Center for Research in LanguageUCSD
CRL
Web

Reports, Abstracts, etc.

June 2008 Vol. 20, No. 2

CRL Newsletter PDFThe Role of Orthographic Gender in Cognition

Tim Beyer1, Carla L.Hudson Kam2

1Center for Research on Language, University of California, SanDiego

2Psychology, University of Califonia, Berkely

Abstract

Although grammatical gender category assignment is arbitrary with respect to the semantics of gender, speakers of languages with grammatical gender conceive of non-gendered objects as having gendered characteristics consistent with the grammatical gender category to which they belong, a phenomenon we call conceptual spread. To extend these findings, we ask if orthographic gender – gender information present in the written, but not the spoken form of a language – also leads to conceptual spread. In Experiment 1, monolingual speakers of Chinese, a language that contains orthographic gender, and monolingual speakers of English, a language that does not contain orthographic gender, were asked to rate nouns on a scale assessing masculinity/femininity. Results show no evidence of conceptual spread related to orthographic gender. To rule out methodological concerns, in Experiment 2 we asked monolingual speakers of German, a language with grammatical gender, to complete the same task as in Experiment 1. The expected effect of grammatical gender category membership and conceptual spread was found for the German speakers. This suggests that grammatical gender, unlike orthographic gender, leads to conceptual spread. We discuss various differences between grammatical gender and orthographic gender that may lead to these results.


PDF files require Acrobat or Acrobat Reader.

If there are problems downloading the files or to obtain a back issue not available here, please send an email to editor@crl.ucsd.edu.



Back Issues

March 2008: Vol. 20, No. 1

  • Auditory perception in atypical development: From basic building blocks to higher-level perceptual organization
    Mayada Elsabbagh1, Henri Cohen2, and Annette Karmiloff-Smith1
    1Center for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK ; 2Cognitive Neuroscience Center, University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada

December 2007: Vol. 19, No. 3

  • Doing Time: Speech, gesture, and the conceptualization of time
    Kensy Cooperrider and Rafael Núñez
    Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego

June 2007: Vol. 19, No. 2

  • The Coordinated Interplay Account of Utterance Comprehension, Attention, and the Use of Scene Information
    Pia Knoeferle
    Center for Research on Language, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

March 2007: Vol. 19, No. 1

  • Arab Sign Languages: A Lexical Comparison
    Kinda Al-Fityani
    Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

December 2006: Vol. 18, No. 2

  • Avoid Ambiguity! (If You Can)
    Victor S. Ferreira
    Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

June 2006: Vol. 18, No. 1

  • Effects of Broca's Aphasia and LIPC Damage on the Use of Contextual Information in Sentence Comprehension
    Eileen R. Cardillo1, Kim Plunkett2, & Jennifer Aydelott3
    1Institute for Neural Computation and the Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA; 2Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; 3Department of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK

December 2005: Vol. 17, No. 3

  • What Age of Acquisition Effects Reveal about the Nature of Phonological Processing
    Rachel I. Mayberry1 & Pamela Witcher2
    1Department of Linguistics, University of California, San Diego; 2School of Communication Sciences & Disorders, McGill University

August 2005: Vol. 17, No. 2

  • Meaning in gestures: What event-related potentials reveal about processes underlying the comprehension of iconic gestures
    Ying Choon Wu
    Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego

March 2005: Vol. 17, No. 1

  • In search of Noun-Verb dissociations in aphasia across three processing tasks
    Analía Arévalo1,2, Suzanne Moineau1,2, Ayşe Saygin1,3, Carl Ludy4 & Elizabeth Bates1,3
    1Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego; 2SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Language & Communicative Disorders; 3Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego; 4VA Medical Center, Martinez

December 2004: Vol. 16, No. 1

  • The relationship between language and coverbal gesture in aphasia
    Eva Schleicher
    Department of Psychology, University of Vienna; Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego

December 2004: Vol. 16, No. 1

  • Introducing the Gesture Norming Study: A tool for understanding on-line word and picture processing
    Analía Arévalo1,2, Andrew C. Butler3, Daniela Perani4, Stefano Cappa4 & Elizabeth Bates5
    1Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego; 2SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Language & Communicative Disorders; 3Washington University in St, Louis; 4Università Vita-Salute, Milan, Italy ; 5Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego

December 2003: Vol. 15, No. 2

  • New corpora, new tests, and new data for frequency-based corpus comparisons
    Robert A. Liebscher
    Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego

April 2003: Vol. 15, No. 1

  • A phonetic study of voiced, voiceless and alternating stops in Turkish
    Stephen M. Wilson
    Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, University of California, Los Angeles

December 2002: Vol. 14, No. 4

  • On the Role of the Anterior Superior Temporal Lobe in Language Processing: Hints from Functional Neuroimaging Studies
    Jenny Staab
    Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders, SDSU & UCSD

August 2002: Vol. 14, No. 3

  • The effects of linguistic mediation on the identification of environmental sounds
    Frederic Dick*^, Joseph Bussiere^ and Ayse Pinar Saygin*^
    *Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD and ^Center for Research in Language, UCSD

May 2002: Vol. 14, No. 2

  • Teasing Apart Actions and Objects: A Picture Naming Study
    Analia L. Arevalo
    Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders, SDSU & UCSD

February 2002: Vol. 14, No. 1

  • Syntactic processing in high- and low-skill comprehenders working under normal and stressful conditions
    Frederic Dick
    Center for Research in Language and Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD
    Morton Ann Gernsbacher
    Department of Psychology and the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison
    and
    Rachel R. Robertson
    Department of Psychology, Emory University

May 2001: Vol. 13, No. 2

  • A Study of Age-of-acquisition (AoA) Ratings in Adults
    Gowri K. Iyer, Cristina M. Saccuman, Elizabeth A. Bates & Beverly B. Wulfeck
    Language and Communicative Disorders, San Diego State University & Center for Research in Language, UCSD

February 2001: Vol. 13, No. 1

  • The Frequency of Major Sentence Types over Discourse Levels: A Corpus Analysis
    Frederic Dick & Jeffrey Elman
    University of California, San Diego

November 2000: Vol. 12, No. 3

  • The Brain's Language
    Kara Federmeier & Marta Kutas
    University of California, San Diego

July 2000: Vol. 12, No. 2

  • Objective Visual Complexity as a Variable in Studies of Picture Naming
    Anna Szekely
    Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest
    and
    Elizabeth Bates
    University of California, San Diego

May 2000: Vol. 12, No. 1

  • Introducing the CRL International Picture-Naming Project (CRL-IPNP)
    English:     Elizabeth Bates, Kara Federmeier, Dan Herron, Gowri Iyer
    University of California, San Diego
    German: Thomas Jacobsen, Thomas Pechmann
    University of Leipzig
    Italian: Simona D'Amico, Antonella Devescovi
    University of Rome 'La Sapienza'
    Spanish: Nicole Wicha, Araceli Orozco-Figueroa
    University of California, San Diego &
    Universidad Autonóma de Baja California
    Spanish-English Bilinguals: Kathryn Kohnert, Gabriel Gutierrez
    San Diego State University & University of California, San Diego
    Chinese: ChingChing Lu, Daisy Hung, Jean Hsu, Ovid Tzeng
    Yang Ming University, Taipei
    Bulgarian: Elena Andonova, Irina Gerdjikova, Teodora Mehotcheva
    New Bulgarian University, Sofia
    Hungarian: Anna Székely, Csaba Pléh
    Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest & University of Szeged

November 1999: Vol. 11, No. 7

  • Could Sarah Read the Wall Street Journal?
    Ezra Van Everbroeck
    Department of Linguistics
    University of California, San Diego

April 1999: Vol. 11, No. 6

  • Blending and Your Bank Account: Conceptual Blending in ATM Design
    Barbara E. Holder
    Department of Conitive Science
    University of California, San Diego

January 1999: Vol. 11, No. 5

  • Analyzing Semantic Processing Using Event Related Potentials
    Jenny Shao
    Department of Speech Pathology, Northwestern University
    and
    Helen Neville
    Department of Psychology, University of Oregon.

June 1998: Vol. 11, No. 4

  • On The Compatibility of Connectionism and Cognitive Linguistics
    Mark Collier
    Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego

January 1998: Vol. 11, No. 3

  • Lexicons in Contact: A Neural Network Model of Contact-Induced Change
    Lucy Hadden
    Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego

April 1997: Vol. 11, No. 2

  • Contexts That Pack a Punch: Lexical Class Priming of Picture Naming
    Kara Federmeier & Elizabeth Bates*
    Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology*, University of California, San Diego

February 1997: Vol. 11, No. 1

  • Learning and the Emergence of Coordinated Communication
    Michael Oliphant & John Batali
    Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego

March 1996: Vol. 10, No. 5

  • Rapid Word Learning by 15-Month-Olds under Tightly Controlled Conditions
    Graham Schafer and Kim Plunkett
    Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University

February 1996: Vol. 10, No. 4

  • Development in a Connectionist Framework: Rethinking the Nature-Nurture Debate
    Kim Plunkett
    Oxford University

January 1996: Vol. 10, No. 3

  • Bilingual Memory: A Re-Revised Version of the Hierarchical Model of Bilingual Memory
    Roberto R. Heredia
    Center for Research in Language, La Jolla, CA

November 1995: Vol. 10, No. 2

  • A Brain Potential Whose Latency Indexes the Length and Frequency of Words
    Jonathan W. King* and Marta Kutas*#
    *Cognitive Science, UCSD; #Neurosciences, UCSD

October 1995: Vol. 10, No. 1

  • Representing the Structure of a Simple Context-Free Language in a Recurrent Neural Network: A Dynamical Systems Approach
    Paul Rodriguez
    Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD

July 1995: Vol. 9, No. 3

  • Connectionist Modeling of the Fast Mapping Phenomenon
    Jeanne Milostan
    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, UCSD

March 1995: Vol. 9, No. 2

  • In Search of the Statistical Brain
    Javier R. Movellan
    Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD

February 1995: Vol. 9, No. 1

  • Analogic and Metaphoric Mapping in Blended Spaces: Menendez Brothers Virus
    Seana Coulson
    Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD

April 1994: Vol. 8, No. 2

  • Abstract Better Than Concrete: Implications for the Psychological and Neural Representation of Concrete Concepts
    Sarah D. Breedin
    Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neurology, Temple University
    Eleanor Saffran, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neurology, Department of Speech-Language-Hearing, Temple University
    H. Branch Coslett, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neurology, Temple University

November 1993: Vol. 8, No. 1

  • Connectionist Representations: the State of the Art
    Daniel Memmi
    LIMSI-CNRS Orsay (France)

September 1993: Vol. 7, No. 3

  • Marking Oppositions in Verbal and Nominal Collectives
    Suzanne Kemmer
    Department of Linguistics, UCSD

January 1993: Vol. 7, No. 2

  • Is Incest Best? The Role of Pragmatic Scales and Cultural Models in Abortion Rhetoric
    Seana Coulson
    Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD

October 1992: Vol. 7, No. 1

  • Mental Spaces and Constructional Meaning
    Claudia Brugman
    Center for Research in Language, UCSD

April 1992: Vol. 6, No. 4

  • Why It Might Pay To Assume That Languages Are Infinite
    Walter J. Savitch
    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, UCSD

December 1991: Vol. 6, No. 3

  • PDP Learnability and Innate Knowledge of Language
    David Kirsh
    Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD

November 1991: Vol. 6, No. 2

  • Learning to Recognize and Produce Words: Towards a Connectionist Model
    Michael Gasser
    Computer Science Department, Indiana University

October 1991: Vol. 6, No. 1

  • What is who violating? A reconsideration of Linguistic Violations in Light of Event-Related Brain Potentials
    Marta Kutas, Departments of Cognitive Science and Neurosciences, UCSD
    Robert Kluender, Department of Linguistics

Vol. 5, No. 6, August 1991

  • Hitting the Right Pitch: A Meta-Analysis of Effect of Sentence Context on Lexical Access
    Mark F. St.John
    Department of Cognitive Science, University Of California, San Diego

Vol. 5, No. 5, July 1991

  • Zai and ba Constructions in Child Mandarin
    Ping Li
    Center for Research in Language, University Of California, San Diego

Vol. 5, No. 4, May 1991

  • Middle-Subjunctive Links
    Ricardo Maldonado
    Department of Linguistics, University Of California, San Diego

Vol. 5, No. 3, April 1991 (2nd printing)

  • Preposition Use in a Speaker with Williams Syndrome: Some Cognitive Grammar Proposals
    Jo Rubba and Edward S. Klima
    Department of Linguistics, University Of California, San Diego

Vol. 5, No. 2, March 1991

  • Neo-structuralism: A commentary on the correlations between the work of Zelig Harris and Jeffrey Elman
    Peter A. Bensch
    Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University Of California, San Diego

Vol. 5, No. 1, November 1990

  • The Segmentation Problem in Early Language Acquisition
    Kim Plunkett
    University of Aarhus, Denmark

Vol. 4, No. 4, August 1990

  • Language and the Primate Brain
    Martin Sereno
    Cognitive Science,University of California, San Diego

Vol. 4, No. 3, June 1990

  • The Rule Controversy: A Cognitive Grammar Perspective
    Ronald Langacker
    University of California, San Diego
  • Connectionist Summer School 1990 Announcement

Vol. 4, No. 2, January 1990

  • Toward a Connectionist Representation of Grammatical Knowledge
    Catherine L. Harris
    Cognitive Science, UCSD
  • Announcements

Vol. 4, No. 1, December 1989

  • Anticipatory Coarticulation and Aphasia: Implications for Connectionist Models of Speech Production
    William F. Katz
    Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego

Vol. 3, No. 6, July 1989

  • Guarani Possessive Constructions
    Maura Velazquez
    Department of Linguistics,University of California, San Diego

Vol. 3, No. 5, June 1989

  • Foreign Policy By Metaphor
    Paul Chilton
    University of Warwick, U.K.
    George Lakoff, University of California Berkeley

Vol. 3, No. 4, April 1989

  • Announcements
  • Competent Scientist Meets the Empiricist Mind
    Valerie Walker
    Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego

Vol. 3, No. 3, January 1989

  • Announcements

Vol. 3, No. 2, November 1988

  • UCSD Connectionist Paper: A Connectionist Perspective on Prosodic Structure
    Mary Hare, Linguistics, David Corina, Psychology, and Garrison W. Cottrell, Computer Science

Vol. 3, No. 1, September 1988

  • Harris and the Reality of Language
    S.-Y. Kuroda
    Department of Linguistics,University of California, San Diego

Vol. 2, No. 5, June 1988

  • A Geometric Conception of Grammar
    S.-Y. Kuroda
    Department of Linguistics, University of California, San Diego

Vol. 2, No. 4, April 1988

  • Abstract: Finding Structure in Time
    Jeff Elman
    Department of Linguistics,University of California, San Diego
  • Rules and Regularities in the Acquisition of the English Past Tense
    Virginia Marchman
    Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego

Vol. 2, No. 3, January 1988

  • Formal Semantics, Pragmatics, and Situated Meaning
    Aaron Cicourel
    Department of Sociology,University of California, San Diego

Vol. 2, No. 2, December 1987

  • Transitivity and the Lexicon
    Sally Rice
    Department of Linguistics, University of California, San Diego

Vol. 2, No. 1, November 1987

  • UCSD Job Announcements: Cognitive Science; Linguistics
  • Recent Dissertations
  • R. W. Langacker’s Clarification
    ...in response to S. -Y. Kuroda's paper, Where is Chomsky's Bottleneck? (Vol.1, No. 7)

Vol. 1, No. 7, November 1987

  • Where is Chomsky's Bottleneck?
    S.-Y. Kuroda
    Department of Linguistics,University of California, San Diego

Vol. 1, No. 6, July 1987

  • Dimensions of Ambiguity
    Peter Norvig
    Computer Science, UC Berkeley

Vol. 1, No. 4, May 1987

  • Talks and Events
  • Cognitive Semantics Workshop Report
  • Recent Dissertations
  • CRL Cognitive Scientist Job Announcement
  • Toward Connectionist Semantics
    Garrison W. Cottrell
    Institute for Cognitive Science, University of California at San Diego

Vol. 1, No. 3, February 1987

  • Talks and Events of Interest
  • Workshop in syntactic theory
  • Announcements
  • The cognitive perspective
    Ronald W. Langacker
    University of California, San Diego

Vol. 1, No. 2, January 1987

  • Talks and Events of Interest

Vol. 1, No. 1, October 1986

  • INAUGURAL ANNOUNCEMENT


Official Web Page of the University of California, San Diego