scholarly journals Sex and Agreement

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-55
Author(s):  
Mark Janse
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Anaphoric Pronouns ◽  
Word Classes

This paper is about the relation between natural and grammatical gender in Greek and the ways in which the twain are matched or mismatched. A variety of topics is discussed, including the relation between grammatical gender and declension, the resolution of gender clashes in epicene nouns and the marking of natural gender in common nouns. Particular attention is given to the gendering of neuter diminutives with male or female referents. Age and particular aspects of “maleness” or “femaleness” are shown to be major determinants in triggering male or female instead of neuter agreement patterns, especially on anaphoric pronouns, but occasionally also on other word classes such as predicative adjectives and participles.

The starting point

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Loporcaro
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
European Perspective ◽  
System P ◽  
Inherent Feature ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
Gender System

The chapter describes the three-gender system of Latin, with a particular focus on the neuter gender: unlike the masculine and feminine, this was not only assigned to nouns as an inherent feature, and used to specify words from other word classes agreeing with those nouns, but it also served default functions in a range of contexts. Arguably, this property was inherited from (late) Proto-Indo-European, as was the three-way gender system itself, in which the neuter seems to have contrasted with masculine/feminine in terms of (in)animacy. Simplification of the gender system in most of Romance is placed in the broader Indo-European perspective, showing that in most branches the gender contrasts have reduced via a drift that reaches its endpoint in the eradication of grammatical gender in, for example Armenian or Farsi. Within this picture, some Romance dialects apparently deviate, showing complexification rather than simplification of the gender system.

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 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.

Accuracy of Four Language Analysis Procedures Performed Automatically

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven H. Long ◽  
Ron W. Channell
Keyword(s):  
Automatic Identification ◽  
Published Data ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Productivity Data ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
Human Coder ◽  
Impaired Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Skills

Most software for language analysis has relied on an interaction between the metalinguistic skills of a human coder and the calculating ability of the machine to produce reliable results. However, probabilistic parsing algorithms are now capable of highly accurate and completely automatic identification of grammatical word classes. The program Computerized Profiling combines a probabilistic parser with modules customized to produce four clinical grammatical analyses: MLU, LARSP, IPSyn, and DSS. The accuracy of these analyses was assessed on 69 language samples from typically developing, speech-impaired, and language-impaired children, 2 years 6 months to 7 years 10 months. Values obtained with human coding and by the software alone were compared. Results for all four analyses produced automatically were comparable to published data on the manual interrater reliability of these procedures. Clinical decisions based on cutoff scores and productivity data were little affected by the use of automatic rather than human-generated analyses. These findings bode well for future clinical and research use of automatic language analysis software.

On the Semantic Content of Grammatical Gender and Its Impact on the Representation of Human Referents

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 367-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Irmen ◽  
Julia Kurovskaja
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Differential Effects ◽  
Gender Information ◽  
Masculine Role ◽  
Feminine Role ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Open Question

Grammatical gender has been shown to provide natural gender information about human referents. However, due to formal and conceptual differences between masculine and feminine forms, it remains an open question whether these gender categories influence the processing of person information to the same degree. Experiment 1 compared the semantic content of masculine and feminine grammatical gender by combining masculine and feminine role names with either gender congruent or incongruent referents (e.g., Dieser Lehrer [masc.]/Diese Lehrerin [fem.] ist mein Mann/meine Frau; This teacher is my husband/my wife). Participants rated sentences in terms of correctness and customariness. In Experiment 2, in addition to ratings reading times were recorded to assess processing more directly. Both experiments were run in German. Sentences with grammatically feminine role names and gender incongruent referents were rated as less correct and less customary than those with masculine forms and incongruent referents. Combining a masculine role name with an incongruent referent slowed down reading to a greater extent than combining a feminine role name with an incongruent referent. Results thus specify the differential effects of masculine and feminine grammatical gender in denoting human referents.

Individual differences predict ERP signatures of second language learning of novel grammatical rules

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily S Nichols ◽  
Marc F Joanisse
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
First Language ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Grammatical Rule ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Anterior Negativity

We investigated the extent to which second-language (L2) learning is influenced by the similarity of grammatical features in one’s first language (L1). We used event-related potentials to identify neural signatures of a novel grammatical rule - grammatical gender - in L1 English speakers. Of interest was whether individual differences in L2 proficiency and age of acquisition (AoA) influenced these effects. L2 and native speakers of French read French sentences that were grammatically correct, or contained either a grammatical gender or word order violation. Proficiency and AoA predicted Left Anterior Negativity amplitude, with structure violations driving the proficiency effect and gender violations driving the AoA effect. Proficiency, group, and AoA predicted P600 amplitude for gender violations but not structure violations. Different effects of grammatical gender and structure violations indicate that L2 speakers engage novel grammatical processes differently from L1 speakers and that this varies appreciably based on both AoA and proficiency.

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