5.11.1 Goal of the experiment
In this storybook reading task I aimed to test children’s agreement strate-gies for hybrid nouns whose referents were females. The experimental items included seven nouns, such as poˇctal0on ‘postwoman’, doktor ‘doctor’, mili-cioner ‘policewoman’,fotograf ‘photographer’,povar ‘cook’,vraˇc ‘physician’, bibliotekar0 ‘librarian’. In order to neutralize the pattern, I also included four hybrid nouns whose referents were males, such as milicioner ‘policeman’, ˇsofer ‘driver’,sadovnik ‘gardener’,povar ‘cook’. As in Experiment 4, I aimed at eliciting noun-verb forms in past tense in order to increase the likelihood of semantic agreement in children’s production.
5.11.2 Materials and procedure
Two books containing six and five stories each (according to the total number of test items) were used in the task. Each story had several color pictures which portrayed female or male individuals of different professions, as well as other characters (usually children). The stories about males were used as filler items among the stories about females. The experiment was organized into two trials which were conducted on two different days. One book was read on each trial. Below I illustrate the story about a postwoman which had the following introduction accompanied by the picture in Figure 5.10:
Eta istorija pro devoˇ` cku Maˇsu, ee babuˇsku i tetju poˇctal0ona. Kak-to raz pod Novyj God Maˇsa zabolela. Togda babuˇska reˇsila ee poradovat0 i kupila ej podarok. No ˇzila ona oˇcen0 daleko, v dru-gom gorode, poetomu ona poslala podarok po poˇcte. Na drugoj
den0 babuˇska pozvonila Maˇse i govorit: “Maˇsen’ka navernoe segod-nja pridet poˇctal0on i prineset tebe moj podarok”. Maˇsa oˇcen0 obradovalas0 i stala ˇzdat0. Vdrug v dver0 pozvonili. Maˇsa podu-mala, ˇcto `eto poˇctal0on i otkryla dver0.
[This story is about a girl called Maˇsa, her granny and a post woman. Once around New Year’s Day Maˇsa got sick. So her granny decided to cheer her up and bought her a present. But she lived far away in another city, so she sent her present in the mail. The next day she called Maˇsa and said: “Maˇsa, I think today poˇctal0on will come and will bring you my present.” Maˇsa became very glad and she started waiting. Suddenly the door bell rang. Maˇsa thought it was poˇctal0on and opened the door.]
Figure 5.10: Post woman: Picture 1
The following pictures were presented to the children one after the other.
Figure 5.11: Post woman: Pic-ture 2
Figure 5.12: Post woman: Pic-ture 3
While showing the picture in Figure 5.11 the experimenter produced the lead-in statement:
Posmotri, vot zdes0 Maˇsa, a vot zdes0 poˇctal0on. Ty koneˇcno pomniˇs0, ˇcto poˇctal0on v `etoj istorii teten0ka. Vidiˇs0, u poˇctal0ona bol0ˇsaja sumka s pis0mami i podrok. A ˇcto bylo dal0ˇse, kak ty du-maeˇs0? ˇCto *sdelaliP L (target: sdelalM.SG) poˇctal0on?
[Look, here is Maˇsa and here is poˇctal0on. You surely remember that poˇctal0on is a woman in this story. Look, the post person has a big bag with letters and a present. What do you think happened then? What did poˇctal0on do?]
The picture in Figure 5.12 was used to help children with the answer.
Note that in every story the sex of the character representing the test noun was made salient in the drawing as well as orally.
5.12 Experiment 7: Double gender nouns -referent absent
5.12.1 Goal of the experiment
The experiment was designed to elicit verbal predicate agreement with five double gender nouns which were derived from real words (e.g. narjaˇzalka
‘decorator’ from the verb narjaˇzat0 ‘to decorate’) with some typical for this type of nouns suffixes, e.g. -ka, -xa, etc. These nouns are narjaˇzalka ‘dec-orator’,ˇzalelka ‘pitiful person’, umnjaˇsa ‘smarty pants’, pomoguˇsa ‘helper’, and paˇckuxa ‘sloven’. These nouns are thus made-up but not novel, as e.g.
obormoˇsa, which was used in Experiment 3 (cf. Section 5.8). In this ex-perimental condition the sex of the referents was unaccessible, so that the nouns’ morphology typical of feminine nouns was the only clue provided by the experimenter.
5.12.2 Materials and procedure
Five pictured stories (according to the number of test nouns) were arranged in one book. No characters were shown in any of the pictures. In the preamble the experimenter explained that the stories in the book were about children.
The experimenter also said that there would be no children in the pictures, because they did something and left. Then the child was invited to see what had been done. Below I illustrate the story about a child called narjaˇzalka
‘decorator’, which had the following introduction accompanied by the picture in Figure 5.13:
Eta istorija pro narjaˇ` zalku. narjaˇzalka ljubit vse narjaˇzat0, ˇctoby bylo krasivo. Po`etomu kak-to raz, narjaˇzalku poprosili ukrasit0 vot takuju eloˇcku k Novomu Godu: povesit0 na nee raznocvetnye ˇsariki, a na makuˇsku nadet0 zvezdu. Davaj teper0 posmotrim, ˇcto bylo dal0ˇse. ˇCto bylo sdelano narjaˇzalkoj?
[This story is about narjaˇzalka. narjaˇzalka likes to decorate ev-erything, so that it looks nice around. Therefore, narjaˇzalka was asked to decorate this tree for the New Year’s Day: to hang dif-ferent color balls, and to put a tar on the top. Let us see now what happened afterwards. What was done bynarjaˇzalka?]
Figure 5.13: Decorator: Picture 1
The other two pictures presented in Figures 5.14 and 5.15 were shown one by one and the experimenter asked: Cto bylo sdelano narajaˇˇ zalkoj? ˇCto
*sdelaliP L (target: sdelalM.SG) narjaˇzalka? Snaˇcala . . . A ˇcto bylo sdelano po-tom? [What was done bynarjaˇzalka? What didnarjaˇzalkado? First,. . . And what has been done after that?]
Figure 5.14: Decorator: Pic-ture 2
Figure 5.15: Decorator: Pic-ture 3
5.13 Experiment 8: Double gender nouns -referent present
5.13.1 Goal of the experiment
The experiment was designed to elicit verbal predicate agreement with four made-up double gender nouns, such as umnjaˇsa ‘smarty pants’, paˇckuxa
‘sloven’, obiˇzala ‘bully’, poedala ‘heavy eater’, and two existing but presum-ably infrequent double gender nouns, viz. stiljaga ‘mod’ andbedolaga ‘poor wretch’. These nouns were used to refer to males. In addition, I used four made-up double gender nouns to refer to females, such as umnjaˇsa ‘smarty pants’,paˇckuxa ‘sloven’,terjaxa‘flaky person’,ˇzalelka ‘pitiful person’. These were filler items. As in the Experiment 4 and Experiment 6, I aimed to elicit noun-verb forms in past tense in order to increase the likelihood of semantic agreement in the children’s production.
5.13.2 Materials and procedure
Ten pictured stories (according to the number of test items) were arranged into two books. Each story was about a boy or a girl who were present in the pictures. The stories about girls were used as filler items among the stories about boys. The experiment was organized into two trials which were conducted on two different days. One book was read on each trial. Below I present the pictures and the introduction to the story about a boy called bedolaga ‘luckless man’.
Eta istorija pro bedolagu. V naˇ` sej istorii bedolaga `eto mal0ˇcik.
Bedolaga vse vremja popadaet v neprijatnye istorii, po`etomu tak i nazyvaetsja. Vot kakaja istorija prikljuˇcilas0 s bedolagoj na reˇcke.
[This story is about bedolaga. Bedolaga is a boy in our story.
Bedolaga often gets into trouble, hence (he) is called this way.
Here is a story that happened once by the river.]
Figure 5.16: Luckless man:
Picture 1 Figure 5.17: Luckless man:
Picture 2
The pictures in Figures 5.16 and 5.17 were shown one by one and the ex-perimenter asked the lead-in question: Cto sluˇˇ cilos0 na reˇcke? ˇCto *sdelaliP L
(tagret: sdelalM.SG) bedolaga? [What happened by the river? What did bedolaga do?]
Note that in every story the sex of the character introducing the test noun was made salient in the drawing as well as orally.
5.14 Summary of the chapter
In this chapter I have specified the methodology used in the study. As we have seen, the elicited production experiments have been specifically designed to explore children’s knowledge of the semantic principle with different sub-categories of nouns. Each experimental situation is uniquely felicitous for testing the predictions discussed in Chapter 4. In the following chapters, where the experimental results are presented and analyzed, the specific pre-dictions are linked to the experiments and to the relevant noun classes. The results are presented in three chapters. Chapter 6 considers the acquisition of the semantic principle in obligatory contexts, i.e. forpapa-type nouns and male names in -a. Chapter 7 focuses on the variable contexts regarding hy-brids and female names in -ok/-ik. Finally, Chapter 8 targets the acquisition of referential gender with double gender nouns.
Chapter 6
Acquiring gender in obligatory contexts
6.1 Introduction
I begin my investigation by looking at nouns which are inherently specified for gender in the lexicon. These are common nouns like papa ‘daddy’ (also referred to as papa-type nouns) and male names in -a (e.g. Vanya) that have feminine case forms and take masculine agreement. In reality, these nouns belong to the masculine gender, since they refer to male individuals.
Hence the dominance of the semantic rule for these nouns is a categorical requirement.
In Chapter 3 I have shown that the nouns in this class can be problematic for a Russian child between the ages of 2 and 3. Yet, as I said it is not possible to draw specific conclusions about the course of acquisition from the diary data of one child (Gvozdev 1961). Therefore the main aim of this study is to reveal a more general picture regarding the acquisition of the semantic principle with different classes of exceptional nouns, which may provide deeper insights into the course of acquisition and development of language.
The aim of this chapter is twofold: First, I present novel experimental results showing an asymmetry in agreement production for individual com-mon nouns (papa-type nouns), as well as an asymmetry between rare proper names (male names in -a) and low-frequency common nouns. I then consider the implications of the new data for generative and cognitive-functional ap-proachers to language acquisition, such as the Rules and Competition (RC) model (Yang 2002) and the Words and Rules (WR) model (Pinker 1999).
Second, I explore the ramifications of these findings for understanding the 87
relationships between formal and non-formal mechanisms involved in the ac-quisition of gender.
The structure of this chapter is as follows. In Section 6.2 I formulate the specific hypotheses and predictions for the acquisition of gender with these nouns, some of which were previously discussed in Chapter 4. Other predic-tions are based on findings from Russian and other languages considered in Chapter 3, as well as certain theoretical considerations outlined in Chapter 2. In Section 6.3 I present the results of the Experiments 1, 2, and 3 and compare them to the results of the pilot test. Most crucially, both data sets show a contrast between high-frequency and low-frequency common nouns as well as between the rare male names in -a and low-frequency common nouns. In the analysis presented in Section 6.4 I propose that gender is a domain which is sensitive to token frequency. Nevertheless, I conclude that the results are not totally compatible with Pinker’s WR model. The evi-dence here comes from children’s agreement behavior with male names in -a.
Furthermore, I suggest that there are other factors, which bear on the differ-ences in the semantic representation of proper names vs. common nouns and which may explain why for some nouns the semantic rule is acquired more easily than for the others. In Section 6.4.4 I consider blocking principle as an explanation for the overgeneralization and the course of gender acquisition.
The chapter ends with a summary of the conclusions (Section 6.5).