This paper investigates possible attrition/change in the gender system of Norwegian heritage language spoken in America. Based on data from 50 speakers in the Corpus of American Norwegian Speech (CANS), we show that the three-gender system is to some extent retained, although considerable overgeneralization of the masculine (the most frequent gender) is attested. This affects both feminine and neuter gender forms, while declension class markers such as the definite suffix remain unaffected. We argue that the gender category is vulnerable due to the lack of transparency of gender assignment in Norwegian. Furthermore, unlike incomplete acquisition, which may result in a somewhat different or reduced gender system, attrition is more likely to lead to general erosion, eventually leading to complete loss of gender. 1525 frontpsychol Frontiers in Psychology Front Psychol Frontiers Media SA PMC4793186 4793186 4793186 27014151 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00344 Grammatical Gender in American Norwegian Heritage Language: Stability or Attrition? The historical reason for this is that Bokmål is a development of the Danish written standard, and in Danish (as well as in Swedish and Dutch) the gender system has been reduced from one that distinguished three genders to one that generally only has two. The three-gender system has generally been retained in spoken Norwegian, in virtually all dialects (except Bergen and parts of Oslo). However, some recent studies indicate that a change from a three-gender system to a two-gender system is underway in the Tromsø dialect (Rodina and Westergaard, 2015a ). More about this below. Given somewhat reduced input, heritage speakers are typically exposed to fewer cues for gender assignment than children learning non-heritage Russian. Polinsky ( 1997 This region has had extensive language contact with Saami and Kven/Finnish, languages which do not have grammatical gender. This language contact is argued to have caused a reduction of the gender system of the Norwegian spoken in this area from three to two (C and N). At the same time the declension system is intact. This means that while the feminine indefinite article ei “a. f ” is virtually non-existent in the data, the corresponding definite suffix still has the – a ending typical of F nouns. This is illustrated in (3). (3) a. en bok - boka a. c book. c - book. f.def This pattern is identical to what Lødrup ( 2011 ) found for Oslo speech (cf. (31) Hypotheses Gender is vulnerable in American Norwegian Gender forms and declensional suffixes behave differently F is more vulnerable than N due to syncretism with M (32) Predictions Speakers will overgeneralize M gender forms Declensional suffixes will be retained F will be affected first; i.e., (some speakers of) American Norwegian will have a two-gender system (common and neuter) In the results section Gender Marking on the Indefinite Article–Overall Results, we saw that all the three genders are represented in the corpus, and the total numbers give the impression of a fairly stable system. The end result of this will presumably be a complete breakdown of gender altogether; i.e., a system without gender distinctions. It is possible that this is already attested in the production of the nine speakers in Group 3, who produce only masculine forms. We would like to speculate about the reasons for this development; i.e., (1) why is grammatical gender vulnerable in heritage language, (2) why are declension class suffixes stable, and (3) why do we not see evidence of a two-gender system the way we predicted? Our findings partly correspond to what has been found in acquisition and change, i.e., proper gender forms such as the indefinite article are late acquired and prone to change, while the declensional suffixes are early acquired and remarkably stable. But we do not find a two-gender system (common and neuter), which is attested in some children and which is also the result of changes that have taken place in certain varieties of Norwegian. An obvious answer to the first question corresponds to the general account for the late acquisition of gender in Norwegian, viz. the non-transparency of gender assignment. If this is the case, then we may speculate on a possible difference between incomplete acquisition and attrition with respect to gender: While the former process typically results in a systematic reduction in the gender system (e.g., from three to two genders), the latter affects an existing system in terms of erosion across the board. That is, incomplete acquisition is the cause of a system that is different from the non-heritage variety (and typically reduced), while the result of attrition is an unsystematic breakdown of the system, eventually leading to total loss of grammatical gender. Some support for our speculation may be found in Schmid's ( 2002 ) important work on German Jews in the United States, who had generally also experienced a severe reduction in the use of their L1 over an extended period of time: The occasional mistakes found in gender assignment in the data did not constitute any rule-based reduction in the gender system of their German 6 . We then turn to the second question, why declensional suffixes are stable in heritage language. The early acquisition of declensional suffixes is generally accounted for by their high frequency and the fact that they are prosodically favored by young children (Anderssen, 2006 ) 7 . Group 1, Gender system unclear; Group 2, Possibly a three-gender system; Group 3, Masculine forms only; Group 4, Mixture of gender forms. Footnotes 1 We indicate gender on the noun itself in parenthesis and gender agreement on other targets after a period. 2 There is only one exception to this, the adjective liten ∕ lita ∕ lite “small/little,” which distinguishes between all three genders. This is illustrated in (i). (i) en liten gutt a. m small. m boy “a small boy” ei lita jente a. f small. f girl “a small girl” et lite hus a. n small.