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Do learners who have mastered two gender systems prior to learning a third have an advantage in gender processing over those who have mastered only one gender system? To address this question, we recruited two groups of adult Polish learners of L3/Ln Swedish with and without prior knowledge of German. They completed a self-paced reading task in Swedish that involved two types of gender marking: the indefinite article, which is realised similarly in Swedish and German, and the definite suffix, which is uniquely present in Swedish. We found that while both groups were sensitive to gender agreement violations involving the indefinite article, only learners with knowledge of German showed sensitivity to gender agreement violations involving the definite suffix. Therefore, knowledge of non-native German conferred an advantage for the processing of dissimilar rather than similar gender marking. We interpret these findings in light of morphological transfer from German that consists in the employment of the existing morphemes and assigning them new grammatical functions. More broadly, the study indicates that the gender system in a non-native language rather than the native language, might be more helpful for the acquisition of a new type of gender marking in L3/Ln. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has documented cross-linguistic influence in L2 grammatical gender acquisition and use. However, it remains unclear what role previously learned languages play in gender assignment beyond L2. To address this question, we created a timed gender decision task with which we tested two groups of L1 Polish university students of Swedish as an additional language: 65 L2 English/L3 Swedish students, and 52 L2 English/L3 German/L4 Swedish students. Adopting a pseudo-longitudinal design, we tested individuals who had completed one, two, or three to four years of studies. Accuracy and response time data were submitted to Generalised Linear Models. The results show that L4 Swedish students did not outperform L3 Swedish students in terms of accuracy. However, L4 Swedish students assigned gender to nouns faster than L3 Swedish students, but only after one year of studies. The response time advantage of L4S students was attributed to the surface transfer of the German gender values into Swedish. Apart from the specific effect of German, the results point to the robust effects of gender congruency with L1 Polish and the persistent tendency to overgeneralise uter gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives: The study investigates the extent to which offline and online comprehension of reflexive possessive pronouns in L3 and L4 is modulated by previously acquired native and non-native grammars. Design/Methodology/Approach: Thirty-one intermediate to advanced L1 Polish learners of Swedish, who have also acquired German and English (L4 Swedish learners) or only English (L3 Swedish learners), completed a self-paced reading task and a grammaticality judgement task. The tasks targeted learners' sensitivity to possessor and possessee agreement violations. Data and Analysis: Reading times and judgement accuracy were collected and analysed using generalised linear models. Findings/Conclusions: In online comprehension, L3/L4 Swedish learners showed sensitivity to possessor and possessee agreement, which was affected neither by their proficiency, nor by their prior native and non-native grammars. In offline comprehension, however, they had difficulty deploying possessor and possessee agreement. Performance on possessee but not possessor agreement increased with advancing proficiency, indicating the persistent influence of L1 Polish grammar. Furthermore, L4 Swedish learners achieved an overall higher judgement accuracy than L3 Swedish learners. At the same time, L4 Swedish learners read the relevant regions longer than L3 Swedish learners, suggesting a speed–accuracy trade-off for L4 Swedish learners. Originality: The study investigates cross-linguistic influence in the comprehension of reflexive possessive pronouns in multilingual learners, which has not been explored before. It is also the first to provide evidence for a multilingual advantage in the accuracy of reflexive possessive agreement, albeit at the cost of reading speed. Significance/Implications: The study demonstrates that native and non-native grammars differently affect the offline comprehension of reflexive possessive pronouns in L3 and L4. The native language seems to have a more direct effect that consists in the employment of agreement mechanisms, while the non-native language has a more indirect effect, as it can increase learners' sensitivity to morphosyntactic violations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although previous research has observed a facilitative influence of the first language (L1) on the acquisition and processing of gender agreement in a second language (L2), particularly in language pairs with similar gender agreement marking, the question of whether knowledge of two languages with gender can confer an additional advantage for L3/Ln (third or additional language) learners has not yet been addressed. The present study aimed to fill this research gap by examining the processing of gender agreement in intermediate and advanced L3/Ln Swedish among two groups of Polish native speakers: 30 L2 English / L3 Swedish learners, and 30 L2 English / L3 German / L4 Swedish learners. Participants were tested by means of a speeded grammaticality judgment task, in which they judged the correctness of indefinite noun phrases that either agreed or did not agree in gender. They also completed an untimed gender assignment task to control for their lexical knowledge of gender. Accuracy and response time data were submitted to Generalized Linear Models. The analysis shows that L4 Swedish learners process noun phrases faster than L3 Swedish learners, but only at the intermediate proficiency level; however, the groups do not differ in their judgment accuracy. This advantage is interpreted in terms of a surface transfer of similar gender agreement marking, which helps the learners automatize gender agreement processes earlier, but does not increase their sensitivity to gender-agreement violations. Moreover, the results accord with previous L2 studies in showing that learners of Swedish as L3/Ln develop sensitivity to ungrammaticality with advancing proficiency and benefit substantially from their gender assignment knowledge in processing gender agreement. Crucially, the present study provides preliminary evidence of a multilingual advantage in processing morphosyntactic features in L3/Ln. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines gender incongruency effects during gender retrieval in L3 Swedish learners, which are due to gender misassignment in L2 German. Twenty learners of L3 Swedish who had previously acquired two gender systems; one in their L1 Polish and the other in their L2 German, completed a speeded Gender Decision Task in Swedish and an untimed Gender Assignment Task in German. All noun stimuli were congruent in gender across the three languages (neuter → neuter, masculine and feminine → uter). Learners who erroneously assigned neuter gender to feminine but not to masculine nouns in L2 German showed higher error rates and longer response latencies in their attempts to retrieve uter gender in L3 Swedish. No interference was observed for neuter nouns. The present study thus demonstrates that incorrect gender representations in L2 German compete for selection with the target gender representations in L3 Swedish and that this cross-language interference is not always successfully resolved. Based on these findings, it is suggested that in the multilingual lexicon the connection of the uter gender node to the feminine gender node is weaker than to the masculine gender node. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study examines transfer effects in the acquisition of grammatical gender in L3/Ln. A learner of L3 Swedish, who had previously acquired two grammatical gender systems: one in his native Polish and the other in his non-native Norwegian, participated in three tasks: an online gender decision task, an offline gender decision task, and a speeded acceptability judgement task on determiner phrases (indefinite article + noun). Accuracy scores in all three tasks reveal robust transfer from Norwegian, but not from Polish. The transfer from Norwegian determines two processes inherent to grammatical gender, i.e. gender assignment and gender concord. However, response latencies in the online gender decision task point to competition between the Norwegian and Swedish gender systems at the level of gender retrieval, suggesting that target-like gender representations in Swedish are developing. Since transfer is traditionally claimed to be situated at the level of linguistic representation, it is assumed that the learner in this study temporarily developed a shared grammatical gender system for Norwegian and Swedish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]