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Language and Cognition: Effects of Grammatical Gender on the Categorisation of Objects

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Language and Cognition: Effects of Grammatical Gender on the Categorisation of Objects Language and Cognition: Effects of Grammatical Gender on the Categorisation of Objects Fatimah Almutrafi A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Integrated) School of Education, Communication, and Language Sciences Newcastle University May, 2015 Abstract One of the key testing grounds for investigating linguistic relativity is to study the effects of grammatical gender on speakers of two languages (bilinguals) who have the category of gender present in only one of their languages. Previous studies have shown that speakers of grammatically gendered languages think of objects as being either masculine or feminine according to the grammatical gender of the objects’ nouns. This study investigates the possible effects of grammatical gender on Arabic-English bilinguals and on two ‘control’ monolingual speakers of Arabic and English. Specifically, two cognitive experiments were carried out in order to investigate gender effects with variations in task instructions and task demands (categorisation vs. similarity ratings). In the first experiment, the bilingual and monolingual participants were asked to attribute masculine and feminine voices to pictures of inanimate items. The results show that the English speakers assigned voices arbitrarily, whereas the Arabic monolinguals attributed more masculine voices to objects whose noun is grammatically masculine in Arabic and more feminine voices to objects whose noun is grammatically feminine in that language, showing the strong effects of the Arabic grammatical gender system. The bilinguals were not greatly affected by the gender system and their voice attributions were somewhere between the two monolingual groups. In the second experiment, the monolinguals and Arabic-English bilinguals were asked to rate similarities between pairs on seven-point scales. The rating task used only pictorial stimuli in an attempt to prevent any strategic use of grammatical gender. Results show that all groups rated the pairs similarly and did not significantly diverge from each other. Overall, these studies suggest that conceptual organisation seems to be free from the effect of grammatical gender and that ways of accessing cognitive representations differ with the modalities tested and with the demands of the task. i Acknowledgements During this long journey, I have accumulated numerous debts, many of which I will never be able to repay. First of all, I owe a special debt of heartfelt thanks to my husband, Oudah, for his unconditional love, support and encouragement throughout the years of my study. I would not have made it this far without him. Thanks will never be enough. There are no proper words to convey my sincerest gratitude and thanks to my supervisor, Professor Vivian Cook, for his advice and invaluable feedback at every stage of the research process. This thesis would not have developed in the way that it has without his clear insight and support. My sincere thanks must also go to my second supervisor Dr. Panos Athanansopoulos for his guidance and much appreciated advice and support during the design of the experiments and his valuable feedback on the overall project. I sincerely thank my thesis examiners, Emanuel Bylund and Nick Riches for the effort and time they spent reading and commenting on my work. My deepest appreciation is further extended to my parents and my brothers and sisters for their continued prayers, love and support. I also thank my wonderful children: Firas and Samer, for always making me smile and for their understanding during those holiday periods when I was writing this thesis instead of playing with them. I hope that one day they can read this thesis and understand why I spent so much time in front of my computer. Last but not least, special thanks go to all the participants who voluntarily took part in the study, their input is greatly acknowledged and valued. Above all, I owe it all to Almighty Allah for granting me the health and strength to undertake this research project and enabling me to bring it to completion. ii Dedication To my beloved children Firas, Samer and the coming one, with love iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. i Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... ii Dedication ....................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ................................................................................................................. vii List of Figures ............................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1. Introduction ............................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Focus of the research .......................................................................................... 3 1.3 Organisation of the thesis ................................................................................... 4 Chapter 2. Literature Review...................................................................................... 6 2.1 The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis ................................................................. 6 2.1.1 Historical Background on Language and Cognition ................................... 6 2.1.2 Emergence of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis ................................................ 7 2.1.3 Language and Cognition: determinism vs. relativism .............................. 12 2.1.4 Investigating the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis ................................... 13 2.1.5 Early Studies of Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis .................................... 15 2.1.6 Recent Research on Linguistic Relativity ................................................. 20 2.1.7 Linguistic Relativity and Bilingualism ..................................................... 26 2.2 Grammatical Gender ........................................................................................ 29 2.2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 29 2.2.2 The Role of Grammatical Gender in Languages....................................... 31 2.2.3 Arabic Grammatical Gender System ........................................................ 32 2.2.4 The Acquisition of Grammatical Gender .................................................. 34 2.2.5 How Grammatical Gender Affects Cognition........................................... 36 2.2.6 Methodological Approaches for Investigating Grammatical Gender ....... 39 2.2.7 Grammatical Gender and Bilingual Cognition ......................................... 44 2.2.8 Factors Affecting Bilingual Thinking ....................................................... 49 Chapter 3. Methodology ............................................................................................ 52 3.1 Research Questions .......................................................................................... 52 3.2 Stimuli used in the experiments ....................................................................... 52 3.2.1 Voice Attribution Task (VAT) .................................................................. 53 iv 3.2.2 Similarity Rating Task (SRT) ................................................................... 54 3.3 Populations ....................................................................................................... 55 3.4 Pilot study ......................................................................................................... 55 3.5 Methodological considerations ......................................................................... 57 3.5.1 Experiments............................................................................................... 57 3.5.2 Participant Demographic Information and Language Background .......... 59 3.6 Summary .......................................................................................................... 60 Chapter 4. Voice Attribution Task ........................................................................... 61 4.1 Experiment 1A: The Effects of Grammatical Gender System on Voice Assignments by Monolingual Speakers of Arabic and English .................................. 61 4.1.1 Aims .......................................................................................................... 61 4.1.2 Hypothesis ................................................................................................. 62 4.1.3 Method ...................................................................................................... 62 4.1.3.1 Participants ........................................................................................... 62 4.1.3.2 Materials ............................................................................................... 63 4.1.3.3 Procedure .............................................................................................. 65 4.1.4 Results ....................................................................................................... 67 4.1.5 Discussion ................................................................................................
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