On the use of the grammatical gender of anaphoric pronouns in German. A comparison between Finns and Germans

1999 ◽  
Vol 18 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 123-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Irmen ◽  
Jochen Knoll
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Gender Information ◽  
Anaphoric Pronouns ◽  
Syntactic Information ◽  
Second Language Speech Production ◽  
Pronominal Gender

Summary: The paper investigates the processing of grammatical gender in German. Finnish subjects regularly show problems in using pronominal gender in English or German second-language speech production. This may be due to the fact that there is no grammatical gender in Finnish. Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that Finns are in general unable to use the information contained in the grammatical gender of personal pronouns. The results show that Germans use both semantic and syntactic information in the processing of personal pronouns while Finns apparently only use semantic gender information. This simplified processing of gender leads to a greater tendency to make mistakes when using German as a foreign language.

Nominal and pronominal gender: Putting Greenberg’s Universal 43 to the test

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 525-574
Author(s):  
Thomas Berg
Keyword(s):  
Strong Correlation ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Small Set ◽  
Pronominal Gender ◽  
Processing Difficulty

AbstractThe aim of this study is to scrutinize Greenberg’s Universal 43, which predicts pronominal gender in the presence of nominal gender. On the basis of a sample of 500 gendered and ungendered languages, gender marking is examined in nouns, personal pronouns, possessors and possessums. Ungendered languages outnumber gendered languages. Eight out of 12 logically possible gender constellations are attested in the database. In keeping with Greenberg, languages with nominal gender show a strong bias towards gendered pronouns. There is a strong correlation between gendered personal pronouns and gendered possessors. Gendered possessums are cross-linguistically uncommon. The empirical patterns are brought about by a small set of theoretical principles. Gender is independently specified for each category. Gender marking is an effort. The strength of the correlation depends on the “distance” between two given gender sites. Coding gender twice in the same time frame creates a processing difficulty. Natural and grammatical gender conspire to generate the gender sensitivity of individual categories.

The Word Unit in Second Language Speech Production and Perception

1994 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Emil Flege ◽  
Murray J. Munro
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Speech Acquisition ◽  
Language Identity ◽  
Phonetic Errors ◽  
Early Learners ◽  
Second Language Speech Production ◽  
Entire Word

The purpose of this study, which focused on the wordtacoas spoken in Spanish and English, was to explore the word as a unit in second language (L2) speech acquisition. As expected, acoustic measurements revealed that Spanish and English monolinguals' renditions oftacodiffered systematically. It was also shown that the extent to which Spanish/English bilinguals approximated English phonetic norms for any one segment oftacowas correlated with their approximation for the other three segments, and that early learners differentiated Spanish versus Englishtacomore than did late learners. It also appeared that the bilinguals produced /t/ with less English-like voice onset time (VOT) values in Englishtacothan in other English words without a cognate in Spanish. In a perception experiment, listeners were able to identify the native language of Spanish and English monolinguals on the basis of their production oftaco. The listeners heard larger differences between Spanish and Englishtacotokens spoken by early than late learners of English L2. Two additional perception experiments assessed further the phonetic dimensions that listeners use to determine language identity and to gauge bilinguals' speech production accuracy. Listeners assigned to language identification and goodness rating tasks responded to acoustic information distributed over all four segments intaco, although the VOT of the word-initial /t/ appeared to be the single most important phonetic dimension. Taken together, the results of this study suggest that (a) bilinguals' accuracy in producing the various segments of a second language word may be interrelated and (b) in judging L2 speech, listeners respond to phonetic errors distributed over the entire word.

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