This study explored learning and generalization of parts of the Russian case-marking paradigm, an inflecting-fusional system in which affixes simultaneously mark several grammatical features (case, gender, number, animacy). In Experiment 1, adult English speakers (N = 43) were exposed to nouns with transparent gender marking in the nominative case…

To examine the effect of diminutives on gender learning, adult native speakers of English were taught Russian nouns. Half the participants trained on diminutive nouns and half on nondiminutive baseforms. Over four sessions, participants learned to use adjectives that had to agree in gender with nouns. The diminutive training group demonstrated…