Synthesis of my Work of Study and Research (TER) – MASTER 1 MILANO Melissa
The acquisition of gender grammatical: induction of the informative values of the suffix /a/ according to subcategories of the Name amongst children from 4 to 7 years old.
The work of study and research (TER) that I did in Master 1 in psycholinguistic, about the acquisition of the grammatical genre. Its specific purpose is to prove that the syntactic subcategories of the Name (i.e., common name versus proper name) organize the induction of probabilistic values of nominal suffixes (i.e., phonological index) allowing the attribution of the grammatical gender, and this in the subject having a typical development from four to seven years. In view of previous studies, it is not possible to explain acquisition mechanisms of subcategories of the Name by semantic, phonological and/or distributional indexes. The statement of this study is: then is it an a priori knowledge of these subcategories of the Name which could allow to select the relevant phonological information to assign the grammatical genre ?
To find out, we conducted an experiment based on Boloh and Ibernon’s studies (2010, 2011, and 2013), themselves inspired by Karmiloff-smith’s theory (1979). Two different tasks were designed for our study. The first is a spontaneous oral production task aimed at presenting artificial objects of different colours, for example red, yellow, and blue, with linguistic stimuli named “logatoms”. The second is a tacit selection task involving the presentation of various artificial objects and extra-terrestrial dolls (males versus females), whose some physical characteristics bear a gender index (i.e., moustache, lipstick, dress, tie, etc.). They are also presented with linguistic stimuli. These are suffixed in /a/ (i.e.,”Fita”,”Kiba”, and “Tida”) and don’t have the same probabilistic value under both conditions. For this reason, the first task is the first condition concerning “common names”, the second task corresponds to “proper names”. To be more precise, in French, the suffix /a/ indicates the masculine gender in the case of common names, for example, “un papa”, “un chat”, while it indicates the feminine gender in the case of proper names, for example “Melissa”, “Laura”.
In the condition “common names”, the three trios of artificial objects were presented by a logatome preceded by a numeral adjective without a gender index (i.e., “Here are three Tida”).
We indicated to the participant where we intended to place them without specifying these places (i.e., “now we’re going to put them here, there and there”). These items were placed in the examination room, close to the participant and the examiner. The participant had to specify where are items, for example, “the blue object is under the table”, “the red object is on the chair”. It was therefore necessary to note what type of article (male versus female, that is, in french “le” or “la”, “un” or “une”) the child was using.
In the “proper name” condition (tacit selection task) objects presented in quartets were not named. Several activities were proposed, (i.e., putting them online, in circles, moving them, and so on) so that he could manipulate each item. Once the participant had become familiar with items, it was up to the examiner to carry out one of the activities listed above. For example, he was asked, “Can you pass me Tida, please?” It was therefore necessary to note which object or doll the child was grasping. There is a question of, through the answers given by the participants, whether there is an a priori knowledge of the subcategories of the Name allowing the induction of the probabilistic values of the suffix /a/ of logatoms presented, by implicitly determining the grammatical gender.
In the “common name” condition, participants of both ages mostly choose the masculine article to refer to objects previously presented via a logatome suffixed in /a/ and accompanied by a gender-neutral determinant (i.e., “three”). On the other hand, the use of female in the “proper name” condition is the majority, mainly in seven-year-olds children. The combined results clearly show that prior knowledge of the syntactic subcategories of the Name organizes the induction of the probabilistic informative values of nominal suffixes allowing the correct attribution of the grammatical gender. This means that the a priori knowledge of the syntax categories, and more precisely in this case the subcategories of the name (i.e., common name versus proper name), would allow the child to select the phonological index to be treated and thus induced the probabilistic values of nominal suffixes. Participants are therefore able to distinguish the subcategory of the name presented during the experiment, in order to induce the grammatical genre based on the phonological index provided (i.e., the suffix /a/). This confirms our initial hypothesis. It was considered to replicate the experience with Williams Syndrome people, for the purpose of conducting a comparative study.
