• The Effects of Attrition on Grammatical Gender: A View from North American Icelandic 

      Björnsdottir, Sigridur Mjoll; Westergaard, Marit; Lohndal, Terje (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2020-03-18)
      Heritage grammars have been argued to differ with respect to whether they are an instantiation of divergent attainment or attrition. Attrition and divergent attainment are not mutually exclusive and can even co-exist with respect to the same or different grammatical phenomena, but teasing these apart requires longitudinal studies or carefully selected cross-sectional data (Montrul, 2008; 2016; ...
    • En splyv eller et splyv? Tilordning av grammatisk genus til nonord-substantiv i norsk 

      Urek, Olga; Lohndal, Terje; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2022-05-12)
      Tradisjonelt har det norske genussystemet blitt karakterisert som lite transparent. Et viktig spørsmål er om språkbrukere likevel kan være sensitive til visse egenskaper ved substantiver og bruker disse produktivt når de tildeler genus til ukjente ord. I denne artikkelen undersøker vi eksperimentelt språkbrukeres sensitivitet til fonologiske egenskaper som vi har identifisert gjennom korpusundersøkelser. ...
    • En splyv eller et splyv? Tilordning av grammatisk genus til pseudosubstantiv i norsk 

      Urek, Olga; Lohndal, Terje; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2022-05-12)
      Tradisjonelt har det norske genussystemet blitt karakterisert som lite transparent. Et viktig spørsmål er om språkbrukere likevel kan være sensitive til visse egenskaper ved substantiver og bruker disse produktivt når de tildeler genus til ukjente ord. I denne artikkelen undersøker vi eksperimentelt språkbrukeres sensitivitet til fonologiske egenskaper som vi har identifisert gjennom korpusundersøkelser. ...
    • English as a Mixed V2 Grammar: Synchronic Word Order Inconsistencies from the Perspective of First Language Acquisition 

      Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2007)
      This paper discusses some word order inconsistencies found in present-day English and argues that these may be explained by natural processes in first language acquisition. English is usually assumed to have lost its verb-second (V2) properties in the Middle English period, but the paper argues that English should be considered a mixed V2 grammar, as subject-auxiliary inversion is still a syntactic ...
    • Exploring the role of cognitive control in syntactic processing: Evidence from cross-language priming in bilingual children 

      Wolleb, Anna; Sorace, Antonella; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2017-07-10)
      In this paper, we explore the role of cognition in bilingual syntactic processing by employing a structural priming paradigm. A group of Norwegian-English bilingual children and an age-matched group of Norwegian monolingual children were tested in a priming task that included both a within-language and a between-language priming condition. Results show that the priming effect between-language was ...
    • Flaskehalshypotesen: Syntaks og morfologiblant norske andrespråksinnlærere avengelsk 

      Jensen, Isabel Nadine; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2021-07-02)
      Flaskehalshypotesen (‘Bottleneck Hypothesis’, Slabakova 2008, 2013) beskriver og forklarer hva som er vanskelig og hva som er enkelt i andrespråkstilegnelse. Formålet med dette er å forstå prosessen knyttet til å lære seg et nytt språk etter førstespråket. Hypotesen argumenterer for at det er morfologiske konstruksjoner som er mest utfordrende å tilegne seg. Til sammenligning skal konstruksjoner som ...
    • Gender Change in Norwegian Dialects: Comprehension is affected before Production 

      Lundquist, Bjørn; Rodina, Yulia; Sekerina, Irina; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2016-10-04)
      This article investigates language variation and change in the grammatical gender system of Norwegian, where feminine gender agreement is in the process of disappearing in some Northern Norwegian dialects. Speakers of the Tromsø ( N = 46) and Sortland ( N = 54) dialects participated in a Visual Word experiment. The task examined whether they used indefinite articles ( en , e ...
    • Generative Approaches to Second Language (L2) Acquisition and Advanced L2 Proficiency 

      Rothman, Jason; Bayram, Fatih; Kupisch, Tanja; Lohndal, Terje; Westergaard, Marit (Chapter; Bokkapittel, 2018-06-22)
      Child first language acquisition (L1A) and adult second language acquisition (SLA) have observably different outcomes. Considering how distinct the two acquisition contexts often are, divergence is perhaps not surprising. Only adults acquiring a second language (L2) (i) are typically not surrounded by high quantities of native input, (ii) receive and must filter through significant amounts of ...
    • Grammatical Gender and Declension Class in Language Change: A Study of the Loss of Feminine Gender in Norwegian 

      Rodina, Yulia; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2021-07-28)
      In this paper, we investigate an ongoing change in the grammatical gender system of Norwegian. Previous research has shown that the feminine form of the indefinite article is quickly disappearing from several dialects, which has led to claims that the feminine gender is being lost from the language. We have carried out a study of the status of the feminine in possessives across five age groups of ...
    • Grammatical Gender in American Norwegian Heritage Language: Stability or Attrition? 

      Lohndal, Terje; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2016-03-16)
      This paper investigates possible attrition/change in the gender system of Norwegian heritage language spoken in America. Based on data from 50 speakers in the Corpus of American Norwegian Speech (CANS), we show that the three-gender system is to some extent retained, although considerable overgeneralization of the masculine (the most frequent gender) is attested. This affects both feminine and ...
    • Grammatical gender in bilingual Norwegian-Russian Acquisition: The role of input and transparency 

      Rodina, Yulia; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2015-09-18)
      This paper investigates the role of parental input and transparency in the acquisition of two different gender systems, Norwegian and Russian, by bilingual children living in Norway. While gender in Russian is generally predictable from the morphophonological shape of the noun (with some exceptions), gender assignment in Norwegian is opaque. An experimental production study was carried out with two ...
    • Grammatical gender in Norwegian: Language acquisition and language change 

      Rodina, Yulia; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2015-05-28)
      Based on data from two experimental studies, this paper investigates the production of gender in a Norwegian dialect (Tromsø) by several groups of child and adult speakers. The findings show that gender is late acquired (around age 7) and, furthermore, that there are considerable differences between the groups, indicating an ongoing historical change that involves the loss of feminine gender ...
    • Grammatical Gender: Acquisition, Attrition, and Change 

      Lohndal, Terje; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2021-02-10)
      This paper discusses grammatical gender in Norwegian by bringing together data from first language acquisition, Norwegian heritage language, and dialect change. In all these contexts, gender is often claimed to be a vulnerable category, arguably due to the relative non-transparency of gender assignment. Furthermore, the feminine gender is in the process of being lost in many Norwegian dialects, as ...
    • Heritage language acquisition: What it reveals and why it is important for formal linguistic theories 

      Lohndal, Terje; Rothman, Jason; Kupisch, Tanja; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2019-08-30)
      This paper discusses the interplay between acquisition and theory construction. It endeavors to show how a more direct and crucially bi‐directional relationship between formal linguistic theory and the study of heritage language bilingualism can provide mutual benefit. It will be argued that data from acquisition—not exclusively but indeed especially from heritage language bilingualism—provide windows ...
    • Hvor mange genus er det i Tromsødialekten? 

      Westergaard, Marit; Rodina, Yulia (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2016)
      Tradisjonelt har tromsø-dialekten tre genus; maskulinum, femininum og nøytrum. i denne artikkelen presenterer vi resultater fra to eksperimentelle studier som kan tyde på at femininum er i ferd med å forsvinne, slik at dialekten endrer seg til et to-genussystem med felleskjønn og intetkjønn. Mens voksne bruker den ubestemte artikkelen ei så å si alltid ved femininumsord, ...
    • Hvor mange genus er det i Trondheims-dialekten? 

      Busterud, Guro; Lohndal, Terje; Rodina, Yulia; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2020)
      Trondheims-dialekten har tradisjonelt tre grammatiske kjønn: hankjønn, hunkjønn, og intetkjønn. Denne artikkelen presenterer resultater fra to eksperimenter som viser at hunkjønn står svakere i denne dialekten enn tidligere antatt. Resultatene tyder på at dialekten er i ferd med å utvikle et togenussystem, der den ubestemte artikkelen for hunkjønn og hankjønn har falt sammen. Vi ser tydelige forskjeller ...
    • The interaction of input and UG in the acquisition of verb movement in a dialect of Norwegian 

      Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel, 2004)
      In this paper it is argued that a principle of information structure provided by Universal Grammar (UG) may interact with input in the acquisition of word order. In a study which investigates three children from the age of approximately 1;9 to 3 acquiring a Northern dialect of Norwegian, it has previously been shown that word order patterns in certain types of wh-questions which are sensitive to ...
    • Interactions between lexical and syntactic L1-L2 overlap: Effects of gender congruency on L2 sentence processing in L1 Spanish-L2 German speakers 

      Klassen, Rachel; Kolb, Nadine; Hopp, Holger; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2022-12-01)
      Bringing together lines of research from sentence processing and lexical access, this empirical study investigates the interplay between lexical (grammatical gender) and syntactic (word order) cross-linguistic overlap in L2 German. Eighty-six L1 Spanish-L2 German and thirty-six monolingual German adults completed a German self-paced reading task with noun phrases (NPs) manipulated by L1-L2 gender ...
    • Internal and External Factors in Heritage Language Acquisition: Evidence from Heritage Russian in Israel, Germany, Norway, Latvia and the UK 

      Rodina, Yulia; Kupisch, Tanja; Meir, Natalia; Mitrofanova, Natalia; Urek, Olga; Westergaard, Marit (Journal article; Tidsskriftartikkel; Peer reviewed, 2020-03-11)
      In this paper, we consider elicited production data (real and nonce words tasks) from five different studies on the acquisition of grammatical gender in Heritage Russian, comparing children growing up in Germany, Israel, Norway, Latvia, and the United Kingdom. The children grow up in diverse heritage language backgrounds, ranging from small groups (in Norway) to large communities (in Latvia). ...
    • Ka korpuse fortæll? Om ordstilling i hv-spørsmål i norske dialekter 

      Vangsnes, Øystein Alexander; Westergaard, Marit (Chapter; Bokkapittel, 2014)
      I standardspråklig norsk finnes en regel som gjerne blir kalt V2. Den krever at det finitte verbet alltid står på andreplass i setninga, som for eksempel i <I>Studentene drikker øl, Hva drikker studentene</I>? og <I>Vanligvis drikker studentene øl</I>. I denne artikkelen tar vi for oss et brudd på V2-regelen som er utbredt i mange norske dialekter, nemlig ikke-V2 i <I>hv</I>-spørsmål, slik som i ...