New JESLA article: Gudmestad & Edmonds (2024)

The catalyst for the current study is the concern raised by various researchers in the field of second language acquisition about the monolingual bias, which refers to the tradition of comparing learner language to native-speaker norms. We contribute to this discussion by focusing on the issue of language gains. Specifically, we consider how progress in additional-language learning can be assessed without using monolinguals as a baseline measure for language acquisition. As a proof of concept to explore this question, we investigate the development of grammatical gender marking in noun-modifier pairs in additional-language Spanish. We first draw on descriptive accounts of gender marking in language to identify two learnability issues associated with learning a grammatical gender system in another language. We then propose that the construct of consistency, operationalized as the use of a single modifier gender with a particular noun, can serve as a benchmark for evaluating language gains for each learnability issue. Following the empirical analyses showing that learners became more consistent in gender marking over time, we discuss the new knowledge about gender marking in additional languages that analyses of consistency can offer and we reflect on other possible baselines that could be considered in future research.