Linguistic Transfer vs. Interference: Social Variables and Linguistic Attitudes Predicting Nonstandard Gender Agreement Production in Basque Spanish

Spanish and Basque are two languages in contact in the Basque Country, linguistically influencing each other. Probably due to Basque not producing gender agreement (GA), nonstandard gender agreement (N‐SGA) production is found in the Spanish spoken in the Basque Country (BAC Spanish). Through the analysis of 73 sociolinguistic interviews in BAC Spanish, the impact of social factors and linguistic attitudes is explored as predictors of N‐SGA production. While linguistic attitudes do not impact this production, N‐SGA is present in all participants, and the rates of N‐SGA production are statistically higher among young participants (contradicting prior beliefs) and those with lower levels of education. Therefore, this article claims that N‐SGA is part of all BAC Spanish speakers, a case of linguistic transfer, and that it has reached different levels of universalization, divided into production and attitudes, due to the mismatch observed between production data and attitudes/perceptions.