ERIC Number: EJ802582
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008-Jul
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
Reference Count: 96
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
Investigating Linguistic Relativity through Bilingualism: The Case of Grammatical Gender
Kousta, Stavroula-Thaleia; Vinson, David P.; Vigliocco, Gabriella
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v34 n4 p843-858 Jul 2008
The authors investigated linguistic relativity effects by examining the semantic effects of grammatical gender (present in Italian but absent in English) in fluent bilingual speakers as compared with monolingual speakers. In an error-induction experiment, they used responses by monolingual speakers to establish a baseline for bilingual speakers and show that gender affects the semantic substitution errors made by monolingual Italian speakers compared with monolingual English speakers. They then showed that Italian-English bilingual speakers behave like monolingual English speakers when the task is in English and like monolingual Italian speakers when the task is in Italian, hence exhibiting appropriate semantic representations for each language. These results show that for bilingual speakers there is intraspeaker relativity in semantic representations and, therefore, that gender does not have a conceptual, nonlinguistic effect. The results also have implications for models of bilingual semantic memory and processing. (Contains 2 tables, 2 figures and 5 footnotes.)
Descriptors: Semantics, Grammar, Linguistics, Monolingualism, Gender Bias, Semiotics, Bilingualism, English, Italian, Experiments
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org/publications
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers: N/A

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