Skip to main content
Log in

Grammatical Gender in Speech Production: Evidence from Czech

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Three experiments demonstrate gender congruency effects (i.e., naming times of a picture are faster when the name of the target picture and a distractor noun are gender congruent) in Czech. In the first experiment, subjects named the pictures by producing gender-marked demonstrative pronouns and a noun. In the second and third experiments, subjects produced a gender-marked numeral (marked with a suffix) plus a noun. Two types of such suffixes exist in Czech. Some numerals vary in nominative singular with gender, others do not. The results show significant gender congruency effects in all experiments. They suggest that gender congruency effects can be obtained not only with free, but also with bound morphemes. In the second and third experiment the effect only emerged when the suffix was gender-marked (as opposed to gender-invariant), supporting the view that the gender congruency effect is due to competition at the level of phonological forms rather than at the grammatical level.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alario F.-X., Caramazza A. (2002) The production of determiners: Evidence from French. Cognition 82: 179–223

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Beringer J. (1999) Experimental run time system. BeriSoft Cooperation, Frankfurt

    Google Scholar 

  • Caramazza A. (1997) How many levels of processing are there in lexical access?. Cognitive Neuropsychology 14: 177–208

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Caramazza A., Miozzo M., Costa A., Schiller N., Alario F.-X. (2001) Lexical selection: A cross-language investigation of determiner production. In: Dupoux E. (eds). Language, brain, and cognitive development: Essays in honor of Jacques Mehler. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 209–226

    Google Scholar 

  • Clahsen H. (1999) Lexical entries and rules of language: A multidisciplinary study of German inflection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22, 991–1060

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Costa A., Sebastian-Galles N., Miozzo M., Caramazza A. (1999) The gender congruity effect: Evidence from Spanish and Catalan. Language and Cognitive Processes 14, 381–391

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Costa A., Kovacic D., Fedorenko E., Caramazza A. (2003) The gender congruency effect and the selection of free-standing and bound morphemes: Evidence from Croatian. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 29, 1270–1282

    Google Scholar 

  • Dell G.S. (1986) A spreading-activation model of retrieval in sentence production. Psychological Review 93, 231–241

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • La Heij W., Mak P., Sander J., Willeboordse E. (1998) The gender congruency effect in picture-word tasks. Psychological Research 61, 209–219

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levelt W.J.M. (1989) Speaking: From intention to articulation. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Levelt W.J.M., Roelofs A., Meyer A.S. (1999) A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22, 1–75

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Miozzo M., Caramazza A. (1999) The selection of determiners in noun phrase production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 25, 907–922

    Google Scholar 

  • Pechmann T., Zerbst D. (2004) Syntactic constraints on lexical selection in language production. In: Pechmann T., Habel C. (eds). Multidisciplinary approaches to language production. Mouton, Berlin, pp. 279–303

    Google Scholar 

  • Schiller N.O., Caramazza A. (2002) The selection of grammatical features in word production: The case of plural nouns in German. Brain and Language 81, 342–357

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schiller N.O., Caramazza A. (2003) Grammatical feature selection in noun phrase production: Evidence from German and Dutch. Journal of Memory and Language 48, 169–194

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schriefers H. (1993) Syntactic processes in the production of noun phrases. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 19: 841–850

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schriefers H., Jescheniak J.D. (1999) Representation and processing of grammatical gender in language production: A review. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 28, 575–600

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schriefers H., Jescheniak J.D., Hantsch A. (2002) Determiner selection in noun phrase production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 28, 941–950

    Google Scholar 

  • Schriefers H., Jescheniak J.D., Hantsch A. (2005) Selection of gender-marked morphemes in speech production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 31, 159–168

    Google Scholar 

  • Schriefers H., Teruel E. (2000) Grammatical gender in noun phrase production: The gender interference effect in German. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1368–1377

    Google Scholar 

  • Stemberger J.P., MacWhinney B. (1986) Frequency and the storage of regularly inflected forms. Memory & Cognition 14, 17–26

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Berkum J.J.A. (1997) Syntactic processes in speech production: The retrieval of grammatical gender. Cognition 64, 115–152

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Denisa Bordag.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bordag, D., Pechmann, T. Grammatical Gender in Speech Production: Evidence from Czech. J Psycholinguist Res 37, 69–85 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-007-9060-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-007-9060-0

Keywords

Navigation