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A review on grammatical gender
acquisition in monolingual
Spanish-speaking children
ONOMÁZEIN 59 (March 2023): 47-62
DOI: 10.7764/onomazein.59.03
ISSN: 0718-5758
University of A Coruña
Spain
Anastasiia Ogneva
59
March
2023
Anastasiia Ogneva: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of A Coruña, Spain.
| E-mail: anastasiia.ogneva@udc.es
Received: December, 2019
Accepted: April, 2020
Journal of linguistics, philology and translation
ONOMÁZEIN 59 (March 2023): 47 - 62
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A review on grammatical gender acquisition in monolingual Spanish-speaking children 48
Acquisition of grammatical gender has been well addressed in psycholinguistic research
with Spanish monolingual typically developing (TD) children but less with children diag-
nosed with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The present article reviews linguistic
and psycholinguistic studies on grammatical gender acquisition from different methodol-
ogies across monolingual Spanish-speaking children with typical language development
DLD children assign grammatical gender and establish gender agreement. We discuss the
Abstract
Keywords: grammatical gender; gender acquisition; gender agreement; gender process-
ing; Spanish.
ONOMÁZEIN 59 (March 2023): 47 - 62
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A review on grammatical gender acquisition in monolingual Spanish-speaking children 49
1. Introduction
Grammatical gender is a common characteristic of many languages across the world. Al-
though some languages do not distinguish the grammatical gender of nouns (e.g., Estonian
or Chinese), other languages (e.g., Romance languages, Russian, German, and many non-Eu-
ropean languages) group nouns according to their grammatical gender (e.g., common nouns
and neutral nouns, masculine nouns and feminine nouns). A language has a gender system
if the gender feature of a noun is observed on other items of the sentence. This phenome-
this grammatical feature:
(1) a. El libro es amarillo
theMASC bookMASC is yellowMASC
‘The book is yellow’
b. La hoja es roja
theFEM sheetFEM is redFEM
‘The sheet is red’
el and the adjective is amarillo since the noun
libro is masculine. In (1b), the determiner la and the adjective roja are feminine, as they
concord with the noun hoja. Furthermore, the determiners and the noun’s ending are
reported to be potential formal indicators of gender in Spanish, as well as the semantic
nouns are either transparent (masculine words normally end in -o and feminine nouns
-
ample, feminine nouns ending in -o and masculine nouns ending in -a). In fact, research
using event-related potentials (ERP) with Spanish-speaking adults provided evidence that
these nouns are processed differently, as different ERP signals emerged when a native
speaker heard and processed one or another word (Caffarra, Janssen, & Barber, 2014). It
was also claimed that formal cues to gender are detected during word recognition process
(Caffarra & Barber, 2015).
-
Russian, Norwegian, etc. (Blom, Polisenska, & Weerman, 2008; Boloh & Ibernon, 2010;
Ceitlin, 2005; Corrêa, Augusto, & Castro, 2011; Corrêa & Name, 2003; Gathercole, Thomas, &
Laporte, 2001; Gvozdev, 1961; Karmiloff-Smith, 1979; Levy, 1983a, 1983b; Mills, 1986; Mulford,
1985; Popova, 1973; Rodina, 2008; Rodina & Westergaard, 2012, 2013, 2015; Tucket, Lambert,
& Rigault, 1977). These studies were mainly aimed to answer two major questions. Specif-
using semantic information or are formal cues to gender discovered earlier? The second
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A review on grammatical gender acquisition in monolingual Spanish-speaking children 50
one is do children learn gender of each word or are they able to predict it on the basis of
gender relevant information, i.e., gender cues? The vast majority of the cited research has
concluded that although some occasional gender assignment errors may be observed in
Gender acquisition is reported to proceed from formal to non-formal, i.e., children begin
using formal cues of gender assignment and agreement (morphological and syntactic
in French, children were reported to be sensitive to a noun’s ending in gender assignment
task (Karmiloff-Smith, 1979; Tucket, Lambert, & Rigault, 1977). In fact, Karmiloff-Smith (1979)
age but frequently from 9 years and on. Nevertheless, some studies argued that children
acquire grammatical gender on the base of the semantic features and do not take into
-
treme” in the statement about the uselessness of the formal cues (Pérez-Pereira, 1991b).
In addition, results from Boloh and Ibernon (2010) have shown that French children es-
tablished gender agreement using “masculine as default” strategy. The authors argue
that the complete ability of gender agreement is acquired from age 7 but not before, as
to the issue and claimed that from early on children are sensitive to both semantic and
-
lish correctly the agreement with semantically masculine nouns that have feminine form
(e.g., papa ‘dad’ has a typically feminine ending -a, but semantically this noun is clearly
masculine, as it denotes a male).
DLD children and how they acquire gender has also received quite a lot of attention cross-
linguistically (for Dutch Duinmeijer, 2017; Keij et al., 2012; Orgassa & Weerman, 2008; for
French Jakubowicz & Roulet-Amiot, 2007; Kupisch, Müller, & Cantone, 2002; Roulet-Amiot et
al., 2004; Roulet-Amiot & Jakubowicz, 2006; for Portuguese Silveira, 2011; for Greek Varlokosta
& Nerantzini, 2013; for Russian Rakhlin et al., 2014; Tribushinina & Dubinkina, 2012; Tribush-
that DLD children produced more agreement errors (Roulet-Amiot & Jakubowicz, 2006).
2011). Interestingly, outcomes by Rakhlin et al. (2014) with Russian-speaking DLD children
-
der assignment task. On the other hand, they did not differ from the control group as for
the sensitivity to agreement features.
This article will focus on discussing studies that analyzed gender acquisition in typically
groups of children differ in gender assignment and agreement processes.
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A review on grammatical gender acquisition in monolingual Spanish-speaking children 51
2. Gender acquisition: evidence from typically developing Spanish-speaking
children
Initial insights on grammatical gender acquisition were provided by a longitudinal study by
gender marking and gender agreement before the age of four (López-Ornat et al., 1994). Bi-
abuelito/abuel-
ita ‘granddad/grandmom’ at 21 month, niño/niña at 22-25 months). From early on, the child
is very sensitive to morphological and syntactic gender cues. Overgeneralization of feminine
gender are observed between 1;9 and 2;1, such as *tierra azula instead of tierra azul ‘blue
earth’ or *mota rota instead of moto rota
1;11, the child frequently overgeneralizes masculine gender with morphologically unmarked
nouns, e.g., *un llave instead of una llave ‘a.F key’, *un leche instead of leche ‘milk’ (femi-
nine and uncountable), *un verde ‘a.M green’ instead of verde (to indicate that something
is green). A short time later1, the child uses an inverse strategy of using a feminine article
with opaque nouns, such as *una camión instead of un camión ‘a lorry’, *una pez instead
of un pez
between nouns and articles but not between nouns and adjectives. In Mariscal’s study
(2008), spontaneous speech samples of four Spanish children (aged 1;10-2;01) were recorded
to particular nouns. Thus, gender agreement between nouns and adjective is conditioned
by this factor and cannot be generalized to other items immediately. Mariscal also points
out that acquisition of noun-determiner gender agreement is processed gradually. Children
seem to be moderately adding new sources of information (phonological, distributional,
-
der cues. Pérez-Pereira presented pictures of fantasy animals to Spanish children (aged
4-11) with auditory stimuli which consisted in naming a fantasy animal with a novel name.
Following that, children were presented with pictures of the same animals but painted in a
different color and were asked to name this animal. The results of this study showed that
semantic cue (animacy feature) was not important for children. Younger children begin
using morphological cue (the noun’s ending) and, as they grow older, they seem to pay
more attention to syntactic cues. Masculine gender overuse was also observed in items
una linolo ‘a.F linolo.M’
or un satila ‘a.M satila.F’. These results can be either related to an earlier acquisition of
this strategy.
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A review on grammatical gender acquisition in monolingual Spanish-speaking children 52
masculine or a “masculine-by-default” strategy, reported by Boloh and Ibernon in French
(2010). Martínez-Nieto (2018) provided evidence for overgeneralization of masculine forms
of articles and clitics, as well as a higher accuracy level in masculine forms use in normally
developing monolingual Spanish-speaking children and young heritage speakers. A recent
study using pseudowords with Spanish monolinguals and Basque-Spanish bilinguals re-
vealed a general preference for masculine gender for both groups (Pérez-Tattam et al., 2019).
Similar to Pérez-Pereira (1991a), the authors of this study found that morphophonological
-
idence of the importance of gender information. Lew-Williams and Fernald (2007) claimed
tested children via eye-tracking procedure. Children (aged 34-42 months) were presented with
pairs of pictures with objects either of the same gender (la pelota ‘the.F ball.F’, la galleta ‘the.F
cookie.F’) or different gender (la pelota ‘the.F ball.F’, el zapato ‘the.M shoe.M’). At the same
time, they heard an auditory stimulus with the article and the name of one of the objects (e.g.,
encuentra la pelota-
fying the target object when the determiner was informative, i.e., when grammatical gender of
study by Lew-Williams and Fernald (2007), where only transparent nouns were used, and in-
cluded opaque familiar nouns as well, such as llave ‘key’, calcetín ‘sock’, etc. Toddlers (24-, 30-,
and 36-month-olds) were shown pair of familiar object (e.g., a target plátano ‘banana.M’ and
a distractor manzana ‘apple.F’) and heard an auditory stimulus such as mira el plátano ‘look
un ‘a.M’ and una ‘a.F’, whereas the elder toddlers (30- and 36-month-
Arias-Trejo and Alva-Canto (2012) provided evidence that Spanish-speaking 30-month-old
toddlers can make use of grammatical gender information stored in adjectives. Children were
mira, es rojo ‘look, it’s red.M’, where-
as when they saw a diabolo they heard mira, es amarilla ‘look, it’s yellow.F’. Following that,
children were shown two objects simultaneously and heard an auditory stimulus consisting
in a nonce word. For instance, mira una betusa ‘look a.F betusa’. The results revealed that
toddlers were able to identify the appropriate target object on the basis of -o/-a pattern of
the adjective, established previously during training phase.
system in a language (Arias-Trejo, Falcón, & Alva-Canto, 2013). In Dutch there are two deter-
miners (common and neuter) for three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), whereas
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A review on grammatical gender acquisition in monolingual Spanish-speaking children 53
in French and in Spanish there are two determiners for two genders (masculine and femi-
nine). Although in Czech there is no obligatory determiner accompanying nouns, there are
particular markers of masculine, feminine, and neuter genders.
Together, the results of the research discussed in this section provide evidence that from
early on typically developing children are sensitive to gender information embedded in
nouns, articles, and determiners.
3. Gender acquisition: evidence from DLD Spanish-speaking children
Alongside the ongoing debate about how grammatical gender is acquired and processed
by typically developing children, researchers also investigated this process in children di-
skills (Bottari et al., 1998; Clahsen et al., 1997; Leonard, 2014), thus grammatical gender is
considered to be a problematic area. In Spanish, some studies focused on spontaneous
in gender agreement (Bedore & Leonard, 2001; Jackson-Maldonado & Maldonado, 2017; Re-
to gender cues (Anderson & Lockowitz, 2009; Perona Jara, 2015).
2. Al-
though gender agreement was not the main object of the broad study, and gender errors
were not analyzed in detail, authors report some limitations in gender use. For instance,
feminine plural adjectives were substituted by masculine plural forms. Omission of the
(Bedore & Leonard, 2005). In the same line, results of Jackson-Maldonado and Maldona-
do’s (2017) research showed omissions and substitutions of gendered articles and clitic
llevó al niño hasta un montaña instead of llevó al niño hasta una
montaña ‘(he) took the boy to the mountain’.
The study by Bosch and Serra (1997), which investigated spontaneous speech of 12 DLD
children (mean age 7;6), included children with phonological disorders. Children’s responses
-
-
ish in a Spanish-speaking country (Silveira, 2011).
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A review on grammatical gender acquisition in monolingual Spanish-speaking children 54
contained omissions of the articles, evidenced mainly in children with lower phonological
and Gutiérrez-Clellén (2001) also claimed gender errors in agreement and article use. Nev-
ertheless, the results are questionable, since the participants were recruited from the USA
and, thus, cannot be considered completely Spanish monolinguals. Research by Anderson
and Souto (2005) aimed to investigate the use of articles by Puerto Rican Spanish-speaking
-
questionable. In spontaneous speech samples, the authors reported 9.5% of gender errors
for DLD children. These errors included article omissions and number errors. The authors
also performed an analysis of errors according to noun ending (transparent and opaque).
Interestingly, 70% of the errors were with typical ending, while 30% occurs with opaque
-
mental task of this research, a child was elicited the production of gendered determiners.
Surprisingly, the analysis showed that 84% (21 out of 25) of gender errors were produced by
typically developing children, whereas DLD children showed only 21 (28 out of 180). These
-
parency” in a very misleading way, claiming that nouns are semantically transparent if they
-
parent, the authors group together la mujer ‘the.F woman.F’, la bebé ‘the.F baby.F/M’ and la
piloto ‘the.F pilot.F/M’. The word mujer refers only to female reference, whereas the nouns
bebé and piloto can have both female and male referents. Therefore, only the word mujer
but, on the contrary, they are ambiguous as for their gender. Furthermore, children may
have made use only of the morphological cue of the noun piloto and classify it as a mas-
culine one. The same arguable condition is observed in masculine / atypical word ending
/ transparent, where the authors group such nouns as el policía ‘the.M policeman.M/F’, el
astronauta ‘the.M astronaut.M/F’, and el hombre ‘the.M man.M’. Once again, only the noun
hombre is semantically transparent, whereas the two other nouns are clearly ambiguous.
them is required.
cues using an invented word task, similar to that of Pérez-Pereira (1991a). Nonce words
were created and grouped according with four different sub-tests conditions: noun ending,
article cue, adjective cue, and semantic transparency. Children were shown a picture of a
aquí hay dos mieslas violetas ‘here are
two purple mieslas’. When a second picture was presented, the participant was elicited an
answer of what he/she sees. Differences were found between the accuracy rates of answers
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A review on grammatical gender acquisition in monolingual Spanish-speaking children 55
for items with article cue, where DLD children showed mean accuracy score of 6.55 whereas
typically developing children showed 9.09 (out of 12). There was also an observed trend
for DLD children to show lower mean score for accuracy in noun-ending cue items (5.55) in
comparison with typically developing children (6.45). The result indicated that DLD children
-
made by DLD children is available.
Following the same research line, Perona Jara (2015) studied Spanish-speaking children
listened to an auditory stimulus such as el perro está descansando ‘a dog.M is resting’,
while seeing pairs of pictures with female and male animal, e.g. perra ‘dog.F’ and perro
as dresses, necklaces, etc., and via typical masculine attributes like mustache, hat, etc.).
in both conditions (real and nonce words) when they had a typical Spanish gender pattern:
el ‘the.M’ + -o or la ‘the.F’ + -a (which was called the “distributional” cue by the author). As
irregular nonce word, where the determiner and the noun’s ending do not agree, e.g. la
coto ‘the.F coto.M’. Comparing age groups, she found that older DLD children show a better
answer rate with known words which have the typical gender pattern. In fact, Perona Jara
words with opaque ending (e.g., el pez
surprising result by the processing limitation in DLD, such as working memory and process-
ing speed (Botting & Conti-Ramsden, 2001; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990; Kail, 1994; Kail &
Müller, 2006; Leonard, 2014). According to that, when only syntactic cue is available (i.e., the
determiner), DLD children process gender information more easily than when the distribu-
the noun pez, which is epicene and only has one grammatical gender. Thus, it is possible
with the noun itself. Nonetheless, this study presents some methodological shortcomings;
e.g., the possibility to answer correctly was 50%, as children only had to point one of two
made consciously considering gender information provided in a noun, as no production
and actual answer was elicited.
Evidence from previous research suggests that gender acquisition in DLD children seems
to differ from this process in typically developing children. Furthermore, the heterogeneity
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A review on grammatical gender acquisition in monolingual Spanish-speaking children 56
similar settings, thus the results are quite inconsistent.
4. Summary
The empirical studies discussed in the present article have investigated how typically devel-
oping and DLD Spanish-speaking monolingual children acquire grammatical gender system
in their native language. It is generally agreed that grammatical gender is acquired quite
early by Spanish monolingual typically developing children.
process. Firstly, it seems that children begin to assign gender to novel nouns using the
morphological cue embedded in the ending of a noun (Pérez-Pereira, 1991a; Perona Jara,
2015). Gendered determiners are also reported to be important in gender assignment and
agreement from early on, as articles normally accompany nouns in a sentence (Arias-Trejo
& Alva-Canto, 2012; Arias-Trejo, Falcón, & Alva-Canto, 2013; Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2007).
-
signment at the early language development stage and how it evolves. Secondly, evidence
suggests that children master masculine earlier than feminine gender (Pérez-Pereira, 1991a;
Martínez-Nieto, 2018) and may even use it by default (Boloh & Ibernon, 2010). Up to date,
no research suggested Spanish children may use “masculine-by-default” strategy. Future
children incorporate semantic cue into gender assignment. Rodina’s research (2008) with
Russian monolinguals suggests that in some cases the semantic cue takes precedence in
papa ‘dad’, which is
semantically masculine as it denotes a male, but formally it is feminine as it ends in -a).
gender assignment and agreement. Thus, we suggest that future studies considering the
gender of these nouns in Spanish is needed.
Furthermore, it is still open to debate whether DLD children make use of different types of
grammatical gender information, such as semantic, morphological, syntactic, or distribu-
this debate so far. To our knowledge, no evidence has been provided on whether DLD chil-
dren are sensitive to semantic gender cue from early on either. Similarly, DLD children have
not been tested on whether they make use of determiners in sentence comprehension task.
In sum, the present article reviewed empirical studies on gender assignment and agree-
ment in Spanish monolingual typically developing and DLD children. We may not have
reviewed all relevant studies, but evidence discussed above will provide reference and
plausible ideas for future research concerning grammatical gender acquisition in Spanish.
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A review on grammatical gender acquisition in monolingual Spanish-speaking children 57
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6. Acknowledgements
This research has been funded by the Regional Government of Galicia (Consellería de Cultu-
ra, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria da Xunta de Galicia, grant ED481A-2017/279) and by
the UDC International Doctoral School and INDITEX (Escola Internacinal de Doutoramento e
INDITEX SA, three-month research stay grant). I am also grateful to Miguel Pérez Pereira for
his valuable feedback on an earlier version of this paper.
