Grammatical gender is a complex classification system and is often referred to as one of the most difficult grammatical categories for second language (L2) speakers to master. Previous research has focused on anticipatory processing of grammatical gender cues in first language (L1) speakers of various gendered languages (French, Spanish, Dutch, etc.) and has found that speakers use gender information from a preceding determiner to facilitate access to a gender-congruent noun (e.g., Dussias et al., 2013; Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2010). These findings have been consistently found among speakers of various languages when they were presented with congruent vs. incongruent determiner phrases (DPs), subsequently collapsing across grammatical genders (e.g., congruent: la maison and le bateau vs. incongruent: *le maison vs. *la bateau). Responses to individual genders cues in Spanish has been teased apart (masculine vs. feminine) as well as the effect of inhibitory control on gender processing (Beatty-Martínez, et al., 2020). A correlation between grammatical gender error recovery and increased inhibitory control was found. The current dissertation aims to dissect the processing and underlying neural mechanisms associated with masculine and feminine grammatical gender in L1 French, simultaneous French-English, and L1 English-L2 French speakers. A series of three experiments were conducted. The first two experiments used a masked priming lexical decision task where participants were presented with congruent (e.g., la maison) and incongruent (*le maison) DPs. The first experiment employed a behavioural version of the task and the second experiment focused on event-related brain potentials (ERPs). At a behavioural level, there was no indication of grammatical gender cue use. However, ERP results show that L1 speakers employ distinct processing mechanisms for feminine (P200; *le maison) incongruencies compared to feminine congruencies (la maison). The final experiment consisted of a self-paced reading task, where participants read sentences with congruent and incongruent DPs and an AX-CPT task as a measure of inhibitory control. L1 French and simultaneous French-English speakers exhibit processing difficulties with the incongruent feminine condition (*le maison) compared to the congruent feminine condition (la maison), as well as with the incongruent masculine condition (*la bateau) compared to the congruent masculine condition (le bateau). On the other hand, L2 speakers only show difficulty with the incongruent feminine condition in relation to the congruent feminine condition. Further, there was no relationship between inhibitory control and grammatical gender processing across groups. Overall, the results reflect an intricate picture of grammatical gender processing in French speakers. At a lexical level, L1 French speakers likely process incongruent feminine DPs as a lexical clash, potentially implementing further cognitive resources during processing. At a syntactic level, L1 French and simultaneous French-English speakers show processing difficulties behaviourally to gender incongruencies. L2 speakers seem to employ the use of masculine grammatical gender cues, implying that it is perhaps the presence of a feminine noun causing processing difficulty due to a feature mismatch. These results indicate that masculine and feminine genders employ distinct processing mechanisms and may be accessed in a contrasting manner.

If most scholars tend to agree that the native language of a speaker does influence the way they will understand the reality around them, the question becomes ambiguous when it comes to bilingual speakers’ cognition. How is their reality affected by the combination of their languages? This study aimed at exploring this question under the angle of grammatical gender. Adult simultaneous early bilingualsin French and Swedish were asked, in an innovative experiment, to match a culturally neutral item to a voice. In a second experiment, the same participants were asked to match a culturally loaded item to a voice. In both experiments, items were carefully chosen according to their grammatical gender. Results indicate that grammatical gender was not a predictor of voice assignment. However, the perceived cultural stereotypes of the items used in the second experiment appeared to be a robust predictor of voice assignment. Findings suggest thus that grammatical gender does not affect how simultaneous early bilingualism French and Swedish would conceptualise artifacts, but cultural gender would.

<p>The category of grammatical gender has gained considerable attention in the linguistic literature. Previous studies focused primarily on describing the often very complex system of genders in particular languages, on the understanding of the category <em>per se</em> (e.g. the origin of gender differentiation) or the acquisition of grammatical gender and the processing of this category in language production.</p> <p>In contrast, the present dissertation looks at grammatical gender from a cognitive point of view. For the sake of this dissertation, <em>cognitive perspective</em> is defined as the assumption that human language cannot be separated from the way human beings perceive the world since language and thought are inextricably related. This approach also implies that research cannot be limited to theoretical explorations, but rather, that it must employ experimental methods and use research tools traditionally associated with other disciplines to collect data about authentic language use. All studies included in this thesis concentrate on the topic of grammatical gender, but they approach the category from a variety of perspectives.</p> <p>It was found that the grammatical gender, at least to some degree, shapes the worldview of speakers of those languages in which the category operates, since the gender of the personification of concepts usually agrees with the grammatical gender of the respective nouns. In the context of translation, grammatical gender proved to be much more challenging than had been expected; there were many mistakes found in the translation product and many hesitations observed in the translation process.</p> <p>The findings of the studies included in this thesis add to the general understanding of the complexities of the category of grammatical gender and its relationship to the way language users perceive the world. What is more, the investigations and proposals presented here emphasize the need for a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of grammatical gender.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2016-08-18T11:53:56Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Daniel de Almeida Leão.pdf: 1416276 bytes, checksum: ba4bc8cff6ad87ee22845be2197eedfb (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-18T11:53:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Daniel de Almeida Leão.pdf: 1416276 bytes, checksum: ba4bc8cff6ad87ee22845be2197eedfb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-28 / This study has as its main goal to investigate the relation between the grammatical system of gender classification for the nouns of the Portuguese language in Brazil and the biological gender of their referents from the perspective of language as a probabilistic system (Halliday, 1991, 1993). More specifically, the investigation extracted the frequencies for the grammatical gender of the nouns (masculine and/or feminine) for the Portuguese language in Brazil and the relation between the grammatical gender and the biological sex of the nouns. For such, this study has as its basis the Corpus Linguistics, a theoretical-scientific methodology which sees the language as a probabilistic system, through the observation of empirical data (Berber Sardinha, 2004). Although the grammatical gender is an aspect of the language approached throughout the grammars of the Portuguese language and its study constantly discussed among scholars and researchers of the field, the great majority of these studies have as basis a traditional perspective of the language, brought by the use of norms (Bechara, 2013). This means that, possibly, there is no other study about this subject which is based on the language in use, in a probabilistic approach (Halliday, 1991, 1993), following the principles of Corpus Linguistics (Berber Sardinha, 2004). In order to accomplish this goal, this work was executed as the following: (i) all the nouns of a corpus (The Brazilian Corpus of Register Variation – CBVR) were extracted; (ii) the nouns were transferred to a database in which they could be classified; (iii) the nouns were classified manually in respect to their grammatical gender and biological gender, following the criteria described in this work’s methodology; (iv) after classifying the nouns, they were accounted according to each of the categories described in the methodology, (v) after that, for each research question, the frequencies were extracted and the probabilities were calculated and; (vi) the research questions were answered based on how the frequencies and probabilities had been revealed. In bringing up the results, it is expected that this research has been able to contribute for offering a new perspective about this subject, one that takes into account the current Portuguese language in Brazil for the 21st century. It is also expected that the methodology designed for the execution of this study could be adapted and applied to several other studies of similar goals, bringing new perspectives for other aspects of the language / O trabalho teve como objetivo principal investigar a relação entre o sistema gramatical de gênero dos substantivos do português Brasil e o gênero biológico de seus referentes a partir da visão da linguagem como sistema probabilístico (Halliday, 1991,1993). Mais especificamente, foi investigada a frequência dos gêneros dos substantivos (masculinos e femininos) na língua portuguesa escrita e falada no Brasil e a relação entre o sistema de gênero gramatical e o gênero biológico dos substantivos. Para tal, o estudo realizado tem como base a Linguística de Corpus, metodologia teórico-científica que vê a língua como sistema probabilístico por meio da observação de dados empíricos (Berber Sardinha, 2004). Embora o gênero gramatical dos substantivos seja um aspecto abordado em todas as gramáticas da língua e seja discutido por acadêmicos e pesquisadores da área constantemente, a grande maioria dos estudos possui base em uma visão tradicional, fixada pelo uso da norma (Bechara, 2013). Isso significa que, possivelmente, não haja estudo acerca do tema que reflete a língua em uso de maneira probabilística (Halliday 1991, 1993), conforme os pressupostos da Linguística de Corpus (Berber Sardinha, 2004).Para a consecução desse objetivo, a pesquisa se sucedeu da seguinte maneira: (i) foram extraídos todos os substantivos de um corpus (o Corpus Brasileiro de Variação de Registros - CBVR); (ii) os substantivos foram transferidos para uma base de dados sob a qual puderam ser classificados; (iii) foi feita a classificação manual de cada um dos substantivos quanto ao gênero gramatical e gênero biológico, seguindo os critérios descritos na metodologia deste trabalho; (iv) ao final da classificação, foi feita contagem de quantos substantivos foram classificados para cada uma as categorias descritas; (v) foram extraídas as frequências e calculadas as probabilidades para cada uma das perguntas de pesquisa e; (vi) as perguntas foram respondidas com base nas frequências e probabilidades reveladas. Ao trazer os resultados, espera-se que esta pesquisa tenha contribuído para oferecer uma nova perspectiva acerca do tema, uma que leve em consideração o português do Brasil em uso corrente no século XXI. Espera-se também que a metodologia desenhada para a execução deste estudo possa ser adaptada e aplicada em diversos outros de cunho similar, trazendo novas perspectivas para outros aspectos da língua

Cette recherche porte sur l’acquisition du genre grammatical français langue maternelle et langue seconde. Dans une perspective développementale, nous cherchons à décrire la manière dont de jeunes enfants, scolarisés en France et au Luxembourg, déterminent le genre des noms en se fondant sur les indices infra-lexicaux portés par les noms. Notre préoccupation consiste à examiner le type de connaissances acquises et les mécanismes sous-jacents à cette acquisition en langue maternelle, mais aussi lors de l’apprentissage du français langue seconde au niveau de l’école primaire au Luxembourg. Nous faisons l’hypothèse que l’extraction des connaissances de genre n’est pas fondée uniquement sur la valeur prédictive des terminaisons mais que les informations morphologiques portées par certaines terminaisons, les suffixes, interviennent aussi dans le processus d’acquisition du genre. En effet, la diversité d’informations portées par cette unité (sémantiques, lexicales et de genre) peut rendre cette unité plus « saillante » parmi l’ensemble des régularités pouvant être extraites. Trois expériences ont permis de mettre en évidence que la détermination du genre fondée sur les indices formels dépend effectivement d’autres facteurs, tels que la nature des terminaisons. Par ailleurs, une série de simulations informatiques a été conduite apportant des données complémentaires aux résultats expérimentaux. L’ensemble de ces données apportent des informations utiles pour l’apprentissage et l’enseignement précoce du française langue seconde au niveau de l’école primaire. / This research concerns the acquisition of the French grammatical gender in first and second language. From a developmental perspective, we tempt to describe the way of young children being sent to school in France and Luxembourg determine the gender of names, by using the infra-lexical cues carried by these. Our concern consists in examining the kind of knowledge acquired and the mechanisms underlying this acquisition for the mother tongue and also during the learning of French as a second language at the primary school in Luxembourg. We hypothesize that the extraction of gender knowledge is not only dependent on the predictive value of endings but that morphological information carried by certain endings, suffixes, also intervenes in the process of gender acquisition. Indeed, the range of information carried by this unit (semantic, lexical and of gender) can make this unit more "striking" among all the regularities being able to be extracted. Three experiments allowed to bring to light that the determination of gender based on formal cues depends effectively on other factors, such as the nature of endings. Besides, a series of computational simulations was driven, bringing additional data to the experimental results. All these data brings useful information to the learning and the early teaching of French as a second language at the primary school.

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Orientador: Tania Maria Alkmim / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-10T07:10:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Lima_JoseLeonildo_D.pdf: 1917053 bytes, checksum: 5e5c7b3847e000743a709565d21daf95 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / Resumo: Esta tese tem por objetivo apresentar uma discussão acerca de aspectos orfossintáticos da variação na concordância do gênero gramatical no falar cuiabano. O trabalho é composto por um levantamento sócio-histórico bem como lingüístico de Cuiabá. No primeiro capítulo apresentamos um pouco de sua história e de sua cultura, bem como alguns aspectos lingüísticos do falar cuiabano. No segundo capítulo temos os procedimentos metodológicos para a realização da pesquisa. O terceiro capítulo é constituído pela análise dos dados em que podemos perceber que a variação na concordância do gênero gramatical, no português falado na região de Cuiabá, apresenta fortes evidências de uma deriva conservadora / Abstract: This thesis has for objective to present a discussion concerning orphosyntactic aspects of the variation in the agreement of the grammatical gender in Cuiabano speech. The paper is composed of a social-historic as well as linguistic survey of Cuiabá. In the first chapter we present a little of its history and its culture, as well as some linguistic aspects of cuiabano speech. In the second chapter we have the methodological procedures for th e research accomplishment. The third chapter is constituted by the data analysis in which we can realize that the variation in the agreement of the grammatical gender, in the Portuguese language spoken in the region of Cuiabá, presents huge evidences of a conservative drift / Doutorado / Doutor em Linguística

L’existence de noms vieil-anglais au genre variable a été signalée encore à la fin du 19e siècle. Alors que le nombre de noms assignés à plusieurs genres dans les dictionnaires du vieil-anglais est très élevé, il n’existe presque aucune étude approfondie du phénomène. La présente thèse tente de répondre à des questions de ce que l'on désigne comme les noms au genre variable, comment ces noms se distinguent d’autres types de fluctuation dans les documents en vieil-anglais et de ce qui se trouve à l’origine de la variation en genre.Après avoir défini la notion de l’accord et son expression dans les marqueurs, on propose une étude détaillée de toutes les occurrences de trente-six emprunts faits au latin et au vieux-norrois d’une part, et de soixante-dix-huit noms indigènes d’autre part, tous assignés à plusieurs genres dans les dictionnaires. Constatant des évolutions parfois importantes dans l’emploi des marqueurs en discours, on cherche à déterminer s’ils interviennent dans la décision des lexicographes ou s’ils reflètent une variabilité interne aux noms étudiés. La variation se présente ainsi sous deux angles et s’explique à travers deux notions, celle du désaccord, où tout lien entre le nom-contrôleur et les cibles d’accord est rompu, et celle de la variabilité, qui soutient le lien d’accord sur le plan cognitif et permet la transition d’un genre à l’autre selon le choix de l’énonciateur. / The existence of nouns of variable genre in Old English was brought to the linguistic community’s attention at the end of the 19th century. Despite the rather high number of nouns assigned to several genders in dictionaries dealing with Old English, to date there has been no substantial study of the phenomenon. This thesis is a usage-based study that explores the notion of nouns of variable gender by distinguishing them from other types of gender-variation in Old English texts. It also explores in detail the factors behind various grammatical gender assignments.It departs from the notion of agreement and its expression in gender-sensitive markers. A corpus of a hundred and fourteen nouns assigned to several genders in the dictionaries – seventy-eight native and thirty-six borrowed from Latin and Old Norse – are analysed in context in order to identify the various factors that influence the lexicographers’ decision-making. Some important developments in the usage of the formerly gender-sensitive markers in the discourse might have influenced the latter to a certain degree. Or, they might be a reflection of variability as an internal feature of the nouns analysed. This study deals with the notion of variation as a cover-term for disagreement, which reflects the discontinuity of the link between a controller and its agreement targets, and, on the other hand, for variability, maintaining the agreement on the cognitive level and allowing the transition from one gender to the other depending on the choice of the speaker.

Après avoir identifié l’emploi du genre masculin en français et l’utilisation du mot « homme » comme « dispositifs de désinformation », une recherche-action, menée pendant 10 ans dans une optique de déontologie journalistique sur le moyen d’informer à propos des femmes comme des hommes, en utilisant la langue française, m’a conduite à adopter une marque graphique qui donne forme au genre commun, du point de vue morphosyntaxique. C’est le point médian unique nommé « point de l’altérité (·)» pour son potentiel de reconnaissance de la diversité humaine. Le compte-rendu de cette recherche et sa poursuite en sciences de l’information et de la communication m’ont permis d’élaborer des procédures d’analyses issues de la linguistique fonctionnelle et de la grammaire classique dans ce que j’ai nommé le champ de la « francographie ». L’analyse d’une affiche Tisséo (transport en commun toulousain) a servi de matrice méthodologique pour déployer des mesures de genre en utilisant les notions de féminin /masculin/ hors genre (ex : adverbes, prépositions…), genre arbitraire (ex : une chaise, un tabouret, une personne…) / genre motivé (ex : un ou une instit, un ou une prof…) et genre apparent (ex : instituteur, institutrice, avocat, avocate…) / genre non apparent (ex : journaliste, architecte, notaire…). Enfin, des propositions didactiques sont présentées comme pratique de « transmutation des valeurs ». / After having identified the use of the masculine gender in the French language and the use of the word "man" as "a tool of disinformation", I conducted a research-action, during 10 years, within an optic of journalistic ethics, on the means used in the French language to inform about women as well as men, which led me to adopt a graphic mark (·) the single median dot, named 'dot of otherness' for its potential recognition of human diversity, so as to signify a common gender identification. This research’s review and its continuation within information and communication sciences have enabled me to develop functional linguistic and classical grammar analytical procedures within the scope of what I define as «francography». I used the analysis of a Tisséo poster (Toulouse public transportation) as a methodological matrix, to develop and display parity measures using the notions of feminine / masculine / outbound genre, arbitrary / semantically motivated and apparent / non apparent gender (read the above examples in French language). Finally didactical proposals are presented as a new way of "transmutation of values".

German and Greek are both Indo-European languages that realize grammatical gender and indeed they have similar grammatical gender systems, they both realize three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter). They pose some similarities concerning gender agreement as well. However, the lexical gender between these two languages differs a lot. The purpose of this study is to examine first, whether L2 learners of German with Greek as their first language are able to use German grammatical gender predictively. Secondly, it was also examined to what extent the differences associated with L1-L2 lexical gender are going to affect their ability to make gender-based predictions in their L2. An experimental condition providing lexical cues (i.e., numeral) as informative cues was added, so that a comparison between the L2ers’ predictive ability based on morphosyntactic cues compared to lexical cues, can be investigated. The research questions of the study were examined by means of a speeded picture-selection task. Gender Assignment Tasks and a proficiency test were also included to investigate the influence of proficiency and knowledge of grammatical gender on the L2ers’ ability to use gender predictively. Besides the L2ers’ group, a control group of German native speakers also participated. The results suggest that L2ers were not able to use grammatical gender in their L2 predictively across the board of the gender trials, although they did successfully use the lexical cues to predict upcoming words. Although proficiency did not significantly interact with L2ers’ performance at the task, their knowledge of grammatical gender did significantly affect their performance, leading to faster Reaction Times.