Does learning a foreign language affect object categorization in native speakers of a language with grammatical gender? The case of Lithuanian speakers learning three languages with different types of gender systems (Italian, Russian and German).
Authors: Vernich Luca AT 
Published: September 2017

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions:

We examined whether categorization of inanimate objects is influenced by learning a language with a different type of gender system. Previous research has examined speakers of languages without grammatical gender (English and Hungarian) who were learning a language with grammatical gender (Spanish and French). By contrast, we examined speakers of a language with grammatical gender (Lithuanian) learning a language with a structurally different gender system (Italian, Russian or German).

Design/Methodology/Approach:

We compared four groups (Lithuanians speaking only English and Lithuanian, Lithuanians learning Italian, Lithuanians learning Russian, Lithuanians learning German) in the completion of a voice attribution task where subjects are asked to attribute either the voice of a man or a woman to inanimate objects.

Data and Analysis:

We tested 128 subjects (32 for each group). The first group included Lithuanians who spoke only Lithuanian and English, and served as baseline for Lithuanians with a single grammatical gender system (Group B). The other three groups included Lithuanians that were proficient in either Italian (Group ITA), Russian (Group RUS) or German (Group GER). Data were analysed by means of mixed effects generalized linear models created using R glmer() function. We conducted a series of logistic regressions examining the following fixed effects: sex, age, distinction ‘artefact vs. natural object’, Lithuanian gender, proficiency in the relevant foreign language and the gender of each item in the relevant foreign language (i.e. either Italian, Russian or German).

Findings/Conclusions:

Our results suggest that the four groups behaved somewhat differently and that belonging to one group or the other was a significant predictor of a participant’s choices. It seems, however, that gender in the respective foreign language did not affect a participant’s choices. By and large, differences between the four groups did not mirror gender asymmetries between the four languages, yet learning a foreign language did appear to interfere with the standard pattern exhibited by baseline Lithuanians who had the highest frequency of attributions congruent with Lithuanian gender.

Originality:

Recent studies showed that the effects of grammatical gender on categorization might not be limited to native language, but could apply also to a second language acquired later in life. Whereas previous research has examined subjects speaking an L1 without grammatical gender, we followed Kurinski and Sera’s suggestion and tested native speakers of a gendered language learning an L2 with a structurally different gender system. More specifically, we compared native speakers of a language with two genders (Lithuanian) learning either a system with three genders (Russian), a system with three genders and gender-marking articles (German) or a system with two genders and gender-marking articles (Italian). Our goal was to understand whether language effects on cognition are influenced not only by specific properties of the L1 – as suggested by Kurinski et al., who noted a difference between English and Hungarian learners – but also by specific properties of the L2 gender system and by the typological gap between the L1 and the L2 gender system.

Significance/Implications:

We asked whether we would find language-specific effects suggesting that learning a foreign language systematically ‘pulls’ standard categorization patterns towards the L2 gender system. Our findings do not support this idea. However, our results do suggest that learning a foreign language weakens the strength of the link between each item and its gender.