Диссертация (1136198), страница 18
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GryzunrodentM.NOM.SG and insectN.NOM.SG eachM.NOM.SGvypilipokaple.drankPST.PL PREPDISTR dropDAT.SGFinally, such constructions with F and N nouns, as in (8), wererejected by most of our informants. The few people who acceptedthem again preferred the masculine form.(8) Ženščinai dit’akaždyjwomanF.NOM.SG and childN.NOM.SG eachM.NOM.SGsjelipojabloku.atePST.PL PREPDISTR appleDAT.SGLet us add that M nouns are used to refer to groups of peopleof mixed or uncertain gender, or to an arbitrary member of suchgroups. This generalization is discussed by Yanovich (2012) whoshows that it does not hold for animals. For example, the wordsobaka “dog” is feminine.
There are specific words to denotemale and female dogs, but they are much more often used asswearwords, like the English bitch. To sum up, N appears tobe the grammatical default as the gender used in impersonalconstructions, while all cases where M is used as the standardoption are limited to the nouns denoting humans and sometimesother animates. In all our experiments, we used only inanimatenouns as heads and attractors (we wanted to avoid additionalfactors before the general picture becomes clear)6 .2.
EXPERIMENT 1Experiment 1 was designed to check whether the findings ofBadecker and Kuminiak (2007) would be replicated in Russian,which is very close to Slovak in the relevant part of the grammar.In particular, both languages have three genders, M is the mostfrequent, N is the least frequent, but is used in impersonalsentences.
There are no articles. Gender agreement can beobserved on adjectives and participles (in singular) and on verbs(in past tense singular). The system of declensions is very similaras well.7 Aswe explained in the introduction, participles, adjectives, and nouns inpredicates can appear either in nominative or in instrumental, and adjectivesand participles also have short forms used only in predicates and inflected forgender and number, but not for case. Often only one variant is grammatical, butsometimes two or even three are, or one is fine, while the others are marginallyacceptable.
Meaning nuances associated with them can be very subtle. It will sufficeto say that we chose instrumental forms because, unlike nominative and shortforms, they suited all our stimuli. But, if the participants occasionally respondedwith nominative or short forms, we did not count this as a mistake.8 We opted for this design primarily to facilitate the comparison with B&K’s study.In addition to that, when we were pretesting the experiment, we found that theexperimental session was relatively short, but very intense because we promptedthe participants to respond very fast. We concluded that making it 1.5 times longerto fully cross the two factors could make it too taxing.2.1. ParticipantsThirty native speakers of Russian (8 male, 22 female) participatedin Experiment 1.
Ages ranged from 18 to 50 (mean age 28.7,SD 9.4). No participant took part in more than one experiment.All experiments reported in this paper were carried out in6 Viglioccoand Franck (1999) demonstrated that the gender agreement error ratewas lower when the gender of the head noun was conceptual, rather than purelygrammatical, but we would not expect markedness patterns to be reversed in suchcases.Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org644November 2016 | Volume 7 | Article 1651Slioussar and MalkoGender Agreement Attraction in RussianTABLE 1 | Gender combinations used in Experiment 1.ConditionNP1 genderNP2 genderPredicate genderExample1/2MMM/Fbyl prosročennym / byla prosročennoj + recept na porošok3/4MFM/F(wasM.SG expiredM.SG / wasF.SG expiredF.SG + prescriptionM.NOM.SG for powderM.ACC.SG )byl prosročennym / byla prosročennoj + recept na maz’(wasM.SG expiredM.SG / wasF.SG expiredF.SG + prescriptionM.NOM.SG for ointmentF.ACC.SG )5/6FFF/M7/8FMF/M9 / 10MMM/N11 / 12MNM/N13 / 14NNN/Mbyl otkrytym / bylo otkrytym + okno v poleN/M(wasM.SG openedM.SG / wasN.SG openedN.SG + windowN.NOM.SG to fieldN.ACC.SG )byl otkrytym / bylo otkrytym + okno vo dvor15 / 16NM(wasM.SG openedM.SG / wasN.SG openedN.SG + windowN.NOM.SG to yardM.ACC.SG )heads and adjectival or prepositional modifiers (the NPs insidethese PPs were not in accusative).
Predicates were similar to theones in target stimuli and did not agree with subjects in gender inone third of the cases.Each participant saw only one target stimulus from each set.Consequently, we had four experimental lists with 148 items (48stimuli and 100 fillers). The number of conditions was balancedfor every list. Thus, every participant saw three target items percondition: for example, three FF stimuli (having an F head andan F attractor) with a matched F predicate, three FF stimuliwith a mismatched M predicate etc.
All lists began with tenfillers, and then fillers and experimental items were presented in apseudo-random order, with the constraint that no more than twoexperimental items occur consecutively.mentioning gender agreement). Then there were four practiceitems.To encourage participants to respond faster, a time counterappeared on the screen after both the predicate and the subjectwere presented.
As soon as the participant responded, theexperimenter pressed a key, and the next trial started. Allparticipants’ responses were tape-recorded. An experimentalsession lasted around 7.5 min.2.4. ResultsThe participants’ responses were transcribed, and each of themwas assigned into one of the following categories:i. Correct response: the sentence is grammatical, the subjectand the predicate provided as stimuli are repeated faithfully.ii. Agreement error: the sentence is correct except for a genderagreement error.iii.
Repetition error: the sentence is grammatical, but the subjector the predicate is repeated incorrectly (for example, theword krem “cream” was used instead of the word maz’“ointment”).iv. A combination of a repetition error and an agreement error.v. Incomplete response: the participant utters only a part of thesentence or says nothing at all.vi.
A combination of an incomplete response and an agreementerror: the sentence is incomplete, but a verb, a participle or anadjective was uttered and did not agree with the subject (cf.9a – 9b).2.3. ProcedureIn a pilot experiment, we used the same procedure as in B&K ’sstudy: participants listened to preambles and were asked togenerate complete sentences. But after running six subjects, wedid not get any attraction errors. This can be explained by thefact that such errors are in general relatively infrequent.
In B&K ’sstudy, they occurred in 3% cases on average. Since the numberof errors varies from subject to subject, the probability to elicitno errors from several people in a row is considerably high.However, we decided to switch to a different method in the mainexperiment in hope to elicit more errors.The experiment was run on a Macintosh computer usingPsyScope software (Cohen et al., 1993). In every trial, participantssaw on the computer screen a fixation point (for 300 ms), thena predicate (for 800 ms), and then a subject NP (for 800 ms).Their task was to combine the predicate and the subject in agrammatical sentence and to say it aloud. If the predicate didnot agree with the subject, participants were instructed to modifythe predicate. Before the main session started, the experimenterexplained the task on two sample items (saying that participantswould see two phrases and would be asked to combine theminto a correct sentence as fast as possible, i.e., without explicitlyFrontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org(9)a.
Receptna maz’byla...recipeM.NOM.SG for ointmentF.ACC.SG wasF.SG . . .b. Receptna maz’recipeM.NOM.SG for ointmentF.ACC.SGprosročennaja. . .expiredF.SG...Errors in subject-verb gender agreement were the only grammarerrors participants made, all other errors involved incorrectlyrepeating or omitting lexical material (we did not expect any745November 2016 | Volume 7 | Article 1651Slioussar and MalkoGender Agreement Attraction in RussianTABLE 2 | The distribution of responses in Experiment 1.Correct responses1018 (71.2%)Agreement errors61 (4.3%), 8 of them partialaRepetition errors111 (7.8%)Repetition and agreement errors9 (0.6%), 3 of them partialIncomplete responses224 (15.7%)Incomplete responses with agreement errors7 (0.5%)TABLE 3 | The distribution of responses by condition in Experiment 1.a In most sentences with agreement errors, both the verb and the adjective or participlewere in a wrong form.
They are components of a complex predicate, so we counted thisas one error (note that counting them as two errors instead would not affect the outcome,because the differences between the relevant conditions would only be inflated). However,in several cases only one of the two components did not agree with the subject.other grammar errors, for example, in number or case, butthey could have occurred accidentally). To exclude mishearingsduring transcription, both authors of this paper and two othernative speakers of Russian listened to all responses to targetstimuli.
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