Scribd
Upload
41 views19 pages

Boroditsky Ea 2003

The document discusses an experiment that tested whether grammatical gender influences how people describe objects. Native Spanish and German speakers described objects in English. Their descriptions reflected the grammatical genders of the object names in their native languages. For example, Spanish speakers described keys as delicate while German speakers described them as metallic, consistent with the gender assignments in each language. The findings suggest people's thinking about objects is shaped by the grammatical genders used in their native language.

Uploaded by

Nancy Daiana Farías
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
41 views19 pages

Boroditsky Ea 2003

The document discusses an experiment that tested whether grammatical gender influences how people describe objects. Native Spanish and German speakers described objects in English. Their descriptions reflected the grammatical genders of the object names in their native languages. For example, Spanish speakers described keys as delicate while German speakers described them as metallic, consistent with the gender assignments in each language. The findings suggest people's thinking about objects is shaped by the grammatical genders used in their native language.

Uploaded by

Nancy Daiana Farías
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 19

Sex, Syntax, and Semantics 69

previous language experience actually interfered with their ability to re­


member object-name pairs when the pairs happened to be conceptually
inconsistent in gender. Since both groups performed the task in English,
it appears that the semantic representation of gender (once it has been
established) is not language specific. Objects do appear to have concep­
tual gender, and this gender is consistent with the grammatical gender
assigned by language.
But what does it mean for a turnip to be conceptually feminine or for a
toaster to be conceptually masculine? How does gender actually make its
way into the representations of objects? As suggested earlier, one possi­
bility is that, depending on grammatical gender, different (stereotypically
masculine or feminine) aspects of objects may become more or less
salient in the representations of those objects. For example, if the noun
that names a toaster is masculine, then perhaps its metallic and techno­
logical properties may become more salient; but if the noun is feminine,
then perhaps its warmth, domesticity, and ability to provide nourishment
are given more importance.

4.6 Grammatical Gender and Object Descriptions

To test whether grammatical gender really does focus speakers of differ­


ent languages on different aspects of objects, Boroditsky, Schmidt, and
Phillips (2002) created a list of 24 object names that had opposite gram­
matical genders in Spanish and German (half were masculine and half
feminine in each language), and then asked a group of native Spanish
speakers and another group of native German speakers to write down
the first three adjectives that came to mind to describe each object on the
list. The study was conducted entirely in English, and none of the parti­
cipants were aware of the purpose of the study. The question was whether
the grammatical genders of object names in Spanish and German would
be reflected in the kinds of adjectives that Spanish and German speakers
generated. All of the participants were native speakers of either Spanish
or German, but both groups were highly proficient in English. Since the
experiment was conducted entirely in English (a language with no gram­
matical gender system), this is a particularly conservative test of whether
grammatical gender influences the way people think about objects.

M 26/816:261 Client: MITN J.9719 Gentner elo 07/08/02 PMU: WSL 23/08/02 pp. 59-80 101.3.04.05 Sabon_lin CH04_P Ip. 691
70 Boroditsky, Schmidt, and Phillips

After all of the adjectives provided by Spanish and German speakers


were collected, a group of English speakers (unaware of the purpose of
the study) rated the adjectives as describing masculine or feminine prop­
erties of the objects (+1 = feminine, -1 = masculine). The adjectives
were arranged in alphabetical order and were not identified as having
been produced by a Spanish or a German speaker.
As predicted, Spanish and German speakers generated adjectives that
were rated more masculine for items whose names were grammatically
masculine in their native language than for items whose names were
grammatically feminine. Because all object names used in this study had
opposite genders in Spanish and German, Spanish and German speakers
produced very different adjectives to describe the objects. For items
that were grammatically masculine in Spanish but feminine in German,
adjectives provided by Spanish speakers were rated more masculine than
those provided by German speakers. For items that were grammati­
cally masculine in German but feminine in Spanish, adjectives provided
by German speakers were rated more masculine than those provided by
Spanish speakers.
There were also observable qualitative differences between the kinds
of adjectives Spanish and German speakers produced. For example,
the word for "key" is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish.
German speakers described keys as hard, heavy, jagged, metal, serrated,
and useful, while Spanish speakers said they were golden, intricate,
little, lovely, shiny, and tiny. The word for "bridge," on the other hand,
is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish. German speakers
described bridges as beautiful, elegant, fragile, peaceful, pretty, and slen­
der, while Spanish speakers said they were big, dangerous, lo'ng, strong,
sturdy, and towering.
These findings once again indicate that people's thinking about objects
is influenced by the grammatical genders their native language assigns to
the objects' names. A further question is whether differences in language
per se lead to differences in thought, or whether other cultural differences
act as intermediary causal factors. For example, the way objects are per­
sonified in fairy tales or in poetry may depend on the grammatical gen­
ders of their names. Further, grammatical genders might affect the design

rY7 26/8 16:261 Client MIT/U J-9719 Gentner elo 07/08/02 PMU: WSL 23/08/02 pp. 6�0 10).3.04.05 Sabon_lin CH04_P Ip. 70)

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy