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Cet article présente une étude expérimentale pilote réalisée afin d’observer s’il est possible d’amorcer la féminisation des noms de rôles chez des enfants âgé·es de 4 à 6 ans. Le type d’amorce était manipulé. Les amorces étaient des noms féminins de rôles introduits dans des histoires lues aux enfants : il s’agissait soit de noms féminins connus des enfants (comme une princesse), soit de noms féminins rares (voire encore jamais rencontrés par les enfants, comme une capitainesse), soit de noms épicènes (comme une vétérinaire). Les cibles étaient des personnages féminins que les enfants devaient dénommer à partir d’illustration. Les résultats montrent que bien que les enfants utilisent majoritairement des formes masculines pour désigner des personnages féminins, le nombre de formes féminines produites augmente néanmoins à mesure que l’expérience progresse. Il est donc possible d’amorcer la production de formes féminines : plus les enfants sont exposé·es à des formes féminines et plus iels sont susceptibles d’en produire. This paper presents an experimental pilot study conducted to observe whether the feminization of nouns could be primed in children aged 4 to 6 years. Primes were female character nouns introduced in stories read to the children: they were either female nouns known to the children (such as une princesse/a princess), female nouns that were rare (or even never encountered by the children, such as une capitainesse/a female captain), or epicene nouns (such as une vétérinaire/a veterinarian). The targets were female characters that the children had to name from illustrations. Although the children used mostly masculine forms to designate female characters, we found that more feminine forms were produced as the experiment progressed. Priming the production of feminine forms is thus possible: the more children are exposed to feminine forms, the more likely they are to produce them.

Priming effects have been related to strong correspondences between the syntactic structure of sentences and of equations (Zeng et al., 2021 ; Hedier et al., 2020 ; Scheepers et al. 2019; Pozniak et al., 2018 ; Zeng et al., 2018 ; Scheepers et al., 2011, a.o.). We did two experiments to investigate how fine-grained the correspondences between linguistics and mathematics are. The first preregistered experiment showed no general effect of mathematical priming on relative clause attachment. An explanation for this was the task itself: contrary to previous studies (from Scheepers and colleagues especially), participants read a sentence with an ambiguous relative clause and then had to decide whether this relative clause refers to the first NP or the second one. However, participants could have a bias for the relative clause attachment (because of the lexical associations between the nouns perhaps), and priming could be less effective in this case. The second preregisterd experiment was a production experiment. However, results did not show the expected results. Calculations did not prime the expected structure of RC attachment and, moreover, we found a strong interaction with number marking. Reanalyses of previous experiments in French showed the same pattern regarding NP1 number which seems to be a robust effect. We suggest that the mathematical calculations primed RC construal to thematic domains as it has been suggested in Construal Theory (Frazier & Clifton, 1997, see also Keller, 1995, or Crysmann, 2005, for corresponding analyses in HPSG). We then decided to replicate the experiments with the adequate equations according to Construal Theory.

The specificity of linguistic structures has been a central question in linguistic research related to questions on language universals and learnability. Our research question is how specific the abstract syntactic structures and the required cognitive capacities are to language processing. This question is currently still under debate (see, e.g., Amalric & Dehaene, 2016; van de Cavey & Hartsuiker, 2016; Fedorenko et al., 2011; Hartsuiker et al. 2004; Patel, 2003; Pozniak et al., 2018; Scheepers, 2004; Scheepers et al., 2011; Scheepers & Sturt, 2014). In our project, we will look at mathematical priming on attachment ambiguities (relative clause, prepositional phrase) in English, French and German. Contrary to previous studies, we will conduct off-line as well as on-line experiments, using parallel designs and close materials in all languages. The comparison of these three languages, chosen for specific typological differences, will allow us to better understand the nature of mathematical priming, i.e. whether it is a superficial phenomenon (priority ordering) or a phenomenon influenced by finer properties of the languages. Our research will contribute to the fundamental question of whether certain structural constraints are specific to language or whether they can be ascribed to the more general cognitive domain. For this preregistration, we will describe the first priming experiments we plan to run for this project, that is to say a multiple choice experiment in French and English.

The specificity of linguistic structures has been a central question in linguistic research related to questions on language universals and learnability. Our research question is how specific the abstract syntactic structures and the required cognitive capacities are to language processing. This question is currently still under debate (see, e.g., Amalric & Dehaene, 2016; van de Cavey & Hartsuiker, 2016; Fedorenko et al., 2011; Hartsuiker et al. 2004; Patel, 2003; Pozniak et al., 2018; Scheepers, 2004; Scheepers et al., 2011; Scheepers & Sturt, 2014). In our project, we will look at mathematical priming on attachment ambiguities (relative clause, prepositional phrase) in English, French and German. Contrary to previous studies, we will conduct off-line as well as on-line experiments, using parallel designs and close materials in all languages. The comparison of these three languages, chosen for specific typological differences, will allow us to better understand the nature of mathematical priming, i.e. whether it is a superficial phenomenon (priority ordering) or a phenomenon influenced by finer properties of the languages. Our research will contribute to the fundamental question of whether certain structural constraints are specific to language or whether they can be ascribed to the more general cognitive domain. For this preregistration, we will describe the other priming experiments we plan to run for this project (see https://osf.io/jd2c8), that is to say a production experiment in French only.

Materials for Poster presentation at AMLaP 2020

Subject inversion in French is usually considered to be optional (Le Bidois 1952; Kayne & Pollock 1978) and more costly than variants with preverbal subject. As the result of verb movement (Hulk & Pollock 2001), it is claimed to demand higher processing cost (Holmes & O’Regan 1981). However, some studies suggest that subject inversion in relative clauses may even be favoured by certain semantic or heaviness constraints (Fuchs 2006; Marandin 2011). In this paper, we take an empirical approach to this question. In our corpus study using the French Treebank described in Abeillé et al. (2019), we found that subject inversion in object relatives can be as frequent as cases without inversion. We also found that inversion is preferred with longer subjects and shorter and non-agentive verbs. This pattern was confirmed in an acceptability judgement experiment as well as in a self-paced reading experiment. Thus, object relatives with and without inversion are not merely stylistic variants (i.e. two equivalent syntactic ways of expressing one meaning), but are more or less preferred depending on their properties. Our results are compatible with semantic accounts of relative clause processing (Mak et al. 2006; Traxler et al. 2002).

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