Processing of pronoun gender by Dutch-Russian simultaneous bilinguals: Evidence from eye-tracking

This paper investigates the processing of pronoun gender by bilingual children. Prior research shows that Dutch–Russian bilinguals below age 7 often make gender agreement errors in Russian anaphoric pronouns, whereas monolingual children are target-like by age 4. This paper aims to establish whether the frequent production errors in the speech of bilinguals are due to lacking knowledge of grammatical gender or due to incidental performance breakdowns. The results of an eye-tracking experiment demonstrate that 5–6-year-old Dutch-Russian bilinguals are sensitive to gender cues, but are slower than Russian monolingual peers and adults in pronoun resolution. The findings support the view that bilinguals possess abstract grammatical representations, but are less efficient in gender production and processing due to competition cost in bilingualism.