Sublexical and lexical influences on gender assignment in French

The role of word form in gender processing during lexical access: A theoretical review and novel proposal in language comprehension

In contrast to language production, there are few comprehension models of the representation and use of grammatical gender in long-term memory. To bridge this gap, we conducted a systematic review of empirical studies on the role of gender-form regularities in the recognition of nouns in isolation and within sentences. The results of a final sample of 40 studies suggest that there are two routes for the retrieval of gender during real-time comprehension: a form-based route and a lexical-based route. Our review indicates that the use of these routes depends on the degree of gender transparency of the language and the degree of overtness of the experimental paradigm. To accommodate these findings, we incorporate a dual-route mechanism within a general model of lexical access in comprehension, the AUSTRAL (Activation Using Structurally Tiered Representations and Lemmas) model, and identify directions for future research.

When are trans women treated worse than trans men?

Purpose

This paper aims to test penis panic theory, which predicts that trans women will face more discrimination than trans men in some but not all situations.

Design/methodology/approach

Respondents were 262 American college students who were all enrolled in the same undergraduate course. They were presented with a case about coworker resistance to transgender employees' use of the workplace restrooms of their choice. Four versions of a case were randomly distributed as follows: trans woman, restroom with one toilet; trans woman, restroom with three toilets; trans man, restroom with one toilet and trans man, restroom with three toilets.

Findings

The authors observed greater discrimination against trans women compared to trans men when there was one toilet but not when there were three toilets. This supports penis panic theory.

Research limitations/implications

The chief limitation was the use of American college students as respondents. The results may not generalize to practicing managers especially in other countries. Future researchers should develop a scale to measure situational discrimination against trans women. This study should be replicated in other contexts to deepen the understanding of discrimination against trans men and trans women with disabilities, as well as discrimination against nonbinary individuals who identify as neither trans men nor trans women.

Practical implications

Employers need to search for situations in which trans women face greater discrimination than trans men, because they can be resolved in ways that protect the rights of transgender employees no matter how transphobic their coworkers may be. Also, employers need a nuanced approach to combat discrimination that recognizes the unique perspectives of trans men, trans women and other members of the transgender community.

Originality/value

This is the first quantitative study of penis panic theory, and it illuminates the understanding of discrimination against transgender individuals.

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.

Sublexical and lexico-syntactic factors in gender access in Spanish

The influence of sublexical and lexico-syntactic factors during the grammatical gender assignment process in Spanish was studied in two experiments using the gender decision task. In Experiment 1, the regularity of the ending of gender-marked nouns (masculine nouns ended in -o and feminine nouns ended in -a) and of nouns with gender-correlated but unmarked word-endings (e.g., -ad) was manipulated. The results showed that regularity affected reaction times and error rates only in the case of gender-marked nouns, suggesting that the mere statistical distribution of a word-ending across genders is not responsible for the regularity effect. In Experiment 2, gender-marked nouns and gender-unmarked nouns were preceded by a masked prime which could be a definite article (which provides information about the gender of the noun) or a possessive pronoun (which does not contain gender information). The presentation of the definite article led to shorter reaction times and less errors only when the word-ending was different from -o or -a. Taken together, these results indicate that gender assignment in Spanish is carried out through different processes depending on the noun ending: gender decisions for gender-marked nouns are based on the gender-to-ending distribution. Meanwhile, gender decisions for unmarked nouns seem to require the retrieval of the corresponding definite grammatical article, regardless of the statistical distribution of the noun ending across genders.

Implicit knowledge of grammatical gender in preschool children

The study aimed at investigating the role of nominal gender in animal categorization in preschoolers. Given the regularities characterizing gender system, at both syntactical and morphological level, Italian language is suitable to address this issue. In three experiments, participants were asked to classify pictures of animals as male or female. Half stimuli had names of feminine gender and half of masculine gender. In Experiment 1, Italian speaking adults and preschoolers classified animals according to the nominal gender. This effect was not found with English speaking participants (Experiment 2) but confirmed with 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old Italian-speaking children (Experiment 3). These results showed an implicit knowledge of grammatical gender in preschoolers, suggesting that semantic processing may be modulated by linguistic information.

Phonological regularities and grammatical gender retrieval in spoken word recognition and word production

Two experiments investigate whether native speakers of French can use a noun's phonological ending to retrieve its gender and that of a gender-marked element. In Experiment 1, participants performed a gender decision task on the noun's gender-marked determiner for auditorily presented nouns. Noun endings with high predictive values were selected. The noun stimuli could either belong to the gender class predicted by their ending (congruent) or they could belong to the gender class that was different from the predicted gender (incongruent). Gender decisions were made significantly faster for congruent nouns than for incongruent nouns, relative to a (lexical decision) baseline task. In Experiment 2, participants named pictures of the same materials as used in Experiment 1 with noun phrases consisting of a gender-marked determiner, a gender-marked adjective and a noun. In this Experiment, no effect of congruency, relative to a (bare noun naming) baseline task, was observed. Thus, the results show an effect of phonological information on the retrieval of gender-marked elements in spoken word recognition, but not in word production.

The relation between language and cognition in 3- to 9-year-olds: the acquisition of grammatical gender in French

The French language has a grammatical gender system in which all nouns are assigned either a masculine or a feminine gender. Nouns provide two types of gender cues that can potentially guide gender attribution: morphophonological cues carried by endings and semantic cues (natural gender). The first goal of this study was to describe the acquisition of the probabilistic system based on phonological oppositions on word endings by French-speaking children. The second goal was to explore the extent to which this system affects categorization. In the study, 3- to 9-year-olds assigned gender categorization to invented nouns whose endings were typically masculine, typically feminine, or neutral. Two response conditions were used. In the determiner condition, children indicated the gender class by orally providing the determiner un or une marked for gender. In the picture condition, responses were given by pointing to the picture of a Martian-like female or male person that would be best called by each spoken pseudoword. Results indicated that as young as 3 years, children associated the determiner corresponding to the ending bias at greater than chance levels. Ending-consistent performance increased from 3 to 9 years of age. Moreover, from 4 years of age onward, sensitivity to endings affected categorization. Starting at that age, pictures were selected according to endings at greater than chance levels. This effect also increased with age. The discussion deals with the mechanisms of language acquisition and the relation between language and cognition.

Assigning grammatical gender during word production

The present study was designed to examine the processes by which grammatical gender is assigned during word production. French words varied in strength of sublexical cues, based on whether the word ending was typical for one gender rather than neutral about gender, and lexical cues, derived from the associated definite article being uninformative about gender for words beginning with a vowel, but informative for words beginning with a consonant. In Experiment 1. when native French speakers classified the gender of mentally evoked names of pictures, no effects of these cues were obtained. Experiment 2 used an improved methodology, with participants classifying the gender of words translated from English. English-speaking learners of French were influenced strongly by lexical and sublexical cues, while French speakers showed a weaker influence. However, for both speaker groups, words whose gender was classified slowly during recognition were also classified slowly during production, and error rates were similarly correlated across tasks. The conclusion was that gender is not equally available for all words once the associated "lemma" is accessed Current models of language production may have to incorporate mechanisms allowing differential speed of access to gender information depending on a word's formal properties.