The mechanisms underlying grammatical gender selection in language production: A meta-analysis of the gender congruency effect

Sá-Leite, Ana Rita; Luna, Karlos; Tomaz, Ângela Gomes; Fraga, Isabel; Comesaña, Montserrat

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105060

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Both the gender-congruent condition and phonologically congruent condition were faster than the corresponding incongruent conditions. The consistent gender congruency effect was found in many studies in the NP language production of German [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ] and Dutch [ 5 , 6 , 8 , 9 , 10 ] (for an overview, see Wang and Schiller [ 21 ] and Sá-Leite et al [ 22 ]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 60%

“…In other words, the determiners match the gender of the noun they accompany. The gender congruency effect, which entails faster and more accurate processing in cases of a match between the gender of nouns and their associated determiners or adjectives, has been studied extensively in Romance languages [ 16 , 18 , 19 , 20 ], as well as in German [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ], Dutch [ 5 , 6 , 8 , 9 , 10 ] and some other gendered languages (for an overview, see Wang and Schiller [ 21 ] and Sá-Leite et al [ 22 ]; for a recent meta-analysis, see Bürki et al, in press [ 23 ]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gender Congruency Effects in Spanish: Behavioral Evidence from Noun Phrase Production

Schiller

2023

Brain Sciences

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Grammatical gender as a lexico-syntactic feature has been well explored, and the gender congruency effect has been observed in many languages (e.g., Dutch, German, Croatian, Czech, etc.). Yet, so far, this effect has not been found in Romance languages such as Italian, French, and Spanish. It has been argued that the absence of the effect in Romance languages is due the fact that the gender-marking definite article is not exclusively dependent on the grammatical gender of the head noun, but also on its onset phonology (e.g., lo zucchero is ‘the sugar’ in Italian, not il zucchero, il being the default masculine determiner in Italian). For Spanish, this argument has also been made because feminine words starting with a stressed /a/ take the masculine article (e.g., el água is ‘the water’, not la água). However, the number of words belonging to that set is rather small in Spanish, and it may be questionable whether or not this feature can be taken as an argument for the absence of a gender congruency effect in Spanish. In this study, we investigated the gender congruency effect in native Spanish noun phrase production. We measured 30 native Spanish speakers’ naming latencies in four conditions via the picture–word interference paradigm by manipulating gender congruency (i.e., gender-congruent vs. gender-incongruent) and semantic relatedness (i.e., semantically related vs. semantically unrelated). The results revealed significantly longer naming latencies in gender-incongruent and semantically related conditions compared to gender-congruent and semantically unrelated conditions. This result suggests that grammatical gender as a lexico-syntactic feature in Spanish is used to competitively select determiners in native Spanish speakers’ noun phrases. Our findings provide an important behavioral piece of evidence for the gender congruency effect in Romance languages.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 60%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Congruency Effects in Spanish: Behavioral Evidence from Noun Phrase Production

Schiller

2023

Brain Sciences

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“…Apparently, the emergence of the gender effect and specifically its direction (facilitative or inhibitory), as well as the influence of contextual factors on its emergence (whether it is evident only when syntactic gender agreement is required or only for bare nouns) is equivocal. A meta-analysis conducted on previous findings in European languages (Sá-Leite et al, 2022) revealed a moderately significant facilitatory effect for Germanic languages and a less stable inhibition effect for Romance languages. In accordance with this line of research, findings on the gender congruency effect in Hebrew using the PWI paradigm provided a unique pattern of results, as detailed below.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…(e.g., findings in Germanic languages like Dutch, e.g., Schriefers, 1993, and German, e.g., Schriefers & Teruel, 2000, versus findings in Romance languages like European Portuguese, Sá-Leite et al, 2021, Italian, Cubelli et al, 2005, and Spanish, Paolieri et al, 2010. (See Jescheniak et al, 2014, for a review and Sá-Leite et al, 2022, for a meta-analysis.) Previous research on accessing gender information and the production of gender agreement in Hebrew accords with this notion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonological instantiation of grammatical gender in the course of production is sensitive to words’ internal structure

Dank¹,

Deutsch

2022

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Research on the gender-congruency effect in speech production across languages suggests that access of grammatical gender during production is modulated by language-specific properties. The present study extends this line of research by seeking evidence for linguistic idiosyncratic influence on gender processing, however, from a within language comparison. Accordingly, it investigated the processing of gender information of Hebrew inanimate nouns from a foreign origin that do not have the typical morphologically complex Semitic structure of Hebrew nouns. The findings were evaluated in relation to previous findings derived from typical, native Hebrew nouns. Gender processing was studied through the picture-word-interference (PWI) paradigm for estimating the gender-congruency effect induced by presenting a spoken distractor word of the same or of a different gender of the picture to be named. Across two experiments naming latency, for bare nouns (Exp. 1) and noun phrases (Exp. 2) revealed a different pattern of results from the pattern previously found for typical native inanimate Hebrew nouns – an inhibitory gender-congruency effect for feminine nouns only, but no congruency effect for masculine nouns. The unique pattern observed for this group of words reflects the high sensitivity of the linguistic system, in terms of gender processing, to the basic morphological structure of words. Thus, even within a language, the linguistic processor accommodates itself up to item specific properties. It is suggested that the specific pattern of the results reflects the attempt of the system to assimilate deviant forms within existing procedures on the basis of a flexible criterion of similarity.

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“…The ability to use grammatical categories as an aid in lexical processing has been found early in L1 learning (Johnson, 2005;Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2007van Heugten & Shi, 2009). However, gender congruency effects may have limitations (Sá-Leite et al, 2022), particularly for late L2 learners, who do not show consistent effects of grammatical gender on lexical processing (Dussias et al, 2013;Guillelmon & Grosjean, 2001;Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2010;Scherag et al, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morphological cues as an aid to word learning: a cross-situational word learning study

Finley

2022

Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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Learning a language with complex morphology poses a challenge to language learners, especially adults, who may need to acquire grammatical categories that do not exist in their native language.One possible advantage to languages with complex morphology, even for adult learners, is that morphology could provide cues to word meaning, particularly when referential uncertainty is high.The hypothesis that morphology can bootstrap adult word learning is tested across four crosssituational word learning experiments. Adult learners were exposed to words from a novel language with CVCV stems and -CV suffixes. In the Experimental conditions, the suffixes consistently mapped to semantic categories: fruit (/-ke/), animals (/-bu/), and vehicles (/-do/). In the Control condition, the suffixes did not provide any consistent semantic information.Participants in the Experimental conditions outperformed participants in the Control conditions on word learning tasks with high referential uncertainty, but only when there were sufficient opportunities to learn the morphology in the initial learning phases. These results highlight adults' ability to rapidly learn novel morphological information, and use this information in word learning.

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The mechanisms underlying grammatical gender selection in language production: A meta-analysis of the gender congruency effect

Cited by 10 publications

References 50 publications

Gender Congruency Effects in Spanish: Behavioral Evidence from Noun Phrase Production

Gender Congruency Effects in Spanish: Behavioral Evidence from Noun Phrase Production

Phonological instantiation of grammatical gender in the course of production is sensitive to words’ internal structure

Morphological cues as an aid to word learning: a cross-situational word learning study

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