On the Semantic Content of Grammatical Gender and Its Impact on the Representation of Human Referents
Abstract
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.
References
1996). The use of stereotypical gender information in constructing a mental model: Evidence from English and Spanish. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49A, 639–663.
(1991). Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(Duden: Die Grammatik [
Grammar ] (5th ed.). (1995). Mannheim: Dudenverlag.2004). Violating stereotypes: Eye movements and comprehension processes when text conflicts with world knowledge. Memory & Cognition, 32, 551–559.
(1998). Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. In , Handbook of social psychology (pp. 357–411) (4th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
(2001). Mental models and the interpretation of anaphora. Hove: Psychology Press.
(2002). Are inferences from stereotyped role names to characters’ gender made elaboratively?. Memory & Cognition, 30, 439–446.
(1998). The readiness is all: The functionality of memory-based text processing. Discourse Processes, 26, 67–86.
(1997). Discourse comprehension. Annual Review of Psychology, 48, 163–189.
(2008). Generically intended, but specifically interpreted: When beauticians, musicians and mechanics are all men. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23, 464–485.
(2000). Sind Frauen mitgemeint? Eine empirische Untersuchung zum Verständnis des generischen Maskulinums und seiner Alternativen [
(Are women also meant? An empirical investigation of understanding masculine generics and their alternatives ]. Sprache & Kognition, 19, 3–13.2007). What’s in a (role) name? Formal and semantic aspects of comprehending personal nouns. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 36, 431–456.
(2005). Die Repräsentation generisch maskuliner Personenbezeichnungen: Eine theoretische Integration bisheriger Befunde [
(Representing masculine generics: A theoretical integration of empirical findings ]. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 213, 167–175.2004). Gender markedness of language: The impact of grammatical and nonlinguistic information on the mental representation of person information. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 23, 272–307.
(1987). The comprehension of discourse and mental models. In , Language and artificial intelligence (pp. 253–261). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.
(2003). Comprehending pronouns: A role for word-specific gender stereotype information. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, 355–378.
(2005). Immediate activation of stereotypical gender information. Memory & Cognition, 33, 972–983.
(1998). Updating a situation model: A memory-based text processing view. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 1200–1210.
(2004) Personenbezeichnungsmodelle auf dem Prüfstand. [
(Models of person denotations put to test ]. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 212, 40–54.1998). The role of scenario mapping in text comprehension. Discourse Processes, 26, 159–190.
(2007). Representation of the sexes in language. In , Social communication. A volume in the series Frontiers of Social Psychology (pp. 163–187). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
(2001). Name your favorite musician: Effects of masculine generics and of their alternatives in German. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 20, 464–469.
(1994). Semantic influences on parsing: Use of thematic role information in syntactic ambiguity resolution. Journal of Memory & Language, 33, 285–318.
(1977). Exploratory data analysis. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
(1983). Strategies of discourse comprehension. New York, NY: Academic Press.
(1998). Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 162–185.
(