The Semantic Role of Gender: Grammatical and Biological Gender Match Effects in English and Spanish

How does language affect thought? Do the grammatical structures of the language we speak influence the way we think about objects and ideas? The linguistic relativity hypothesis (Whorf, 1956) proposes that the specific language we speak affects the way we think about reality. Predictions made under this hypothesis (e.g., Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips, 2003) posit that grammatical gender is an example of a linguistic structure that affects other aspects of thought. Specifically, because speakers of languages like Spanish denote a grammatical gender to every noun, including those with inanimate referents, this systematic distinction is thought to become part of the meaning representation of objects. Under this hypothesis, pairs of words that match in grammatical gender would be considered as more similar in meaning than pairs that do not share a gender. In four experiments we examined the role of grammatical gender, as well as biological gender, as an organizing dimension of the semantic representation of speakers of Spanish and English. With respect to biological gender, as denoted by English, we found that native English speakers consider pairs of words that share a biological gender (e.g., queen-cow) to be more similar in meaning than pairs that do not share a gender (e.g., king-waitress) (Experiment 1). However, match in biological gender was not sufficient to produce a priming effect in a lexical decision task (Experiment 4). With respect to grammatical gender, as denoted by Spanish, we found that in contrast to the predictions made under the linguistic relativity hypothesis, pairs that match in grammatical gender (e.g., 'camisa' (f) - 'mesa' (f), shirt-table respectively) did not elicit higher semantic similarity ratings by native Spanish speakers compared to unmatched pairs (Experiment 2), and furthermore these pairs were not processed more quickly or accurately in a primed naming task (Experiments 3A and 3B). We discuss the theoretical and practical considerations that may underlie these effects

Bidirectional Transfer: Consequences of Translation Ambiguity for Bilingual Word Meaning

Could a second language (L2) influence how bilinguals process their native language (L1)? The work described in this dissertation examined this issue focusing on the way bilinguals interpret the meanings of words. Capitalizing on the prevalence of words that can be translated in more than one way across languages (i.e., translation ambiguity, e.g., ‘watch' and ‘clock' are both translated into Spanish as ‘reloj'), the current work examined if and how bilinguals are affected by the indirect mapping between translations. Performance of two groups of bilinguals who differed in the order in which they learned English and Spanish (English-Spanish and Spanish-English bilinguals) was compared to that of monolingual English controls. In Experiment 1 participants' eye movements were recorded as they read English sentences, in which target words were replaced with English words that either share a translation with the target in Spanish (e.g., ‘clock' to replace ‘watch', both corresponding to ‘reloj' in Spanish) or a control. Participants' sensitivity to the degree of anomaly created by these replacements was compared. The results indicate bidirectional patterns of transfer (L1 influence on L2 and the reverse), in that both bilingual groups processed shared-translation replacements differentially than controls. Experiment 2 further asked if translation ambiguity impacts intra-word senses. Participants were presented with pairs of phrases instantiating different senses of ambiguous English words (e.g., dinner date - expiration date) and were asked to decide if the two senses were related in meaning. Critically, for some pairs of phrases a single Spanish word encompassed both meanings of the ambiguous word (‘joint-translation') and for others each sense corresponded to a different Spanish translation (‘split-translation'). The proportion of ‘yes' responses and latency data again suggest differences between bilinguals and monolinguals as a function of translation status in Spanish. These results demonstrate that language experience continues to shape semantic representations, and highlight the dynamic and interconnected nature of the bilingual lexicon. L2 learning can thus impact the meaning interpretation of words, and may lead to subtle differences in semantic processing between monolingual and bilingual speakers