The comparative investigation of the acquisition of gender in Spanish by early and late
bilinguals of different language combinations is highly debated and crucial as the phenomenon
of gender involves grammatical features that differ in all three languages under investigation.
Against this background both early and late bilinguals face an arduous learning task which
differs in complexity. Couched within a generative framework the empirical study focuses on
257 participants with different levels of proficiency in Spanish ranging from low to advanced
and through a series of tests aims to discover which extra-linguistic and intra-linguistic
factors act as triggers for non-native outcomes in adult heritage speakers and L2 learners. The
observed morphological variability is argued not to stem from a representational (i.e.
syntactic) deficit but rather from a mapping problem in L2 learners and heritage speakers.
Successful attainment in terms of gender is possible but dependent on the interplay between
various extralinguistic and linguistic factors.
