scholarly journals The effect of gender agreement mismatches on intersentential anaphoric pronouns

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. e021027
Author(s):  
Eduardo Correa Soares ◽  
Mailce Borges Mota
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Contextual Features ◽  
Anaphoric Pronouns ◽  
Semantic Agreement

This article focuses on the effect of gender agreement mismatches between personal pronouns and their antecedents across sentences. In two acceptability experiments, we test whether acceptability of gender agreement violations on animated nouns may be modulated by grammatical and contextual features of the antecedents of personal pronouns. In the first experiment, we manipulated the “specificity” feature of the antecedent in order to make the antecedent refer either to the class of individuals or to a specific referent. In the second experiment, we used stereotypically male or female proper names to test whether grammatical gender mismatches between personal pronouns and bigender nouns could be attenuated. Although the first experiment showed an effect explainable purely by grammatical factors, against many theories of “semantic” agreement, the results of the second experiment suggest that both the grammatical and the contextual features of the antecedent are computed when speakers evaluate agreement relations between personal pronouns and their antecedents.

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.

scholarly journals Neutrales Rufnamengenus zwischen Grammatik und Pragmatik

2021 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-144
Author(s):  
Simone Busley ◽  
Julia Fritzinger
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Gender Variation ◽  
German Dialects ◽  
And Gender

In numerous German dialects and in Luxembourgish, female first names can take on both feminine and neuter gender agreement, thus leading to gender variation on a paradigmatical level and gender mismatches on a syntactical level. This is contradictory to canonical conceptions of gender systems and can be interpreted as a case of degrammaticalization. Here, grammatical gender has been refunctionalized as a socio-pragmatic marker which indicates the age and status of the woman referred to as well as the speaker’s relationship to her. In some varieties, regrammaticalization of gender assignment resulted in female first names always taking neuter agreements. The present article focusses on the reconstruction of the stages of degrammaticalization and regrammaticalization of gender assignment based on data of the research project “Das Anna und ihr Hund – Weibliche Rufnamen im Neutrum”. Analyses of the data indicate that personal pronouns as the targets most prone to differing agreement played a key role in this process.

scholarly journals The Processing of Spanish Article–Noun Gender Agreement by Monolingual and Bilingual Toddlers

2020 ◽  
pp. 002383092097705
Author(s):  
Monika Molnar ◽  
José Alemán Bañón ◽  
Simona Mancini ◽  
Sendy Caffarra
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Gender Agreement

We assessed monolingual Spanish and bilingual Spanish-Basque toddlers’ sensitivity to gender agreement in correct vs. incorrect Spanish noun phrases (definite article + noun), using a spontaneous preference listening paradigm. Monolingual Spanish-learning toddlers exhibited a tendency to listen longer to the grammatically correct phrases (e.g., la casa; “the house”), as opposed to the incorrect ones (e.g., * el casa). This listening preference toward correct phrases is in line with earlier results obtained from French monolingual 18-month-olds (van Heugten & Christophe, 2015). Bilingual toddlers in the current study, however, tended to listen longer to the incorrect phrases. Basque was not a source of interference in the bilingual toddler’s input as Basque does not instantiate grammatical gender agreement. Overall, our results suggest that both monolingual and bilingual toddlers can distinguish between the correct and incorrect phrases by 18 months of age; however, monolinguals and bilinguals allocate their attention differently when processing grammatically incorrect forms.

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.

Esse? Percipi? Referentiality and Subjectivity in Footfalls

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-53
Author(s):  
Julie Gaillard
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
The Body ◽  
Paradoxical Effect ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
The Stability

This article analyzes how, in Footfalls, Beckett erodes subjective certainty as well as bodily evidence by calling into question the stability of referential mechanisms. Focusing on proper names and analyzing closely how they articulate (or rather disarticulate) personal pronouns and bodily referents, it shows how their unhinging produces a de-stabilization of reality, which has the paradoxical effect of calling into question the subjective unity and permanence of the body present on stage. This article follows the various movements of this short play to trace series of shifts and glitches in the pragmatics of enunciation, and shows how these glitches call into question the identity of the enunciating ‘I’ as well as the reality of its links to the body that it refers to.

scholarly journals Longitudinal case study of child-directed speech in Slovak from the perspective of acquisition of personal pronouns

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-268
Author(s):  
Milada Walková ◽  
◽  
Alexandra Brestovičová ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Longitudinal Case Study ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Simple Regression Analysis ◽  
Simple Regression ◽  
Over Time

Objectives. Previous research has shown that the acquisition of personal pronouns benefits from input with higher amounts of stable reference. This paper aims to provide more evidence of how input is structured. The language under study is Slovak, a pro-drop language, allowing to extend the study of input to verb marking. Participants and setting. The longitudinal study follows speech directed to three children in two families from the age 1;9 to 3;0. Hypotheses. It was hypothesised that the incidence of the first and second person singular pronouns and verb marking as expressions with shifting reference grows with the child’s age while the incidence of proper names and category names as expressions with stable reference decreases with the child’s age. Statistical analysis. Occurrences of first and second person singular pronouns and verb marking as expressions with shifting reference as well as proper names and category names referring to the speaker and addressee as expressions with stable reference were found and analysed. Simple regression analysis testing was conducted on the data. Results. The results confirm the hypothesis, showing an increase in the first and second person singular pronouns and verb marking over time, at the expense of proper names and category names referring to the speaker and the addressee. Study limitations. The study is limited by the size of the sample.

scholarly journals Definiteness

Linguistics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus von Heusinger
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Definite Descriptions ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Definite Expressions

Definiteness is a semantic-pragmatic notion that is closely associated with the use of the definite article (or determiner) in languages like English, Hungarian, Hebrew, and Lakhota. The definite article can be used in different conditions: deictic, anaphoric, unique, and certain indirect uses, often also called “bridging uses.” Accordingly, there are different semantic theories of definiteness, such as the salience theory, the familiarity or identifiability theory, and the uniqueness or inclusiveness theory. Definite expressions cover personal pronouns, proper names, demonstratives, definite noun phrases, and universally quantified expressions. Noun phrases with the definite article, known as “definite descriptions,” are a key issue in semantics and analytic philosophy with respect to the interaction of reference and description in identifying an object. The research and analysis of definiteness is of great importance not only for the linguistic structure of languages but also for our understanding of reference and referring in philosophy, cognitive science, computational linguistics, and communication science.

scholarly journals Gender agreement hierarchy in common gender and epicene nouns in Spanish

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 279-292
Author(s):  
Anastasiia Ogneva
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Formal Rule ◽  
Gender System ◽  
Morphosyntactic Feature

Gender is a grammatical category defined as an abstract morphosyntactic feature of nouns reflected in characteristics of associated words (i.e. agreement) (Hockett, 1958; Corbett, 1991). Agreement is, in fact, easily established in “transparent” nouns which follow either semantic or formal rule of gender agreement. However, when we deal with ambiguous nouns regarding their gender, agreement is not straightforward. In this article we aim to pursue two main goals. Firstly, to review and briefly describe grammatical gender system in Spanish (§1) with a special focus on so called “ambiguous” or “problematic” nouns (§2). Secondly, to review agreement hierarchy theories and explore if they are applicable for Spanish epicenes and common gender nouns (§3). Discussion and conclusion remarks are presented in (§4).

The complexity of grammatical gender and language ecology

2020 ◽  
pp. 193-229
Author(s):  
Francesca Di Garbo
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
The Other ◽  
Linguistic Identity ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Language Ecology ◽  
Morphological Complexity ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
The Prestige

This chapter investigates the evolution of grammatical gender agreement, taken as an instance of paradigmatic and syntagmatic morphological complexity, in a sample of thirty-six languages, organized per sets of closely related languages with different sociolinguistic profiles. Both loss and emergence of gender agreement occur in areas of intense language contact between diverse speech communities. However, given similar contact scenarios, asymmetries in the structure of the bilingual population and/or in the prestige dynamics between the languages in contact tend to favour one development over the other. Loss of gender agreement occurs when the demographically dominant and/or more prestigious language lacks grammatical gender. Conversely, borrowing of gender agreement is favoured when the demographically dominant and/or more prestigious language has grammatical gender. Finally, the data suggest that patterns of gender marking may have important ties to the way in which speakers construe their linguistic identity in opposition to that of their neighbours.

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