The acquisition of grammatical gender in German as an additional language: A comparison of L1 English and L1 Polish learners with and without knowledge of other gendered languages

• L1 Polish speakers outperform L1 English speakers in German gender acquisition. • No lexical gender congruency effects observed for L1 Polish learners. • Grammatical gender in L1 supports gender assignment and agreement in Ln. • Other gendered languages boost sensitivity to gender agreement violations. This study examines the acquisition of lexical and syntactic knowledge of grammatical gender in German as an additional language (Ln) among L1 Polish speakers (whose native language has grammatical gender) and L1 English speakers (whose native language lacks grammatical gender), both with and without proficiency in other non-native gendered languages (primarily Spanish). We tested learners of German as an additional language at lower to upper-intermediate proficiency levels using two tasks: a gender decision task and an acceptability judgment task with correction. Our findings provide consistent evidence for a significant advantage of L1 Polish learners over L1 English speakers in both gender assignment and gender agreement, regardless of German proficiency. Notably, L1 Polish learners do not exhibit lexical gender congruency effects, suggesting that their advantage is not due to gender overlaps between Polish and German. Instead, our results indicate that the mere presence of a grammatical gender feature in L1 facilitates Ln gender acquisition. Additionally, knowledge of other gendered languages heightens learners’ sensitivity to gender agreement violations in German. Finally, participants’ performance varies by case, showing higher judgment accuracy for definite phrases in the nominative but no defaulting to a specific gender.