Loosing grammatical gender in Dutch: The result of bilingual acquisition and/or an act of identity?

In the Dutch sociolinguistic literature it is often noted that the overgeneralization of common gender, that is, the use of the definite article de where het is required, characterizes the Dutch variety(ies) of immigrants. Recent sociolinguistic research shows that this overgeneralization also occurs in the speech of subsequent generations born in the Netherlands who acquire Dutch as one of their first languages. The aim of this paper is to discuss whether the overuse of de can exclusively be ascribed to the effects of bilingual (2L1 /child L2) acquisition. It is argued that although the overgeneralization of de constitutes a linguistic resource for every bilingual child acquirer (and even for monolingual acquirers), it only becomes meaningful in the indexing and reproducing of an (immigrant) “allochtone” identity versus the dominant (indigenous) “autochtone” one. It is used according to a set of language use norms defined by generations of that social group of speakers.