The Gender Incongruency Effect in L3 Swedish due to Imperfect Gender Acquisition in L2 German

Abstract 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.