Lexical Co-Activation Beyond Nouns: Cognate, Gender, and L2 Proficiency Effects on Pronoun Production in the L1

Aims and Objectives: We investigate whether the cognate facilitation and gender congruency effects observed in previous bilingualism research extend to pronoun production. The aim is to examine these effects in bilinguals’ L1 as a function of L2 proficiency. Design/Methodology/Approach: Fifty late, unbalanced Polish-German bilinguals completed a pronoun production task, in which they produced third-person singular pronouns in their L1 Polish in response to visually presented Polish bare nouns. The stimulus set included 132 inanimate nouns, manipulated for cognateness and cross-linguistic gender congruency. Participants also completed a control gender assignment task and a background questionnaire. L2 proficiency was measured using the Dialang test. Data and Analysis: We analysed participants’ response times in L1 Polish using linear mixed-effects models. Trials involving nouns with unknown gender in L2 German were excluded from the analysis. Findings/Conclusions: Pronoun production in bilinguals’ L1 was not affected by cognateness with the L2. However, we found a significant gender congruency effect in the L1, with faster responses to nouns congruent in gender with L2 German than to incongruent ones. This effect was limited to masculine and feminine nouns and decreased with increasing L2 proficiency. In addition, we observed a main effect of gender, with facilitated pronoun production for the feminine gender relative to the masculine and neuter genders. Originality: The study is the first to explore whether lexical cognate and gender effects in bilingual language production extend beyond nouns to agreeing elements such as pronouns. It also contributes to the underexplored areas of bilinguals’ L1 production and L2 effects on L1. Significance/Implications: The findings provide novel evidence that pronoun production depends on the lexico-syntactic, but not the formal, properties of the antecedent noun. Moreover, the results demonstrate stronger cross-language activation in the L1 at lower L2 proficiency levels, offering support for parasitic models of the bilingual mental lexicon.