RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 The frequency of word gender as a variable for lexical access in Spanish
A1 Santos, Anthea
A1 Bermúdez Margaretto, Beatriz
A1 Álvarez González, Carlos Javier
A1 Domínguez Martínez, Alberto
A2 Psicología CognitivaSocial y Organizacional
K1 development of morphology
K1 dominant gender
K1 dual route model
K1 frequency of the stem
K1 morphological gender
AB The endings of Spanish nouns reflect gender with varying degrees offrequency and regularity. The most common and regular endings are -o formasculine nouns and -a for feminine nouns, -o being more frequent and lessclosely associated with a specific gender category (masculine) than -a. Pairs ofwords occurring with both gender categories differ in the frequencies with whichthey are used as masculine or feminine forms: médic-o/médic-a ‘doctor’ (m.)/‘doctor’ (f.) is a clear example of a masculine-dominant pair, whereas enfermer-o/enfermer-a ‘nurse’ (m.)/ ‘nurse’ (f.) is a feminine-dominant pair. Adult readers ofSpanish are faster in recognizing feminine forms of feminine-dominant pairs, andmasculine forms of masculine-dominant pairs (Dominguez, Alberto, FernandoCuetos & Juan Segui. 1999. The processing of grammatical gender and number inSpanish. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 28(5). 485–498). This study aims totest the dominant frequency effect in third and sixth grade children, as well as inadults. Children were faster in recognizing masculine forms in masculinedominant pairs, but not feminine forms in feminine-dominant pairs. Adults, bycontrast, tended to respond faster to higher frequency words, irrespective ofgender, indicating that they have independent representations for both genders.The dominance of masculine forms in children could be a consequence of thestatistical distribution of gender dominance and regularity in Spanish. The experience of skilled adult readers seems to make them less dependent on thisstatistical pattern
YR 2022
FD 2022
LK http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/35483
UL http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/35483
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DS Repositorio institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna
RD 07-ago-2024