Grammatical gender mismatch under nominal ellipsis

Grammatical gender mismatch under nominal ellipsis: effects of mismatch type and grammatical number Berry Claus & Aline Willy | Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Grammatical gender languages

Asymmetry under nominal-predicate ellipsis

In grammatical gender languages such as Russian, Italian, Greek, and German, nouns denoting human beings usually take a morphological gender marker In German, nouns denoting females can be derived from male-denoting nouns by attaching the suffix –in e.g., König 'king' / König-in 'queen' Kanzler 'chancellormasculine' / Kanzler-in 'chancellorfeminine'

Proposal (e.g. Bobaljik & Zocca, 2011; Merchant 2014): certain nominals, including nouns indicating profession or nationality, exhibit an asymmetry under nominal-predicate ellipsis. For this class of nouns, gender mismatch under ellipsis is assumed to be licensed with masculine but not with feminine antecedent predicates

Markedness/presupposition difference Assumption: masculine (unmarked) forms do not impose a gender/sex presupposition, while feminine (marked) forms presuppose female referents (e.g., Bobaljik & Zocca, 2011) ⟦Kanzler⟧ PRESUPPOSITION: [∅]; ⟦Kanzlerin⟧ PRESUPPOSITION: [FEM] Resolving the ellipsis [mascantecedent-femellipsis]: *Katherine is PRESUPP: [FEM] >>> violates parallelism Katherine is PRESUPP: [∅] >>> felicitous (no gender clash)

e.g., Spencer ist Kellner. Katherine auch . [mascantecedent-femellipsis] 'Spencer is a waiter. Katherine is too.' Katherine ist Kellnerin. #Spencer auch. [femantecedent-mascellipsis] 'Katherine is a waitress. Spencer is too.' This asymmetry can be explained in terms of markedness/presuppositions and identity/parallelism requirement in ellipsis

Resolving the ellipsis [femantecedent-mascellipsis]: *Spencer is PRESUPP: [∅] >>> violates parallelism #Spencer is PRESUPP: [FEM] >>> infelicitous (gender clash)

Present study: Testing the asymmetry proposal for German with singular and plural nouns ACCEPTABILITY-JUDGMENT EXPERIMENT German native speakers (n=40) were presented with isolated sentence pairs, with an antecedent clause as the first sentence and a bare argument ellipsis as the second sentence Participants’ task: judging the acceptability of the second sentence with respect to the first sentence on a rating scale ranging from 1 (very bad) to 7 (very good) 24 experimental and 40 filler items Sentence subjects were either one or two individuals who were referred to by family names + gender-indicating titles (Frau 'Mrs.' / Herr 'Mr.')

EXPERIMENTAL ITEMS All experimental items comprised an antecedent clause with a nationality noun (to avoid gender-stereotype effects) as nominal predicate and a gender-mismatch ellipsis 2x2 versions: MISMATCH TYPE x NUMBER mascantecedent-femellipsis vs. femantecedent-mascellipsis singular vs. plural (one vs. two individuals as subject) Example Herr Saki ist Japaner. Frau Watanabe auch. 'Mr. Saki is Japanesemasc_sg. Mrs. Watanabe is too.' Frau Watanabe ist Japanerin. Herr Saki auch. 'Mrs. Watanabe is Japanesefem_sg. Mr. Saki is too.' Herr Saki und Herr Yoshimoto sind Japaner. Frau Watanabe und Frau Kobo auch. 'Mr. Saki and Mr. Yoshimoto are Japanesemasc_pl. Mrs. Watanabe and Mrs. Kono are too.' Frau Watanabe und Frau Kobo sind Japanerinnen. Herr Saki und Herr Yoshimoto auch. 'Mrs. Watanabe and Mrs. Kono are Japanesefem_pl. Mr. Saki and Mr. Yoshimoto are too.'

7

Median ratings in the four experimental conditions

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By way of comparison: median ratings for the filler items Filler type I: Md = 7; Filler type I to IV: Md = 1

5 4 3

n.s.

2

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singular plural femantecedent-mascellipsis

- predicate: nationality noun (n=8); e.g., Herr Hill ist Australier. Herr Upfield auch. 'Mr. Hill ist Australian. Mr. Upfield is too.' - variety of predicates: e.g., jobs, habits (n=14), some with negation; e.g., Frau Ospelt ist nicht abergläubig. Ihre Kollegin auch nicht. 'Mrs. Ospelt isn‘t superstitious. Her colleague isn‘t either.'

II Gender mismatch of kinship term (n=6) e.g., Frau Emre ist Großmutter. Herr Blixen auch. 'Mrs. Emre is a grandmother. Mr. Blixen is too.'

III Gender mismatch of possessive determiner (n=6) e.g., Frau Fringli ißt gerne Schokolade. Sein Sohn auch. 'Mrs. Fringli likes eating chocolate. His son does too.'

IV Polarity mismatch (n=6) e.g., Herr Dobas schnarcht. Herr Pausch auch nicht. 'Mr. Dobas snores. Mr. Pausch doesn‘t either.'

Each participant’s median ratings in the two mismatch type conditions plotted against each other

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1 0

FILLER ITEMS I Without mismatch btwn. antecedent and ellipsis

singular plural mascantecedent-femellipsis

Dot size indicates # of participants who share the given pair of median ratings

Conclusion The results of the present study do not unequivocally support the asymmetry proposal. Indeed, the direction of the mismatch-type effect is in line with an explanation in terms of presupposition differences. However, two aspects of the results are inconsistent with the presupposition account. First, there was an interaction between mismatch type and number, such that there was no effect of number on the ratings in the femantecedent-mascellipsis mismatch type, whereas the ratings in the mascantecedent-femellipsis mismatch type were significantly higher in the plural condition than in the singular condition. This finding may be explained in terms of an exposure effect, i.e. that German native speakers are familiar with the usage of masculine plural forms to refer to mixed-gender groups (for exposure effects on the generic interpretation of masculine forms see also Lévy et al., 2014). Second, there was large interindividual variation in the acceptability patterns for the two mismatch types. Though the acceptability patterns of most participants showed the predicted asymmetry, there was a large group of participants (40%) whose median ratings did not differ in the two mismatch types. Within the presupposition account, this could be explained by assuming that the two acceptability patterns reflect a difference in gender feature presuppositions. Another (or additional) possibility is that the two groups of participants differ in their sensitivity to gender equality in language. References Bobaljik, J. D. & Zocca, C. L. (2011). Gender markedness: the anatomy of a counter-example. Morphology, 21, 141-166. | Lévy, A., Gygax, P., & Gabriel, U., (2014). Fostering the generic interpretation of grammatically masculine forms: When my aunt could be one of the mechanics. The Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 26, 27-38. | Merchant, J. (2014). Gender mismatches under nominal ellipsis. Lingua, 151, 9-32. Night Whites 2018, St. Petersburg

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