Gender marking in L1 and L2 French: Syntactic complexity, lexical category and phonological expression

Abstract

Very little is known about the accuracy of grammatical inflection in written language. In this study we investigated the effects of syntactic complexity, lexical category and phonological expression on gender marking in L1 and L2 French. Native speakers of French (n = 40) and Dutch learners of French (n = 45) completed a fill-in-the-gap task in which the test items were controlled for the linguistic factors under investigation. The results showed main effects for syntactic complexity and lexical category. For phonological expression we only observed moderation effects. We conclude that syntactic complexity and lexical category affect the accuracy of gender marking in written L1 and L2 French more than phonological expression.