ERIC Number: EJ1065083
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Aug
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0090-6905
EISSN: N/A
Grammatical Gender and Mental Representation of Object: The Case of Musical Instruments
Vuksanovic, Jasmina; Bjekic, Jovana; Radivojevic, Natalija
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, v44 n4 p383-397 Aug 2015
A body of research shows that grammatical gender, although an arbitrary category, is viewed as the system with its own meaning. However, the question remains to what extent does grammatical gender influence shaping our notions about objects when both verbal and visual information are available. Two experiments were conducted. The results obtained in Experiment 1 have shown that grammatical gender as a linguistic property of the pseudo-nouns used as names for musical instruments significantly affects people's representations about these instruments. The purpose of Experiment 2 was to examine how the representation of musical instruments will be shaped in the presence of both language and visual information. The results indicate that the co-existence of linguistic and visual information results in formation of concepts about selected instruments by all available information from both sources, thus suggesting that grammatical gender influences nonverbal concepts' forming, but has no privileged status in the matter.
Descriptors: Language Styles, Form Classes (Languages), Psycholinguistics, Grammar, Classification, Nouns, Musical Instruments, Concept Formation, Verbal Stimuli, Visual Stimuli, Nonverbal Learning, Educational Experiments, Naming
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
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