Group 12 Gender in Third-person Singular Pronouns English Mandarin - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Gendered and Genderless: The mental organization of Chinese personal pronouns Group 12

Gender in Third-person Singular Pronouns English Mandarin Cantonese 他 [t h a1] Masculine He 佢 她 [t h a1] Feminine She [k h øy5] 他 [t h a1] Neuter/ He/They Genderless

The Bilingual Gender Error Mandarin/Cantonese-English bilinguals sometimes use gender mismatched pronouns, i.e., using “he” to refer to females and “she” for males. E.g. Mark visits Starbucks every morning. She thinks their coffee is the best. Ruby visits Starbucks every morning. He thinks their coffee is the best. ?

Self-paced English reading experiment by Dong et al. (2014) Native English speakers: longer reading times on pronouns that mismatched their antecedents’ gender than those that matched i.e. “mismatch effect” e.g.1 matched pronoun - Mark (male name) is a student. He (masculine) goes to school by bus. e.g.2 mismatched pronoun - Mark (male name) is a student. She (feminine) goes to school by bus.

Self-paced English reading experiment by Dong et al. (2014) Native Chinese speakers: initial absence of mismatch effect; but appeared when participants were prompted by human pictures that explicitly showed gender information (visual cue) Conclusion: → Native Chinese speakers do not process gender information → Biological gender processing deficiency in the conceptualizer

Cheung (1994) Participants: 60 children Experiment: 1. Read aloud sentences with two antecedents 2. followed by a gender matched or mismatched pronoun ( 他 ’He’ or 她 ’She’) 3. Offline questions: test the ability to make anaphoric reference Results: Aware of the gender distinction between 他 and 她 But no significant effect of gender cues on accuracy Conclusion: 他 (He) and 她 (She) share the same semantic and phonological access codes

ERP Studies ERP = Event-related potential evidence for gender processing in pronoun resolution in Chinese speakers N400 effect semantic violations P600 effect syntactic violations E.g. 這位女患者情緒低落，醫生鼓勵他振作起來。 This female patient was in low spirits, the doctor encouraged him to cheer up.

Qiu et al. (2012) & Xu et al. (2013) - When the gender mismatched pronoun occurs in the clause or sentence immediately after the antecedent e.g. 這位女患者情緒低落，醫生鼓勵他振作起來。 This female patient was in low spirits, the doctor encouraged him to cheer up. - ERP studies have shown both N400 and P600 effects - Chinese speakers can detect both semantic and syntactic violations in gender mismatch situations - shows that both semantic and syntactic processing occur in pronoun resolution - Dong et al.’s and Cheung’s results are not consistent with ERP results

Two aims 1. Call into question … 2. alternative account by examining the lemma level (gender specification) of the Dong et al. (2014) and Cheung (1994): mental lexicon “ There is a deficiency in biological gender processing for linguistic purposes in Chinese Apply the “Multi-level Spreading Activation native speakers.” Model” (Bock & Levelt, 1994) If Chinese speakers show gender mismatch → 3 levels of representation: effect, the idea of “shared semantic entries I. conceptual level (semantics) and a gender processing deficiency in the conceptualizer of Chinese speakers” is II. lemma level (syntax) rejected → Not yet clear if this is the case in Chinese III. lexeme level (morphology and phonology)

Multi-level Spreading Activation Model Conceptual ask related concepts Stratum syntactic ask Lemma information Stratum Morphology ask ing Form /a:/ /s/ /k/ /ɪ/ /ŋ/ Stratum Phonology Legal Phonological Combinations

Multi-level Spreading Activation Model Conceptual Level ? VS (Concepts of gender) ? Lemma Masculine Genderless Feminine Level (Syntax) 他 Lexeme 她 他 佢 她 佢 Level (morphology + phonology) /t h / /a/ /k h / /ø/ /y/ /t h / /k h / /a/ /ø/ /y/ Legal Phonological Combinations

Experimental Design 1. Preliminary Study for sample selection 2. Self-paced reading 3. Offline questions

Preliminary Study 1. Self-report by target participants - Rate their own competence in Standard Chinese and Cantonese respectively on a scale of 1-10 - Report the number of hours spent on using the written form of each variety per day → Target participants: senior high school & university students 2. Test - Translation task and reading comprehension *Helps eliminate potential confounding variables of frequency effect and imbalanced competence

Methodology 1. Tutorials & trials : ensure participants are familiar with the gender of the four proper nouns used in the experiment 2. Self-paced reading - Participants are presented with chunks of sentences - Proceed chunk-by-chunk by pressing spacebar on the keyboard 3. Offline questions - Identify the referent of the pronoun in self-paced reading - Answer by pressing “A” or “L” on keyboard, corresponding to the referents’ positions

Example of the self-paced reading and offline question 大文 很 怕 麗麗， 因為 他 的 脾氣 很 壞 啊！ Dai Man very afraid Lai Lai because 3.M.SG POSS temper very bad PART “Dai Man is very afraid of Lai Lai because he has a very bad temper!” Question: 誰的脾氣很壞？ (Who has a bad temper?) Answer: 大文 (Dai Man) 麗麗 (Lai Lai)

+

大文

很怕

麗麗，

因為

他的

脾氣很壞

啊！

誰的脾氣很壞 ? 大文 麗麗

Example of fillers Manipulation on animacy 小明 很 怕 那 蝴蝶， 因為 牠 非常 膽小 啊！ Siu Ming very afraid that butterfly because 3.SG.animal very easily frightened PART “Siu Ming is very afraid of that butterfly because it is very easily frightened!” Question: 誰很膽小？ (Who is easily frightened?) 小明 蝴蝶 Manipulation on plurality 小明 很 怕 那 一隻 蝴蝶， 因為 牠們 非常 醜陋 啊！ Siu Ming very afraid that CLF butterfly because 3.PL.animal very ugly PART “Siu Ming is very afraid of that butterfly because they are very ugly!” Question: 句中有多少隻蝴蝶？ (How many butterflies are there in the sentence?) 1 隻 多於 1 隻

Independent Variables & Dependent Variables Independent variables: manipulation: Gender specification Mandarin: Gendered third-person singular pronouns ( 他 / 她 ) Cantonese: Genderless third-person singular pronoun ( 佢 ) Dependent variables: Self-paced reading tasks: Reading times Off-line questions: Accuracy *Accuracy for ensuring that participants actually read the sentences *Data from participants with low accuracy are rejected

Conditions Matched condition 大文 很 怕 麗麗， 因為 她 的 啊 ! 脾氣 很 壞 Dai Man very afraid Lai Lai because 3.F.SG POSS temper very bad PART “Dai Man is very afraid of Lai Lai because she has a very bad temper!” Mismatched condition 大文 很 怕 麗麗， 因為 他 的 啊 ! 脾氣 很 壞 Dai Man very afraid Lai Lai because 3.M.SG POSS temper very bad PART “Dai Man is very afraid of Lai Lai because he has a very bad temper!” Cantonese, Genderless 大文 好 怕 麗麗， 因為 嘅 啊 ! 佢 脾氣 好 壞 Dai Man very afraid Lai Lai because 3.SG POSS temper very bad PART “Dai Man is very afraid of Lai Lai because he/she has a very bad temper!” Masculine: 小明 , 大文 Feminine: 芬芬 , 麗麗

Predictions Prediction: Gender mismatch effect exists in Chinese 1. Longer reading time will be found in the mismatched condition than the matched condition 2. The matched condition will have shorter reading time than the genderless condition Reading Times: Matched < Genderless < Mismatched

Mismatched: 大文 很 怕 麗麗， 因為 他 的 脾氣 很 壞 啊！ Dai Man very afraid Lai Lai because 3.M.SG POSS temper very bad PART “Dai Man is very afraid of Lai Lai because he has a very bad temper!” Matched: 大文 很 怕 麗麗， 因為 她 的 脾氣 很 壞 啊！ Dai Man very afraid Lai Lai because 3.F.SG POSS temper very bad PART “Dai Man is very afraid of Lai Lai because he has a very bad temper!”

Matched: 大文 很 怕 麗麗， 因為 她 的 脾氣 很 壞 啊！ Dai Man very afraid Lai Lai because 3.F.SG POSS temper very bad PART “Dai Man is very afraid of Lai Lai because he has a very bad temper!” Genderless: 大文 很 怕 麗麗， 因為 佢 嘅 脾氣 很 壞 啊！ Dai Man very afraid Lai Lai because 3.SG POSS temper very bad PART “Dai Man is very afraid of Lai Lai because he/she has a very bad temper!”

Implications 1. Matched < Mismatched - 他 (he) and 她 (she) have different lemma entries, they contain different syntactic information - Gender is processed semantically and syntactically 2. Matched < Genderless - Genderless has a longer reading time because there is less semantic and syntactic information