TY - JOUR
T1 - Two routes to grammatical gender
T2 - Evidence from hebrew
AU - Gollan, Tamar H.
AU - Frost, Ram
PY - 2001
Y1 - 2001
N2 - Access to grammatical gender in Hebrew was examined using gender decisions and grammaticality judgments. In gender decisions, and in rejecting agreement violations, the role of gender-marking regularity was robust; irregular feminine nouns were classified more slowly and produced more errors than did regular masculine nouns. These same exception nouns, however, produced radically different results when they appeared as part of a grammatical phrase. In this context, irregular nouns were processed as quickly and accurately as were regular nouns. These findings are interpreted within a model containing two routes to grammatical gender: one that involves an abstract gender node, and another that is form-based and is assumed to play a greater role in recovery from agreement errors. We also argue that there are cross-linguistic variations in the availability and speed of the form-based route to gender. Finally, we caution that under some circumstances grammatical gender may also be retrieved through a variety of heuristics that do not necessarily reflect the normal mechanisms of access to gender.
AB - Access to grammatical gender in Hebrew was examined using gender decisions and grammaticality judgments. In gender decisions, and in rejecting agreement violations, the role of gender-marking regularity was robust; irregular feminine nouns were classified more slowly and produced more errors than did regular masculine nouns. These same exception nouns, however, produced radically different results when they appeared as part of a grammatical phrase. In this context, irregular nouns were processed as quickly and accurately as were regular nouns. These findings are interpreted within a model containing two routes to grammatical gender: one that involves an abstract gender node, and another that is form-based and is assumed to play a greater role in recovery from agreement errors. We also argue that there are cross-linguistic variations in the availability and speed of the form-based route to gender. Finally, we caution that under some circumstances grammatical gender may also be retrieved through a variety of heuristics that do not necessarily reflect the normal mechanisms of access to gender.
KW - Agreement
KW - Grammatical gender
KW - Hebrew
KW - Regularity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0035524075&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1023/A:1014235223566
DO - 10.1023/A:1014235223566
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C2 - 11913850
AN - SCOPUS:0035524075
SN - 0090-6905
VL - 30
SP - 627
EP - 651
JO - Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
JF - Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
IS - 6
ER -