LingLunch : Kate Bellamy

Kate Bellamy (Lacito)
Gender assignment strategies in mixed noun phrases: Evidence from two communities

Previous codeswitching studies identify three gender assignment strategies in mixed noun phrases: (i) the gender of the noun’s translation equivalent dictates assignment (also known as the “analogical criterion”, see Liceras et al., 2008); (ii) phonological cues from the ungendered language coincide with gender assignment in the gendered language; or (iii) a default gender preference (often masculine) proliferates (e.g. Valdés Kroff, 2016; Parafita Couto et al., 2015).

In this talk I will present the results of two experimental tasks (one production and one judgement task) and one corpus study from two distinct bilingual communities: Purepecha-Spanish bilinguals in Michoacán (Mexico), and Tsova-Tush-Georgian speakers in Zemo Alvani (Georgia). Purepecha and Georgian have no grammatical gender system, whereas Spanish has two genders (masculine and feminine) and Tsova-Tush has five (masculine human, feminine human, and three ‘neuter’ genders called B, D, J after the form of their agreement targets). I will therefore focus on how nouns from the ungendered language are inserted into the gendered language.

The results highlight how speakers in the two communities prefer different gender assignment strategies in the same task: in the director-matcher production task Purepecha-Spanish bilinguals prefer a masculine default strategy, while Tsova-Tush-Georgian speakers opt for the gender of the translation equivalent more often. In the forced-choice acceptability judgement task, the Purepecha-Spanish participants preferred a phonological strategy, driven by word-final -a on Purepecha nouns coinciding with the canonical feminine ending in Spanish. In contrast, Tsova-Tush responses were less consistent, with all three strategies appearing.

Taken together, these findings indicate that task type plays a role in the type of gender assignment strategy applied (Bellamy et al., 2018). They also support the claim that sequential bilinguals who acquired the gendered language first, as is the case with the Tsova-Tush cohort, are more likely to prefer a translation equivalent strategy (in production). Moreover, we also find that frequency plays a role: more frequent lexemes display higher inter-participant consistency in production for the Tsova-Tush group.

References

• Bellamy, K.; Parafita Couto, M.C.; Stadthagen-Gonzalez , H. 2018. Investigating gender assignment strategies in mixed Purepecha–Spanish nominal constructions. Languages 3(3): 28.
• Gullberg, M., Indefrey, P. & Muysken, P. 2009. Research techniques for the study of code-switching. In: Bullock, B. & Toribio, A.J. (eds.) The Cambridge handbook of linguistic code-switching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21-39.
• Liceras, J. M., Fernández Fuertes, R., Perales, S., Pérez-Tattam, R., & Spradlin, K. T. 2008. Gender and gender agreement in bilingual native and non-native grammars: A view from child and adult functional-lexical mixings. Lingua 118: 827–51.
• Parafita Couto, M.C.; Munarriz, A.; Epelde, I.; Deuchar M.; Oyharçabal, B. 2015. Gender conflict resolution in Spanish–Basque mixed DPs. Bilingualism, Language and Cognition 18(2): 304-323.
• Valdés Kroff, J. R. (2016). Mixed NPs in Spanish-English bilingual speech: Using a corpus-based approach to inform models of sentence processing. In R. E. Guzzardo Tamargo, C. M. Mazak, & M. C. Parafita Couto (Eds.), Spanish-English code-switching in the Caribbean and the US, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 281-300.