English Speakers’ Implicit Gender Concepts Influence Their Processing of French Grammatical Gender: Evidence for Semantically Mediated Cross-Linguistic Influence

Second language (L2) learners often show influence from their first language (L1) in all domains of language. This cross-linguistic influence could, in some cases, be mediated by semantics. The purpose of the present study was to test whether implicit English gender connotations affect L1 English speakers’ judgments of the L2 French gender of objects. We hypothesized that gender estimates derived from word embedding models that measure similarity of word contexts in English would affect accuracy and response time on grammatical gender (GG) decision in L2 French. L2 French learners were asked to identify the GG of French words estimated to be either congruent or incongruent with the implicit gender in English. The results showed that they were more accurate with words that were congruent with English gender connotations than words that were incongruent, suggesting that English gender connotations can influence grammatical judgments in French. Response times showed the same pattern. The results are consistent with semantics-mediated cross-linguistic influence.

Sarah Richmond’s Translation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness

Sarah Richmond’s translation makes an important contribution to Sartrean scholarship. L’Etre et le néant was first translated by Hazel Barnes in 1956 but it contained various errors. Richmond also had access to the internet and to Sartre’s French and German sources. Her edition also contains an Introduction and a ‘Notes on the translation’ section.Sartre published his work in 1943 and, unable to access all the works he cited, he often did so from memory. He also adopted certain translators’ neologisms: for example, Corbin’s translation of Heidegger’s Qu’est-ce que la métaphysique? , and when he quoted Nietzsche, he used two different translations, and he quotes Spinoza using a text by Hegel. He quotes a line from the playwright Beaumarchais without clarifying the context.Sarah Richmond deals with many of these problems and also notes that the French gender system can be problematic. Also, Sartre’s neologisms rendered finding English equivalents difficult. This is an excellent translation.

The Air of Paris

This chapter examines a popular U.S.-distributed English-language radio series produced by the FBS in Paris during the Cold War. Bonjour Mesdames (Hello Ladies) was a talk program dedicated to fashion, lifestyle, and symbolic gender repair of French and U.S. women. Hosted by Marjorie Dunton, the series invited U.S. listeners to support France as consumers, tourists, and self-fulfilling individuals. The program also gave voice to gender unconventionality among the male staff, some of whom voiced their non-conformism on the air. Rife with contradiction in its conservative framing of womanhood and Franco-French ideals of white racial essence on the one hand, and celebration of female agency and self-knowledge on the other, Bonjour Mesdames constitutes a remarkable artifact of U.S.–French gender politics.

Gender Policy Studies

This chapter maps out the international field of feminist comparative policy (FCP) and emerging gender policy studies in France in relation to each other. While French researchers have been involved with FCP projects and non-French scholars have contributed significantly to general understanding, knowledge, and theory on France, gender policy studies in France have maintained a distinctive twist, including more interdisciplinary connections, less formalization, less of an explicit feminist approach, and more use of in-depth qualitative methods. The distinct nature of French gender policy studies has underpinned its dynamism inside and outside France and has allowed French research to make significant contributions to comparative feminist policy studies at an international level. This strong comparative connection is reflected by the degree to which the research agendas of the French and international research communities converge around implementation studies and intersectionality.

The development of gender in simultaneous and successive bilingual acquisition of French – Evidence for AOA and input effects

This study investigates the effects of Age of Onset of Acquisition (AOA) and the quality and quantity of input on the longitudinal development of gender in the acquisition of French by simultaneous (2L1) and successive bilinguals (cL2). Three aspects of French gender are studied: the abstract GENDER feature, gender assignment and gender concord. The findings show that amount and quality of input correlate significantly with the rate of development of gender assignment. Group-level analyses on gender concord show that there is no significant difference between the L1 and the 2L1 groups and that error patterns are different in the 2L1 and cL2 groups. We conclude that while it is clear from the data that the development of gender assignment is primarily dependent on input conditions the question is more open with respect to gender concord. For concord a combination of AOA, the L1 acquisitional timetable, and input are important factors.

Early child second language acquisition: French gender in German children

This study investigates the acquisition of grammatical gender in French by German L1 children (age of onset of acquisition (AO) 2;8-4,0). The analysis of spontaneous production data of 24 children gathered longitudinally and a gender assignment test administered to 8 of these children at ages 6;7-8;3 and to 9 children (AO 2,11-3;8) at ages 3;2-5;1 revealed that some of them resembled L1 learners whereas others behaved like adult L2 learners. The turning point is at around AO 3;6. AO is thus a crucial factor determining successive language acquisition.

Between Work and Play: The Gendering of Formal Volunteering Practices in France

Research on women's time-use in France has hitherto focused principally on employment and domestic labour. If leisure time is discussed, it is as a residual element of the analysis and an indicator of how ‘overworked’ particular groups of women are. Moreover, little attention has been paid to how this leftover time is used by women and few studies have discussed how the French gender regime influences men's and women's participation in various possible free-time activities. The present article addresses this gap in current research by discussing one possible use of women's free time, namely formal volunteering. The ways in which the gender regime in France influences the differences in women's and men's formal volunteering practices will be analysed within the constraints of existing secondary data.

Predictability in French gender attribution: A corpus analysis

This article presents a corpus analysis designed to determine the extent to which noun endings in French are reliable predictors of grammatical gender. A corpus of 9,961 nouns appearing in Le Robert Junior Illustré was analysed according to noun endings, which were operationalised as orthographic representations of rhymes, which consist of either a vowel sound (i.e., a nucleus) in the case of vocalic endings or a vowel-plus-consonant blend (i.e., a nucleus and a coda) in the case of consonantal endings. The analysis classified noun endings as reliably masculine, reliably feminine, or ambiguous, by considering as reliable predictors of grammatical gender any noun ending that predicts the gender of least 90 per cent of all nouns in the corpus with that ending. Results reveal that 81 per cent of all feminine nouns and 80 per cent of all masculine nouns in the corpus are rule governed, having endings that systematically predict their gender. These findings, at odds with traditional grammars, are discussed in terms of their pedagogical implications.