The Acquisition of Gender: A Study of English and German

1 Gender in Linguistic Description. - Ontology and Development of Gender. - The Grammatical Status of Noun Classification Systems. - Theories of Opposition and Markedness. - 2 A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German. - Parts of Speech Affected by Gender. - Semantic Rules. - Natural Gender Rule. - The Animacy and Personal Rule. - Common Gender Rule. - Personification Rule. - Other Semantic Rules. - Morphological Rules. - Derivational Suffixes. - Noun Compounds. - Phonetic Rules. - The Interaction of the Rule Types. - Function. - Anticipation of Content. - Marking of the Onset of a Noun Phrase. - Distinction of Singular and Plural. - Lexical Structuring. - Anaphoric Reference. - Deictic Reference. - Functional Importance of the Male/Female Opposition. - Summary. - 3 Rules and Speakers' Behaviour. - The Psychological Status of Morphological and Phonetic Rules of Gender Assignment of German Nouns. - Evidence from Loan Words. - The Experimental Testing of the Use of Phonetic Rules in Gender Assignment in Adult German Speakers. - The Psychological Status of Semantic Rules of Gender Assignment. - Evidence from Loan Words. - Conflict of Semantic and Grammatical Gender in German. - A Study of Metaphorical Extension in German. - Frequency of English Pronoun Forms and a Study of the Use of Generic 'he' in English Children's Literature. - The Psychological Status of Unmarked Terms. - Summary and Conclusions. - 4 The Acquisition of Gender in Children. - The Acquisition of Formal Rules in German. - Hypotheses. - Observational Acquisition Data. - Indefinite Article. - Definite Article. - Vocabulary Analysis. - Gender with Suffixes and Compounds. - Gender and Plural. - Relative Pronouns and Question Words. - Experimental Investigation. - Experimental Testing of the Selection of the Definite Article for Real Words by 5- to 6-Year-Old German Children. - Experimental Testing of the Use of Phonetic Rules in 7- to 8-Year-Old German Children. - Summary and Conclusions. - The Acquisition of Semantic Rules in English and German. - The Acquisition of the Animacy and Common Gender Rule. - Hypotheses. - Observational Acquisition Data. - The Use of Pronouns Referring to Animates and Inanimates in a Production Task by 5- to 10-Year-Old English and German Children. - The Use of Pronouns Referring to Animates and Inanimates in an 'Animating' Context Compared in English Adults and in 9- to 10-Year-Old Children. - Summary and Conclusions. - Acquisition of the Natural Gender Rule. - Hypotheses. - Observational Acquisition Data. - The Use of Pronouns Referring to Sex-Marked Persons in a Production Task by 3- to 4-Year-Old English and German Children. - Summary and Conclusions. - Implications for Explanatory Theories in Child Language Acquisition . - The Interaction of Formal and Semantic Rules in Acquisition. - The Relative Notion of 'Clear Rule'. - Summary and Conclusions. - 5 Psychological Gender. - Language and Thought. - An Investigation of the Interrelationship of Grammatical Gender and Sex Assignment in English and German. - An Investigation of Sex Assignment in Children's Literature. - Experimental Testing of Sex Assignment. - The Testing of Sex Attributes. - Summary and Conclusions. - 6 Conclusions. - Appendices. - References.