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The influence of three-gendered grammatical systems on simultaneous bilingual cognition : The case of Ukrainian-Russian bilinguals

Osypenko, Oleksandra ; Brandt, Silke and Athanasopoulos, Panos LU (2025) In Language and Cognition 17.
Abstract

This paper examines the linguistic relativity principle (Whorf, 1956) by investigating the impact of grammatical gender on cognition in simultaneous bilinguals of three-gendered Ukrainian and Russian. It examines whether speakers of three-gendered languages show grammatical gender effects on categorisation, empirically addressing claims that such effects are insignificant due to the presence of the neuter gender (Sera et al., 2002). We conducted two experiments using a similarity judgement paradigm while manipulating the presence of neuter gender stimuli (Phillips & Boroditsky, 2003). Experiment 1, including neuter gender, revealed no significant effects, compatible with earlier studies on three-gendered languages. Conversely,... (More)

This paper examines the linguistic relativity principle (Whorf, 1956) by investigating the impact of grammatical gender on cognition in simultaneous bilinguals of three-gendered Ukrainian and Russian. It examines whether speakers of three-gendered languages show grammatical gender effects on categorisation, empirically addressing claims that such effects are insignificant due to the presence of the neuter gender (Sera et al., 2002). We conducted two experiments using a similarity judgement paradigm while manipulating the presence of neuter gender stimuli (Phillips & Boroditsky, 2003). Experiment 1, including neuter gender, revealed no significant effects, compatible with earlier studies on three-gendered languages. Conversely, Experiment 2, excluding neuter gender stimuli, showed significant language effects. Bilingual participants rated pairs as more similar when grammatical genders in both languages were congruent with the biological sex of a character. Significant effects were also found for pairs with mismatching grammatical genders in Ukrainian and Russian. Participants with higher proficiency in Ukrainian rated pairs as more similar when the grammatical gender of a noun in Ukrainian was congruent with the character's biological sex, and incongruent in Russian. Our findings thus provide the first empirical demonstration that the exclusion of neuter gender online induces grammatical gender effects in speakers of three-gendered languages.

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organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
grammatical gender, language proficiency, linguistic relativity, simultaneous bilingualism
in
Language and Cognition
volume
17
article number
e25
publisher
Cambridge University Press
external identifiers
  • scopus:85215667450
ISSN
1866-9808
DOI
10.1017/langcog.2024.73
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
829e946f-c953-40ab-98c8-7d0decdad1c0
date added to LUP
2025-04-09 09:20:07
date last changed
2025-04-09 09:20:21
@article{829e946f-c953-40ab-98c8-7d0decdad1c0,
  abstract     = {{<p>This paper examines the linguistic relativity principle (Whorf, 1956) by investigating the impact of grammatical gender on cognition in simultaneous bilinguals of three-gendered Ukrainian and Russian. It examines whether speakers of three-gendered languages show grammatical gender effects on categorisation, empirically addressing claims that such effects are insignificant due to the presence of the neuter gender (Sera et al., 2002). We conducted two experiments using a similarity judgement paradigm while manipulating the presence of neuter gender stimuli (Phillips &amp; Boroditsky, 2003). Experiment 1, including neuter gender, revealed no significant effects, compatible with earlier studies on three-gendered languages. Conversely, Experiment 2, excluding neuter gender stimuli, showed significant language effects. Bilingual participants rated pairs as more similar when grammatical genders in both languages were congruent with the biological sex of a character. Significant effects were also found for pairs with mismatching grammatical genders in Ukrainian and Russian. Participants with higher proficiency in Ukrainian rated pairs as more similar when the grammatical gender of a noun in Ukrainian was congruent with the character's biological sex, and incongruent in Russian. Our findings thus provide the first empirical demonstration that the exclusion of neuter gender online induces grammatical gender effects in speakers of three-gendered languages.</p>}},
  author       = {{Osypenko, Oleksandra and Brandt, Silke and Athanasopoulos, Panos}},
  issn         = {{1866-9808}},
  keywords     = {{grammatical gender; language proficiency; linguistic relativity; simultaneous bilingualism}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{01}},
  publisher    = {{Cambridge University Press}},
  series       = {{Language and Cognition}},
  title        = {{The influence of three-gendered grammatical systems on simultaneous bilingual cognition : The case of Ukrainian-Russian bilinguals}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2024.73}},
  doi          = {{10.1017/langcog.2024.73}},
  volume       = {{17}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}