Abstract This chapter provides an outline of the acquisition, variation, and possible attrition of the grammatical gender systems of North Germanic languages—Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. The overview covers developmental trajectories in early and late language learners as well as gender representations in child bilingualism, adult heritage language attrition, non-native language processing, and language change. The chapter also discusses the linguistic factors that shape and constrain language acquisition, processing, and maintenance of this grammatical domain, such as (non-)transparency of the nominal gender cues, frequency, productivity, linguistic default, morphological complexity, and syncretism.

Bilingualism can be thought of as an intensive mental gym for language control. However, the moderators that underlie bilingual adaptations are a matter of ongoing investigation. Degree of similarity in mental, linguistic representations between the languages of a bilingual has been argued to differentially condition recruitment of control mechanisms and, as such, would embody a contributing factor to relevant neurocognitive adaptations. While ample evidence exists for this claim, its empirical coverage is limited because testing in cognitive science disproportionally represents communities that speak big, Indo-European languages, thus potentially providing a biased view of bilingual cognition. In this work, we assess the role of language distance as a key moderator of bilingual adaptations through a large-scale aggregation analysis of 510 experiments. To measure distance, we develop a multi-metric approach, using state-of-the-art databases, such as Grambank, and tapping into different levels of linguistic granularity. Aggregating data from 56,173 participants who speak 79 different languages, spanning 11 language families and a language isolate, we find sparse evidence for a distance effect at the population level. Certain language pairs stand out as promising hosts for bilingual adaptations, but their representation in the sample is not robust enough to enable strong conclusions, attesting to the need to employ more representative samples. Our results suggest that language distance is a complex variable that has the potential to address the perennial question of what makes bilinguals distinct.

This study investigates the role of structural similarity in third language acquisition by using two different semi-artificial languages (ALs, called Aliensk A and Aliensk N) as the targets and either Polish–Norwegian or Norwegian as the previously acquired languages (all speakers also know English). It is an extension of Mitrofanova et al., who did a similar study with one semi-artificial language with Norwegian, Russian–Norwegian, and Greek–Norwegian speakers. Mitrofanova et al. found that previous experience with a language (Russian) which is structurally similar to the target language is facilitative even in instances where the other previously acquired language (Norwegian) is lexically similar to the target language, but this was only the case when the property in question was both structurally and overtly similar (i.e. had similar overt morphological expression). The ALs in the current study are lexically based on Norwegian, a language which does not have morphological case marking. Aliensk A has case marking on articles (structurally but not overtly similar to Polish) and Aliensk N has case marking on nouns (structurally and overtly similar to Polish). Results provide support for the position that previous experience with a language with an overtly and structurally similar property (case) can be facilitative at early stages of acquisition. However, this process may be mediated by an SVO bias, the level of proficiency and activation of the lexically similar language. Overall, the findings support models of L3/Ln acquisition which consider crosslinguistic influence (CLI) to be the result of co-activation of all previously acquired languages and suggest that both lexical and structural similarity play a role at early stages of acquisition.

This study investigates predictive processing in heritage Turkish, focusing on how morphosyntactic cues, word order and language engagement shape real-time comprehension. Using a web-based visual world eye-tracking paradigm, 219 Turkish–German heritage speakers and 102 monolingual Turkish speakers completed a sentence-comprehension task involving transitive sentences varying in case marking and word order. The monolingual group was included for methodological validation only. Time-continuous gaze analyses showed that heritage speakers used case marking to anticipate referential roles before verb onset across structures, although timing and strength varied by condition. Predictive processing depended not simply on the presence of an early cue, but on how morphosyntactic and positional information unfolded and were integrated over the sentence. Crucially, predictive efficiency scaled with overall Turkish engagement, speakers with greater Turkish engagement showed earlier and stronger anticipatory fixations. These findings show that heritage grammars retain active morphosyntactic predictive mechanisms shaped by language experience.

The present study compared the comprehension of morphological case in transitive and ditransitive German sentences in two multilingual speaker groups whose first languages (L1s) differ typologically and structurally from the target language: Polish and Norwegian. Like German and unlike Norwegian and English (Germanic languages), Polish (Slavic) has morphological case and a relatively free word order. For all participants, German was the third or even later acquired language, and all had knowledge of English. In a picture selection task, the participants were presented with two event scenes: one that matched the event as described in an auditorily presented sentence and one that mismatched. Critically, successful comprehension required the exploitation of case on full noun phrases (NPs). The results showed that the comprehension of object-initial vs. subject-initial transitive sentences differed between Norwegian and Polish L1 speakers, supporting cross-linguistic influence as a function of structural similarity to the target language. The difference in performance between the object-initial and the prototypical subject-initial order was larger for the Norwegian than for the Polish L1 group, indicating a higher reliance on word order in the former group. The results for the comprehension of different object orders following a ditransitive verb were less conclusive but point in a similar direction. The findings of this study provide new answers to the question under which circumstances there is cross-linguistic influence from other grammar(s) in the comprehension of a later acquired language beyond early stages of acquisition.

It has been argued that bilingualism under certain conditions can confer adaptations to the human mind and brain. Among the possible moderators of such adaptations, language distance occupies a distinctly ambiguous role. Equally unclear is the directionality of the effect. On the one hand, monitoring language may become more effortful depending on how similar competing alternatives are, thus predicting more robust adaptations in similar language bilinguals. On the other hand, the pool of competing alternatives grows with fewer overlaps between languages, and this widespread competition may require increased effort, predicting more robust adaptations in distant language bilinguals. In this systematic review and Bayesian analysis, we find robust evidence for a distance effect in bilingualism, but mixed evidence concerning its directionality. We interpret the results through charting the extreme variability that exists across studies, highlighting the need for developing ecologically accepted metrics of what counts as similar in language processing.

The present study compares the use of morphological case for argument interpretation between German L1 speakers in Norway and Germany to investigate whether and how processing may be affected by attrition. Participants were presented with a spoken sentence and pictures of two scenes, one showing an event as described by a transitive or ditransitive sentence and another showing the same event, with the roles of agent and patient (transitives) or recipient and theme (ditransitives) reversed. Their task was to select the scene that matched the sentence. End-of-sentence responses show no between-group differences in comprehension. Moreover, eye movements show that both groups exploit case marking on the first noun phrase in transitive sentences in the same way. However, differences in processing between groups emerge for the use of case marking on the first object following a ditransitive verb. While the home country group shows a higher likelihood of looks to the target after a dative-marked article than after an accusative-marked article prior to the second object, the reverse holds for the expat group, at least temporarily. Altogether, the results indicate subtle changes in the processing of alternating argument orders in ditransitive sentences in L1 German, potentially as a result of the bi-/multilingual experience.

This article presents an investigation of the ongoing change in grammatical gender in Norwegian dialects, specifically the dialect of Oslo. We find that the feminine indefinite article ei and the prenominal possessives mi/di/si have disappeared from the Oslo dialect, resulting in a two-gender system with common and neuter. While the feminine definite suffix - a and the postnominal possessives mi/di/si have been found in previous studies to be generally retained in other dialects, we find less use of these forms in Oslo. We argue that the erosion of these two forms is due to the loss of feminine gender, resulting in a common gender with two competing declension classes. We consider the theoretical status of these forms and argue that our empirical data is better explained within an analysis where definite suffixes are analysed as declension class markers and the postnominal possessive no longer expresses feminine gender.

In recent years, there has been considerable research into the factors contributing to cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of a third language. Much of the focus has been on linguistic cues, with less emphasis (and conflicting results) on experiential factors, such as the role of dominance. Additionally, there is very little literature on the role of the language used for instruction in experiments, which may be argued to reflect a recency effect. In this article, we investigate whether dominance (in one of the previously acquired languages) and recency may be responsible for cross-linguistic influence in the third language at early stages of acquisition. We exposed four groups of Polish–English speakers to thirty-six lexical items in a new language (Norwegian), followed by a picture-matching task to ensure word comprehension. Participants gave forced-choice judgements on sentences where the morphosyntax was either Polish-like or English-like. Four properties were tested: articles, ditransitives, number agreement, and semantic gender. The results showed complex relationships between dominance, recency, and linguistic property, which are discussed in light of a foreign language effect, differential cognitive control, language domains, and previous L3 studies. Additionally, we suggest some experimental considerations for future L3 research.

Foreign-accented speech has been explored from various perspectives, yet the current study is one of the first to investigate the role of accentedness in relation to acceptability judgements in multilingual acquisition. We consider possible interactions of two domains, phonology and syntax, by presenting learners of L3 Norwegian with an Acceptability Judgement Task focusing on eight morphosyntactic properties. Stimuli were recorded with Polish, English and native Norwegian accents. The rationale of the study is based on activation competition; it is expected that a Polish or English accent may enhance activation of syntax of the relevant language and thus affect acceptability judgements. Test items were selected based on their grammatical similarities or dissimilarities between Norwegian and the two previously acquired languages, Polish and English. Prerecorded sentences were evaluated for grammaticality on a 7-point Likert scale. Participants included L1 Norwegian controls and L1 Polish-L2 English-L3/Ln learners of Norwegian divided into instructed and immersive groups. Results show significant effects of accent, group, and condition/grammaticality, as well as a significant group by condition/grammaticality interaction. Conditions not similar to Polish and English did not exhibit accent effects. Findings suggest that differences in ratings based on accentedness are linked to structural similarity and exposure conditions.

Previous research on real-time sentence processing in German has shown that listeners use the morphological marking of accusative case on a sentence-initial noun phrase to not only interpret the current argument as the object and patient, but also to predict a plausible agent. So far, less is known about the use of case marking to predict the semantic role of upcoming arguments after the subject/agent has been encountered. In the present study, we examined the use of case marking for argument interpretation in transitive as well as ditransitive structures. We aimed to control for multiple factors that could have influenced processing in previous studies, including the animacy of arguments, world knowledge, and the perceptibility of the case cue. Our results from eye- and mouse-tracking indicate that the exploitation of the first case cue that enables the interpretation of the unfolding sentence is influenced by (i) the strength of argument order expectation and (ii) the perceptual salience of the case cue.PsycINFO code: 2720 Linguistics & Language & Speech.

Aims and objectives: This article investigates naturalistic acquisition of a second dialect (D2), comparing the global accent of speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) exposed to European Portuguese (EP), either as children or as adults (early vs late bilectals). The focus is on the predicted advantage of an early age of onset of the D2, as well as possible crosslinguistic influence from the D2 onto the first dialect (D1). Design and methodology: The study is an Accent Rating Task, where 50 raters judged the global accent of 30 BP speakers living in Portugal (15 early + 15 late bilectals), who were recorded in both BP and EP modes. Using a 6-point Likert-type scale, the raters judged whether the speakers sounded Brazilian or Portuguese and also indicated how certain they were about their judgment. Data and analysis: The data consisted of two 10-second audio snippets from each speaker, one in BP and the other in EP mode (altogether 60 items). In addition, there were 10 control items produced by native BP and EP speakers. Several mixed-effects models compared the target groups to each other and to the monolectal controls. Findings and conclusions: Both the early and late bilectals were rated as Brazilian in BP mode, but the degree of rater certainty was significantly lower for early than for late bilectals, which was again lower than for BP monolectals. In EP mode, early bilectals were perceived as Portuguese (though the raters were less certain than when rating EP monolectals), while late bilectals were judged as Brazilian. Originality: The study adds to the novel but increasing body of research on speakers of two closely related varieties. Significance and implications: This research illustrates that bilectalism displays a number of similarities with bilingualism, specifically that there may be significant effects of age of onset of the D2.

Modulation of visual attention in the Visual World Paradigm relies on parallel processing of linguistic and visual information. Previous studies have argued that the human linguistic capacity includes an aspect of anticipation of upcoming material. Such anticipation can be triggered by both lexical and grammatical/morphosyntactic cues. In this study, we investigated the relationship between comprehension and prediction by testing how subtle changes in visual representations can affect the processing of grammatical case cues in Russian by Russian-German bilingual children (n = 49, age 8-13). The linguistic manipulation followed previous designs, contrasting SVO and OVS sentences, where the first NP (NP1) was marked with nominative or accusative case, respectively. Three types of visual displays were compared: (i) individual referents (potential agent/theme); (ii) pairs of referents (NP1 + potential agent/theme); and (iii) events (representing interactions between the referents). Participants were significantly more sensitive to the case manipulation when presented with events compared to the other two types of visual display. This suggests that they were able to quickly integrate the thematic role information signaled by grammatical case in the event representations. However, they were less likely to use the case information to anticipate upcoming arguments when the target pictures represented individual referents or pairs of noninteracting referents. We hypothesize that the process of argument anticipation is mediated by the activation of syntactic templates (SVO or OSV, depending on the case marking on NP1). The relatively weak anticipation effect observed may be attributed to the absence, or weak representation, of the noncanonical OVS template in the bilingual children's long-term memory.

Purpose: This study examines embedded clauses with adverb/negation in heritage speakers of Norwegian in North America. We ask (a) whether the production of these structures is different from the baseline, (b) how the production is different, and (c) why it is different.Methodology: 50 second to fifth-generation speakers from the Corpus of American Nordic Speech (CANS) are compared with a baseline consisting of 13 first-generation speakers from the same corpus and a large corpus study on verb placement in embedded clauses in European Norwegian.Findings: The speakers behave differently from the baseline, as they use main clause word order in embedded clauses, especially when the finite verb is an auxiliary. Furthermore, there is a correlation between main clause word order in embedded clauses and V2 violations in main clauses. We propose a combination of crosslinguistic influence, language-internal drift, differential acquisition, and activation of the heritage language as possible factors affecting the speaker's production.Originality: Whereas several studies have looked at main clause word order in the same and similar populations, not as much work has been done on embedded clauses. We also combine data from the same informants from a previous study to look at correlations between the behaviour in main and embedded clauses.Implications: This study illustrates how heritage languages are affected by different factors across speakers; where some speakers seem to simplify the language, others have held on to fine-grained distinctions.

Several studies have argued that bilingualism can confer adaptations to the human mind and brain. Among the possible moderators of such adaptations, language distance occupies a distinctly ambiguous role. While degree of similarity across lexical, morphosyntactic, and phonological representations has been argued to modulate the degree of recruitment of cognitive control mechanisms during bilingual processing, details of this modulation are un(der)specified, and, thus, largely unknown. Equally unclear is the directionality of the effect of language distance, with the literature providing support for two seemingly contradictory predictions. On the one hand, similar language bilinguals may exert more cognitive effort than distant language bilinguals, because monitoring language may become more effortful depending on how similar competing alternatives are. On the other hand, given that the pool of competing alternatives grows when there are fewer overlaps between languages, this widespread competition may require increased cognitive effort. The first hypothesis predicts that neurocognitive adaptations to bilingualism will be more pronounced in similar language bilinguals, while the second predicts this for distant language bilinguals. This systematic review and Bayesian analysis aim to decipher the role of language distance, assessing both behavioral and neurological evidence. We find robust evidence for a distance effect in bilingualism, but mixed evidence in relation to its directionality. We interpret the results through charting the extreme variability that exists across studies that can serve to test the impact of language distance, and we highlight the need for developing ecologically accepted metrics and definitions of what counts as similar in language processing.

This study investigates the role of lexical vs structural similarity in L3 acquisition. We designed a mini-artificial language learning task where the novel L3 was lexically based on Norwegian but included a property that was present in Russian and Greek yet absent in Norwegian (grammatical case). The participants were Norwegian-Russian and Norwegian-Greek bilinguals as well as a group of Norwegian L1 speakers. All participants also knew some English. The morphological expression of the L3 target property was more like Russian than Greek in that case was marked on the noun itself, not on articles. The results of our study indicate that previous experience with a language that is structurally like the L3 (Russian) is facilitative, even when the L3 lexically resembles a language that lacks this grammatical property (Norwegian). Our results suggest overt that the morphological expression of the target property also plays a role: previous experience with Greek that marks the target contrast on determiners did not seem to be facilitative at early stages of acquisition. Overall, our results are in line with models of L3/Ln acquisition which assume that both previously acquired languages influence the development of the L3 and that structural, morphological and lexical similarity play a role.

This study investigates the role of lexical vs structural similarity in L3 acquisition. We designed a mini-artificial language learning task where the novel L3 was lexically based on Norwegian but included a property that was present in Russian and Greek yet absent in Norwegian (grammatical case). The participants were Norwegian-Russian and Norwegian-Greek bilinguals as well as a group of Norwegian L1 speakers. All participants also knew some English. The morphological expression of the L3 target property was more like Russian than Greek in that case was marked on the noun itself, not on articles. The results of our study indicate that previous experience with a language that is structurally like the L3 (Russian) is facilitative, even when the L3 lexically resembles a language that lacks this grammatical property (Norwegian). Our results suggest overt that the morphological expression of the target property also plays a role: previous experience with Greek that marks the target contrast on determiners did not seem to be facilitative at early stages of acquisition. Overall, our results are in line with models of L3/Ln acquisition which assume that both previously acquired languages influence the development of the L3 and that structural, morphological and lexical similarity play a role.

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The present study aims at obtaining a comprehensive picture of language development in Russian heritage language (RHL) by bringing together evidence from previous investigations focusing on morphosyntax and global accent as well as from a newly conducted analysis of a less-studied domain-lexical development. Our investigation is based on a narrative sample of 143 pre- and primary-school bilinguals acquiring RHL in Norway, Germany, and the United Kingdom. We performed a multiple-way analysis of lexical production in RHL across the different national contexts, across both languages (heritage and societal), also comparing bilinguals and monolinguals. The results revealed a clear and steady increase with age in narrative length and lexical diversity for all bilingual groups in both of their languages. The variation in lexical productivity as well as the differences between the bilingual groups and between bilinguals and monolinguals were attributed to input factors with language exposure in the home and age of starting preschool as the major predictors. We conclude that, overall, the results from lexical, grammatical, and phonological acquisition in RHL support the view that having longer exclusive or uninterrupted exposure to a heritage language in early childhood is beneficial for its development across domains.