Abstract
Previous research, for example in English, French, German, and Spanish, has investigated the interplay between grammatical gender information and stereotype gender information (e.g., that secretaries are usually female, in many cultures), in the interpretation of both singular noun phrases (the secretary) and plural nouns phrases, particularly so-called generic masculines—nouns that have masculine grammatical gender but that should be able to refer to both groups of men and mixed groups of men and women. Since the studies have been conducted in cultures with broadly similar stereotypes, the effects generally reflect differences in the grammatical systems of the languages. Russian has a more complex grammatical gender system than the languages previously studied, and, unlike those languages frequently presents examples in which grammatical gender is marked on the predicate (in an inflection on the verb). In this study we collected stereotype norms for 160 role names in Russian, providing a useful resource for further work in this language. We also conducted a reading time study examining the interaction of grammatical and stereotype gender information in the interpretation of both Russian singular noun phrases, and plurals that were (potentially) generic masculines. Our results show that, although both types of gender information are used, when available, the effects of grammatical marking on the predicate are not as strong as those of such marking on subject noun phrases.
Highlights
The understanding of written text and spoken discourse depends on the integration of information that is explicitly presented in the text with background information, both specific and general, that the comprehender has
We collected a set of stereotype norms for 160 Russian role names, and used a subset of these role names to construct short passages for an online study of the use of stereotype and other gender information in the interpretation of Russian
Russian was of interest because of its morphological gender marking on verbs, which typically agrees with the semantic gender of an animate referent, and because of the existence of different noun classes, which may or may not have corresponding feminine forms
Summary
The understanding of written text and spoken discourse depends on the integration of information that is explicitly presented in the text with background information, both specific and general, that the comprehender has. The combination of these two types of information should be straightforward according to theories, such as the theory of mental models (Johnson-Laird, 1983), that claim the two types of information have the same format. There has been some debate about the extent to which inference making occurs routinely during comprehension. Alternative, constructivist accounts (e.g., Graesser et al, 1994) place more emphasis on inference making, attempting, for example, to identify classes of inference that are routinely made, or circumstances in which inferences are made in an “effort after meaning.” To some extent
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