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Concord, convergence and accommodation in bilingual children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2007

ANDREW RADFORD ,
TANJA KUPISCH ,
REGINA KÖPPE  and
GABRIELE AZZARO
ANDREW RADFORD
Affiliation:
University of Essex
TANJA KUPISCH
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
REGINA KÖPPE
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
GABRIELE AZZARO
Affiliation:
Università di Bologna
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Abstract

This paper examines the syntax of GENDER CONCORD in mixed utterances where bilingual children switch between a modifier in one language and a noun in another. Particular attention is paid to how children deal with potential gender mismatches between modifier and noun, i.e., if one of the languages has grammatical gender but the other does not, or if one of the languages has a ternary gender system and the other a binary one. We show that the English–Italian and French–German bilingual children in our study accommodate the gender properties of the noun to those of its modifiers in such cases, in order to ensure convergence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , November 2007 , pp. 239 - 256
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2007

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Footnotes

We are grateful to Enam Al Wer, Harald Clahsen, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to the University of Essex for providing a small grant from its Research Promotion Fund to employ Marina Arlati to transcribe the LUCY tapes.