attitude compared to simultaneous bilinguals, such that
the former group attributes greater importance to preserving “French” properties when mixing their
languages, thus spending more time deciding what their preference is, and then applying analogical
gender preferentially.
These results also suggest that the self-paced reading times of mixed DPs do reflect conscious,
strategic preferences to a certain extent. This contrasts with the RTs for unmixed DPs, which really did
seem to reflect modulations in processing time related to the grammaticality of particular constructions.
Having participants rate the sentences with respect to their acceptability might reduce the benefits
of the more implicit RT measure. As such, while it was argued that adding the SPR element to an
AJT may decrease the strategic nature of the latter task, this might also increase the strategic nature
of the former methodology. It would be interesting to see if the same patterns would persist when
the acceptability judgment aspect is removed from the self-paced reading task, rendering it a simple
reading task with comprehension questions focusing on meaning.
In a similar vein, the inclusion of within-language morphosyntactic violations may also have
affected participants’ acceptability ratings of sentences containing mixed DPs. First of all, gender
agreement violations in unmixed French DPs are very salient errors to native speakers. As such,
drawing participants’ conscious attention to such errors may have increased their likelihood of
applying the same “rules” to mixed DPs. This could have resulted in an increased tendency to
assign analogical gender to English nouns in mixed DPs, particularly for the late bilinguals, who
might be more prescriptive. Second, asking participants to use the same acceptability scale to assess
within-language violations and potential language switch violations might have also reduced the
effectiveness of the task. Bilinguals likely have significant metalinguistic knowledge of within-language
morphosyntactic violations as a result of the explicit teaching and correction of grammatical errors,
particularly in formal, written (unmixed) language. Language mixing, however, is typically used
in informal oral contexts, and bilinguals rarely pay conscious attention to issues of grammaticality.
Indeed, the results for the control conditions indicated that participants did have significantly stronger
judgments for within-language violations than for language switch violations. This suggests that the
scale was more sensitive to the former type of violation, and thus perhaps less able to detect subtle
differences in the latter.
7. Conclusions
The mixed DP asymmetry of Spanish–English has been investigated from various perspectives
over the years, yet there are still many conflicting views with respect to what it means for the underlying
linguistic system acquired by bilinguals. The DM-based theoretical account presented in Section 3
assumes a somewhat different underlying system than do previous accounts.
Generally speaking, there are two important theoretical advantages to a DM approach to language
mixing. First, because morphology is taken out of the lexicon, this means that the same syntactic
processes apply both above and below the word-level (Grimstad et al. 2014;
Alexiadou et al. 2015
);

Languages 2018,3, 10 25 of 28
“words” are therefore derived from their morphological sub-components in the same way that
sentences are derived from their lexical sub-components. As such, word-internal and word-external
language mixing, which are often treated separately (e.g., Poplack and Dion 2012; see also
Grimstad et al. 2014
), can be accounted for, at least formally, using the same mechanisms. Secondly,
because VIs from both languages compete for insertion into fully specified syntactic terminal nodes,
this allows for optionality when VIs from the two languages have the same feature specifications. This
leads to theoretically motivated predictions with respect to where optionality can be expected in mixed
language utterances, and where there should be a categorical language preference. This optionality
is one of the reasons why it is challenging to model language mixing, yet it is an aspect that DM is
particularly well suited to handle.
Demonstrating that the DM framework can account for mixed language data also provides
empirical support for the underlying assumptions of this model. In particular, the assumption that
gender is not a root property, but a feature on n, is supported by the argument that bilinguals have
options as to which na translation can become licenced under. Further, the theoretical analysis
of Spanish gender and declension class argued for by Kramer (2015) generated specific predictions
regarding how this phenomenon was expected to manifest itself in French–English, and also predictions
regarding how different paths of dual-language acquisition may affect the patterns. The study
presented addressed some of the resulting hypotheses and provided positive evidence for this account,
thus lending empirical support to Kramer’s analysis. The two main findings were that there was no
evidence for a mixed DP asymmetry for French–English bilinguals, as expected, and that late sequential
bilinguals are more likely than simultaneous bilinguals to apply analogical gender to English roots
in mixed DPs. The strength of conclusions based on the first result rests on the assumption that such
an asymmetry could be found for Spanish–English using this particular experimental methodology.
As such, testing this is an important direction for future work. While the second result was predicted
based on a model of the bilingual mental lexicon, the reading time data suggest that this pattern might
not actually reflect differing types of lexical access across languages for the two groups, but different
attitudes and preferences. Conducting experimental studies using even more covert measures, such as
event-related potentials and eye-tracking, could help to investigate these questions further.
Supplementary Materials:
The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/3/2/10/s1,
Table S1: Experimental Stimuli, Table S2: Participant data for acceptability ratings, Table S3: Participant data for
reading times, Figure S1: Results for the mixed DP asymmetry by group.
Acknowledgments:
The author has been funded by a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council, as well as by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Many thanks to Éric Mathieu for
his valuable guidance regarding theoretical aspects of this paper, as well as to Laura Sabourin for help with the
experimental side. Thanks also to Dan Siddiqi for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. This
paper has also benefited considerably from the comments of two anonymous reviewers and the academic editors.
Finally, thanks to members of the Ottawa-Carleton Linguistics Reading Group and the ERP Linguistics Lab at the
University of Ottawa for their support and feedback, and of course to all the enthusiastic language mixers who
participated in the study.
Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.
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