The processing of gender assignment in SpanishDoes canonicity have an effect on Basque speakers?

  1. Imaz Agirre, Ainara
Revue:
Revista española de lingüística aplicada

ISSN: 0213-2028

Année de publication: 2016

Volumen: 29

Volumen: 2

Pages: 523-543

Type: Article

DOI: 10.1075/RESLA.29.2.06IMA DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR

D'autres publications dans: Revista española de lingüística aplicada

Objectifs de Développement Durable

Résumé

This paper reports on an experiment investigating the processing of accurate gender assignment in canonical and non-canonical inanimate nouns in Spanish by native speakers of Basque with nativelike proficiency in Spanish. 33 Basque/Spanish bilinguals and 32 native speakers of Spanish completed an online and an offline gender assignment task. Participants assigned gender to inanimate nouns with canonical (-o; -a) and non-canonical word endings (-e; consonants). The results revealed that the Basque/Spanish bilingual group obtained high accuracy scores in both tasks, similar to the Spanish native speaker group. Interestingly, unlike the Spanish group, the Basque speakers showed faster reaction times with feminine nouns than masculine ones. Canonicity seems to be a strong cue for both groups, since all participants were more accurate and faster with canonical word endings. Even though quantitatively Basque/Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals’ gender assignment accuracy rates do not differ, qualitatively, the Basque/Spanish bilinguals’ assignment patterns seem to differ somewhat from those of the native Spanish speakers.

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