This research was supported by a Feodor-Lynen grant of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation to Dieter Hillert (V.3-FLF), who was a visiting scholar at the above-mentioned departments, and was supported with facilities by a grant from the NIH National Institute for

The goals of the present study were: (1) to determine whether grammatical gender on a noun modifier can prime recognition of the following noun; (2) to determine whether the priming effect involves facilitation, inhibition or both, and (3) to compare performance across three different tasks that vary in the degree to which explicit attention to gender is required, including word repetition, gender monitoring and grammaticality judgment. Results showed a clear effect of gender priming, involving both facilitation and inhibition. Priming was observed whether or not the subjects' attention was directed to gender per se. Results suggest that gender priming involves a combination of controlled, post-lexical processing and automatic, pre-lexical processing. Implications for different models of lexical access are discussed, with special reference to modular vs. interactive-activation theories. Why grammatical priming? The issue of whether gender can be a useful prime in lexical access is a ...

(Note: due to a formatting problem, some of the pages only appear to be missing text.)

This newsletter is produced and distributed by the CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN LANGUAGE, a research

This paper presents an investigation of the relation between words and their gender in two gendered languages: German and Romanian. Gender is an issue that has long preoccupied linguists and baffled language learners. We verify the hypothesis that gender is dictated by the general sound patterns of a language, and that it goes beyond suffixes or word endings. Experimental results on German and Romanian nouns show strong support for this hypothesis, as gender prediction can be done with high accuracy based on the form of the words. 1

I hereby solemnly declare that I have written this paper by myself with only the direction of my spervisors. Only materials and sources are used that are indicated in the footnotes and bibliography of this paper. All the materials listed in this paper are used. All the sources from which I have drawn intellectual input for this paper are listed. I have placed in “quotation marks ” all words, phrases or passages taken verbatim from other sources. Neither I nor any other person has submitted this paper, or any part of this paper, in its present or in a similar version for another examination of any kind. Signed___________________________