THE PROCESSING OF GENDER AGREEMENT IN MONOLINGUAL AND HERITAGE SPEAKERS OF SPANISH By DÁMARIS MAYANS RAMÓN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2018 © 2018 Dámaris Mayans Ramón Para mi madre, mi padre y el Arturo ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deepest gratitude would first go to my advisor Dr. Valdés Kroff for his continuous help and for sharing his knowledge and passion for psycholinguistics with me. I also want to express my gratefulness to Dr. De Prada Pérez for her guidance and outstanding encouragement during my first years in the doctoral program. Besides my advisors, I would like to thank the rest of my committee members, Dr. Kaan and Dr. Blondeau, for their support throughout my dissertation work and for being such outstanding professors in their respective fields. My sincere thanks also go to Dr. Lord for being part of my committee when I needed her and for her complete support from the very beginning of the Ph.D. program. I want to express my gratitude to Dr. Ana Margarita Haché, Rafaela Carrasco, Dr. Francisco Cruz and Teresa Ureña from Centro de Desarrollo Curricular and the Spanish department from Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM) for providing me with the help and the facilities to collect my data in the Dominican Republic. Les agradezco de corazón por el gran apoyo que me concedieron. Special thanks to Dr. Syed Rahman who has helped me with the statistical analysis. Thanks for your knowledge, patience and good heart. Also, to my fellow graduate student Carolyn Bradley who patiently edited my dissertation and always had words of encouragement during this arduous process. I do not have words to express how thankful I am to have shared this journey with Osmer Balam, thanks for your unconditional support and incessant help with all my projects. I also want to deeply thank Francesc Morales for being always there for anything I needed, and Clara Sotelo and Kathy Navajas for their constant care and love. My immense appreciation for those graduate fellows who substituted my classes when I needed it most. I cannot forget to thank Tania Fleming, the office manager at the Spanish and 4 Portuguese department, for her extraordinary work and just for being always willing to help with anything. Also, I want to thank my favorite teaching coordinators Victor Jordán, Su Ar Lee, Susana Braylan and Clara Sotelo for being outstanding mentors. Besides, I want to thank Jennifer Wooten for her guidance, especially during the job search process. I want to acknowledge the effort and care that all Gators for Equal Opportunity family invested in our community project, in Alachua city and Gainesville. I want to thank everyone who gave their time and helped to make a difference: Jaime and Maria Eugenia Zelaya, Lyndsey Wright, Zhen XU, Yiyan Zeng, Wanqi Liu, Shengrui Khan, Archangela Dias, Josefina Almanza, Matthew Morse, Sally Leinthal-Rist, Emmalyn Deak, Katherine Barko-Alva, Dr. Wooten, Dr. Coady and Dr. de Jong. Also, our amazing faculty advisors Kathy Navajas and Clara Sotelo. Because my Cronhs´s disease has been part of my Ph.D. journey, I want to thank the remarkable individuals that were by my side in the worst times. I am immensely thankful for Michael Claudio, Osmer Balam, Kathy Navajas, Elisabet Liminyana, Ana de Prada Pérez, Clara Sotelo, Alberto Escudero and Jaime and Maria Eugenia Zelaya. Also, my fellow graduate students, co-workers, professor and friends who showed me all the love when I most needed it: Nehemie Joseph, Filipe Da Silva, Gerlanda Valencia, Enrique Ibañez, Yanina Becco, Carlos Bertoglio, Andrea Villa, Antonio Cardentey, Dr. Lord, Dr. Wind Cowles, Souad Kehder, Corina Liu, Layla Mieses, Henry Robinson, and Ana Hellmuth. Furthermore, I need to thank Dr. Padilla and her medical team at the infirmary, and Dr. Glover, my GI doctor, who was always available for me. I also want to thank the Disability Resource Center at UF and Jim Faubel for the help and guidance. I am immensely grateful for all the people who directly or indirectly made this possible, such as my dear friends in Gainesville, Jacksonville, Spain or any other parts of the world: 5 Alberto Escudero, Filipe Da Silva, Elisabet Liminyana, Jimena Ojeda, Mercedes Tejera, Caridad Jiménez, Corina Liu, Leandro Santos, Anna Helmuth, Layla Mieses, Henry Robinson, Amy and Ruben Laureano, Kristen Hughes, Anum Tariq, Lydia Burnao, Marisa Delgado, Paula Gonzalez, Veronica Davila, Viviana Davila, Olga Ellis, Antonio Cardentey. Also, all my friends back in Illinois, particularly, Marisol Garrido, Lauren Hetrovicz, Antonio Perez Nuñez and Karima Belghiti who supported and have been supporting me in every step, not only academically but also personally. I cannot be grateful enough for my dearest family, mis padres, Enrique Mayans Lacruz y Ángeles Ramón Cascales, mi hermano, Arturo, mi tía, Nati, mis tíos Juanma y Manu y mis primos, Gabriel y Nereida. Mis abuelos Paco y Carmen. Mi familia postiza Margarita Espino, Ignacio Balsalobre, Sandra y Tamara. Especialmente agradecer a mis padres y a mi hermano por lidiar conmigo en los peores momentos y también por apoyarme siempre y en cada decisión. También, quiero agradecer de corazón a mi tío Juanma por siempre creer en mí. Last but not less, I want to thank with all my heart to Kenneth Harris for being my beloved partner during all this process. Thanks for your support, love and patience during this Ph.D. craziness and, more importantly, thanks for always making me laugh. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 LIST OF TABLES .........................................................................................................................10 LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................................12 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................13 ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................16 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................18 1.1 Heritage Speakers and Heritage Languages .....................................................................18 1.2 Grammatical gender ..........................................................................................................20 1.3 Overview of Research Questions and Hypothesis ............................................................22 1.4 Dissertation structure ........................................................................................................26 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................................................27 2.1 Heritage Speakers of Spanish ...........................................................................................27 2.3 Gender Assignment and Gender Agreement ....................................................................34 2.4 Gender in Psycholinguistic Models of Lexical Access and Word Production .................41 2.5 Studies on Grammatical Gender .......................................................................................52 2.6 Gender Agreement with Noun Morphology .....................................................................52 2.6.1 Native Speakers ......................................................................................................52 2.6.2 Bilingual Speakers ..................................................................................................61 2.7 Gender Processing with Noun Frequency ........................................................................65 2.7.1 Native Speakers ......................................................................................................65 2.7.2 In Bilingual Speakers .............................................................................................66 Frequency effects in retrieval processing: Frequency-Lag Hypothesis ...................66 3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODOLOGY ..........................................................71 3.1 Current Study and Research Questions ............................................................................71 3.1.1 Effect of Noun Morphology in Gender Access in Monolingual and HSs of Spanish .........................................................................................................................71 3.1.2 Frequency Effects on Gender Access in Monolingual and HSs of Spanish ...........76 3.2 Methods ............................................................................................................................78 3.2.1 LEAP-Q and Language Background Questionnaire ..............................................78 3.2.2 Standard Proficiency Measures: DELE, MELICET and MINT ............................79 3.2.3 Vocabulary Test Experiment 2 ...............................................................................80 3.2.4. Participants ............................................................................................................80 7 3.3 Materials and Design ........................................................................................................85