Variation in gender assignment strategies in mixed Spanish-Chinese noun phrases: Insights from a multilingual community in Barcelona

Aims and objectives: This study investigates gender assignment strategies in mixed Spanish-Chinese noun phrases (NPs) among early Spanish-Chinese bilinguals in Barcelona, Spain. It explores whether bilinguals rely on a default masculine or use the gender of Spanish translation equivalents across production and comprehension tasks.
Design/methodology/approach: A multitask approach was employed, including a director-matcher task, a sentence repetition task, and a two-alternative forced-choice judgment task. Forty-two early sequential Spanish-Chinese bilinguals participated in the study.
Data and analysis: The analysis focused on the use of masculine and feminine Spanish determiners with Chinese nouns, categorized according to the gender of their Spanish translation equivalents. One-way repeated analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to examine whether gender choices significantly differed when Chinese nouns, either with feminine or masculine Spanish equivalents, were paired with different Spanish determiners in each task. Paired-samples t-tests and nonparametric Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were conducted to determine whether masculine gender is significantly preferred over feminine gender in the three tasks.
Findings/conclusions: Results revealed task-dependent variability in gender assignment. In production, bilinguals used both masculine and feminine determiners for Chinese nouns with feminine equivalents, reflecting both default masculine and translation equivalent strategies. For nouns with masculine equivalents, masculine determiners predominated. In comprehension, participants favored the translation equivalent strategy, using determiners that matched the gender of Spanish translation equivalents.
Originality: This study is the first to examine gender assignment in mixed Spanish-Chinese NPs.
Significance/implications: The study highlights the flexible nature of bilingual language processing, demonstrating that gender assignment strategies can change in response to different task demands. It emphasizes the importance of capturing the range of bilingual behaviors in both production and comprehension.
Limitations and future research: The study focuses on a specific bilingual community, limiting generalizability. Future studies should examine gender assignment over time and in other Spanish-Chinese bilingual populations with different sociolinguistic backgrounds.
© The Author(s) 2025.