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4. The theory of mind's role in pronoun acquisition : the phenomenon of pronoun reversal in typically developing childrenGreta Mazzaggio, 2016, original scientific article Abstract: This study’s aim is to understand how children learn first- and second-person singular pronouns. Many researchers tried to find possible connection between Theory of Mind (ToM) and the acquisition of pronouns. The ability to produce and comprehend first- and second-person singular pronouns seems closely linked with the ability to appreciate other people’s mental states: a lack or non-mature development of ToM may thus affect their competence in using pronouns. To strengthen this hypothesis we focused on the phenomenon of pronoun reversal, which mainly consists in the substitution of I for you, and you for I, testing a group of 17 typically developing children - 38 to 70 months of age. Due to its pro-drop classification, Italian is the focus language of this study. The outcome showed a correlation between the phenomena of ToM and pronoun reversal. Further research should focus on the directionality of this correlation and better our understanding of its meaning.
Keywords: pronoun reversal, pronouns, echolalia, theory of mind, typically developing children, psycholinguistics
Published in RUNG: 27.09.2021; Views: 1468; Downloads: 44
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6. Explicit gender stereotyping in bilingualismGreta Mazzaggio, 2021, published scientific conference contribution abstract Abstract: A gender stereotype is a mental representation related to gender, according to which certain characteristics are attributed without direct experience (Allport 1954). Many ordinary words present a negative connotation when applied to women compared to men (Lakoff 1973). Do linguistic stimuli influence our bias towards gender stereotypes? We want to exploit the foreign language effect (FLE) to see whether explicit linguistic gender stereotypes are reduced
in a second language (L2) compared to a first language (L1). We asked Italian native speakers (213), English native speakers (105) and Italian/English bilinguals (192) to evaluate words as neuter, masculine or feminine. We presented
a total of 58 words divided into four categories: 14 Power words vs. 14 Weak words and 15 Warm words vs. 15 Cold words. As expected, overall, participants judged Power words much more masculine than Weak words and Cold words much more masculine than Warm words (Rudman et al. 2001). Running a two-way MANOVA (Group*Gender), there was a statistically significant effect of group for Weak words and of Gender for both Weak words and Warm words. Post-hoc analyses revealed that L2 participants behave differently from the L1 ones, with lower masculine scores for Power words, lower feminine scores for Weak words and Warm words. We demonstrated that when presented with words in a L2 participants are less prone to judge them in a gender-biased way. Our results seem to confirm the FLE:
a L2 might trigger cognitive and emotional distance, leading to a lesser gender-biased semantic behavior and language might (mildly) affect how we perceive reality. The take home message is that linguistic behavior might affect our inner beliefs and, thus, how women are represented in everyday language should reflect better equality standards. Gender- free language policies (e.g., gender-neutral language) might be useful in the long run.
Keywords: linguistic sexism, gender, stereotype, psycholinguistics, bilingualism
Published in RUNG: 22.09.2021; Views: 1460; Downloads: 69
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7. How good a cue is a resumptive pronoun? Processing relative clauses in SlovenianMatic Pavlič, Artur Stepanov, 2020, published scientific conference contribution abstract Abstract: We explore the time course of processing Slovenian subject and object relative clauses (SRC and ORC, respectively) and the role of resumptive pronouns (RP). Participants (adult native speakers of Slovenian, Exp1: N=37; Exp2: N=33, Exp3: N=35) read the sentences in the self-paced mode, followed by a comprehension question after each sentence. In Exp.1 we ask whether the basic SRC/ORC processing asymmetry obtains in Slovenian, despite the presence of an RP. Results: The RC verb was read longer in ORCs compared to SRCs, and postverbal NPs were read longer than preverbal NPs (Figure 1). Both observations are likely to reflect integration effects, suggesting that the presence of RP does not cancel the stand-ard SRC/ORC processing asymmetry. In Exp. 2, we ask whether this asymmetry depends on the structural position of the RC within the sentence. We manipulated RC type and structural position (center-embedded, right-peripheral), across four conditions. Results: similarly to Exp.1, a SRC/ORC asymmetry was observed at the RC verb as well as between the postverbal vs. preverbal NPs, independently of the structural position of RC. The main clause predicate was read slower in sentences with center-embedded RCs compared to those with right-peripheral RCs, in accordance of predictions of metric-based theories of integration cost. Questions following ORCs took somewhat longer to answer than those following SRCs. At the same time, all RCs were read slower in the right-peripheral position than in the center-embedded position, and questions following right-peripheral RCs were answered significantly less accurately than those following center-embedded RCs. We attribute the greater complexity associated with the right-peripheral position to availability of a competitive parse based on a pseudo-relative structures. In Exp.3, we investigate how the feature structure of an RC head and its corresponding RP may affect retrieval of the RC head with the ORC subject as a featural intervenor. Design: by crossing values for number (sg., pl.) and gender (masc.,fem.) between the RC head, RP and the ORC subject we created a continuum of feature matching across four conditions. Results: the integration effect at the RC verb was significantly greater in the conditions with non-matching gender, but not those with non-matching number, suggesting that an RP does not cancel the intervention effect caused by featural similarity, while supporting the conjecture that different patterns of processing nominal features may correlate with their grammatical status (e.g. semantic vs. morphological).
Keywords: relative clause, Slovenian, resumptive pronoun, self-paced reading, structural complexity, psycholinguistics
Published in RUNG: 02.09.2020; Views: 2213; Downloads: 0
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8. Age-related effects on language production : A combined psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic perspectiveAndrea Marini, Sara Andreetta, 2016, independent scientific component part or a chapter in a monograph Abstract: This chapter focuses on the effects of aging on the process of language production from a psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic perspective. The first section provides a detailed description of the language production system by outlining the notions of micro- and macrolinguistic processing and introducing to some of the most influential psycholinguistic models of message production. The second part focuses on psycholinguistic investigations assessing age-related variations in the ability to produce a verbal message. A conclusive section outlines the complex interplay between the neural changes induced by aging and the reorganization of the language production system.
Keywords: aging, language, neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics
Published in RUNG: 09.05.2016; Views: 4496; Downloads: 0 |
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