This document summarizes a research study that investigated how people assign gender to nouns in different languages. The study developed a questionnaire with 40 nouns from French, German, and Spanish and had 21 participants indicate the gender of each noun. The researcher found that participants were more able to assign gender through speaking skills rather than reading skills. The document provides background on gender assignment systems in languages and how gender is assigned through semantics, morphology, phonology, or arbitrarily in the lexicon. It also summarizes gender systems specifically in French, German, and how gender is assigned in general across languages.
How does human mind Assign Gender to any noun of any language
1. How does human mind assign Gender
to any noun of any language
by Morphologically OR by Phonologically
Course title: - Research Method II
Resource person: - Dr. Mehar Saeed Akhtar
Submitted by: - Maqsood Ahmad
ID # 12011084006
Programme: - M. Phil (Applied Linguistics)
University of Management and Technology
Johar Town Lahore, Pakistan
2. 1. Abstract
This study was conducted to investigate, how we assign gender to any unseen and unheard noun
of any language through different skills. For this purpose a questionnaire consisted of forty items
was developed. Twenty one participants were taken randomly from different institutions.
Through this questionnaire, the researcher checked the participants ability that how they assign
gender to any unseen and unheard noun of any language through Reading or Speaking skills
(morphologically or phonologically). The researcher found that the ratio of gender assigning
through speaking was more than reading. The study was delimited to noun perception only.
2. Introduction
Gender is linguistically defined as a system of noun classes. It triggers specific types of
inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. Every noun must belong to
one of the classes and there are only few that belong to several classes at once. If a language
distinguishes between genders, one must identify the gender of a noun because of correctly
decline any noun and any modifier or other type of word affected by that noun. Linguistic notion
is distinguished from biological and social notion of a natural gender. These notions interact
closely in many languages and have linguistic effects in a given language. It can be a
complicated category of language and language change. To clarify the issue, it is important to
distinguish between the two types of gender systems, grammatical and natural conventions.
In some languages, nouns are classified as belonging to a certain gender, often masculine,
feminine or neuter and other parts of speech connected to the noun. Languages around the world
have much more extensive and complex systems of gender. In many languages gender is often
more related to the sound of the word than to its meaning. In Spanish for example, words
ending in “O” are typically masculine and words ending in “a” are typically feminine. One
example of a word with grammatical gender that differs from its natural gender is the German
Maedchen or "maiden" which is grammatically classified as neuter rather than feminine. In some
grammars, gender may refer to distinctions other than masculine and feminine.
Languages of the Caucasian family often have four genders feminine, masculine, animate, and
inanimate. Gender follows enough basic patterns that one can make an educated guess as to the
gender of an unknown word but some degree of memorization is typically necessary. More
unusual systems of gender can be found around the world. Dyirbal, an Australian Aboriginal
language notoriously includes a gender category for "women, fire and dangerous things." Some
languages have genders based on the physical shapes of objects and some languages have over
ten noun classes.
3. Many languages place each noun into two or three gender classes commonly called masculine,
feminine and neuter gender. It is important to note that the terms are used purely for linguistic
classification and have no real world implications. It is possible for words pertaining to the sexes
(masculine or feminine) to be inconsistent with their respective gender designation in any
specific language.
There is always a system at work in this process of gender assignment for even unseen and
unheard words. The purpose of this study is to see how human mind assign gender to any noun
of any language. For this purpose a questionnaire containing forty nouns (thirteen from French,
thirteen from German and fourteen from Spanish) was developed and fired among twenty one
people from different walk of life and the responses are analyzed and presented in the next
pages.
Statement of the Study
“How do We Assign Gender to any noun of any language by Reading OR by Speaking”
Objectives of the Study:
This study is conducted to achieve the following objectives:
(1) To measure how we assign gender to unseen and unheard nouns
(2) To measure the effects of age in assignment of gender to unseen and unheard nouns
(3) To measure the effects of gender in assignment of gender to unseen and unheard
nouns
(4) To measure the effects of mother tongue in assignment of gender to unseen and
unheard nouns
(5) To measure the effects of education in assignment of gender to unseen and unheard
nouns
(6) To measure the skill by which people assign gender to unseen and unheard words
Research Questions:
1. By which skill (Reading or Speaking) we Assign Gender to any unseen or unheard
noun of any language?
2. What are effects of age in assignment of gender to unseen and unheard nouns?
3. What are effects of gender in assignment of gender to unseen and unheard nouns?
4. What are effects of mother tongue in assignment of gender to unseen and unheard
nouns?
4. 5. What are effects of education in assignment of gender to unseen and unheard nouns?
To answer these questions following null hypothesis were formulated:
Ho1. There is no effect of skills (Reading or Speaking) in assigning the gender to any unseen
and unheard noun of any language.
Ho2. There are no effects of age in assignment of gender to unseen and unheard nouns.
Ho3. There are no effects of gender in assignment of gender to unseen and unheard nouns.
Ho4. There are no effects of mother tongue in assignment of gender to unseen and unheard
nouns.
Ho5. There are no effects of educational status in assignment of gender to unseen and
unheard nouns.
3. Literature review
Gender assignmentsystems: -
There are three main ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into genders according
to logical or symbolic similarities in their meaning (semantic) by grouping them with other
nouns that have similar form (morphological) or through an arbitrary (lexical) convention.
Usually a combination of three types of criteria is used, though one is more prevalent.
Semantics
In Alamblak, a Sepik Hill language spoken in Papua New Guinea, the masculine gender includes
males and things which are tall or long and slender or narrow such as fish, crocodiles, long
snakes, arrows, spears and tall slender trees, while the feminine gender includes females and
things which are short, squat or wide, such as turtles, frogs, houses, fighting shields, and trees
that are typically more round and squat than others.
Sometimes semantics prevails over the formal assignment of grammatical gender. In Polish, the
nouns mężczyzna "man" and książę "prince" are masculine, even though words with the ending
“a” are normally feminine and words that end with “ę” are usually neuter. Interestingly in
Sicilian dialect the noun indicating the male sexual organ is feminine (a minchia), while the
female sexual organ is masculine (u sticchiu). This is true also in Latin, for the words mentula
and cunnus, as used by Catullus.
Morphology
In Spanish, gender is most obviously noticeable by noun morphology. Since nouns that refer to
male persons usually end in “o” or a consonant and nouns that refer to female persons usually
5. end in “a” most other nouns that end in “o” or a consonant are also treated as masculine and
most nouns that end in “a” are treated as feminine, whatever their meaning. Nouns that end in
some other vowel are assigned a gender either according to etymology by analogy or by some
other convention. Morphology, in some cases, may override meaning. The noun
membro/miembro "member" is always masculine even when it refers to a woman but
pessoa/persona "person" is always feminine even when it refers to a man. It would however be
far more useful to consider that the gender of almost all nouns in Romance languages is
determined by etymology. It is to say that on the whole gender of a word in Portuguese, Spanish,
Italian or French is the same as the gender of its cognate word in Latin with very few exceptions.
In German, diminutives with the endings “chen” and “lein” (cognates of English “kin” and
“ling” means "little, young") are always neuter, that is why Mädchen "girl" and Fräulein "young
woman" are neuter. Another ending the nominalizing suffix “ling” can be used to make
countable nouns from uncountable nouns (Teig "dough", Teigling "piece of dough") or personal
nouns from abstract nouns (Lehre "teaching", Strafe "punishment", Lehrling "apprentice",
Sträfling "convict") or adjectives (feige "cowardly", Feigling "coward") always producing
masculine nouns. In Irish, nouns ending in “óir/eoir” and “ín” are always masculine while those
ending “óg/eog” or “lann” are always feminine.
On the other hand, the correlation between gender and morphology is usually not perfect because
problema "problem" is masculine in Spanish (for etymological reasons as it was derived from a
Greek noun of the neuter gender) and radio "radio station" is feminine because it is a shortening
of estación de radio, a phrase whose head is the feminine noun estación.
Phonological assignment rules were elaborated extensively by Köpcke (1982) on the basis of
monosyllabic nouns. He came to the conclusion that almost 2/3 of the German monosyllabic
nouns are of masculine gender. Exceptions occur, when they end in “ur/ür” which normally
implies that they receive feminine assignment.
Lexicon
In some languages, gender markers have been so eroded by time that they are no longer
recognizable, even to native speakers. Most German nouns give no morphological or semantic
clue as to their gender. It must simply be memorized. The conventional aspect of grammatical
gender is also clear when one considers that there is nothing objective about a table which makes
it feminine as French table, masculine as German Tisch, or neuter as Norwegian bord. The
learner of such languages should regard gender as an integral part of each noun. A frequent
recommendation is to memorize a modifier along with the noun as a unit, usually a definite
article, e.g. memorizing la table, where la is the French feminine singular definite article.
“derTisch” where “der” is German masculine singular nominative definite article and “bordet”
where the suffix “et” indicates the definite neuter singular in Norwegian. In French the noun's
ending often indicates gender. As a very broad trend nouns ending in “e” tend to be feminine
6. while the rest tend to be masculine but there are many exceptions. Certain suffixes are quite
reliable indicators such as the suffix “age” which when added to a verb e.g. garer "to park"
garage, nettoyer "to clean" nettoyage "cleaning", indicates a masculine noun. However when
“age” is part of the root of the word, it can be feminine as in plage "beach" or image. On the
other hand, nouns ending in "tion" "sion" and “aison” are all feminine. Whether a distant
ancestor of French, German, Norwegian, and English had a semantic value for genders is of
course a different matter. Some authors have speculated that archaic Proto-Indo-European had
two noun classes with the semantic values of animate and inanimate.
Gender assignmentin general: - How nouns are allotted to genders in a language then?
According to Corbett (1991) semantic and formal principles build the basis for these
connections. Semantic rules assign a gender to nouns with respect to their meaning. In strict
semantic systems like Tamil, semantic rules often take the principle of humanity or animacy as
the semantic core of gender. For example all animate male nouns receive masculine assignment,
all animate females will be feminine and all other (inanimate) nouns will be of neuter gender.
But this kind of language is relatively rare and most languages do not follow such a straight-
forward system. In these more formal systems gender may be determined by morphological
attributes of the noun, e.g. specific affixes, or phonological attributes, e.g. syllables etc. These
types are often inter-connected and it is not that easy to distinguish between the two of them.
Importantly, formal systems always have a semantic basis. There is no language that operates
solely on formal rules but these rules intervene where semantic ones do not succeed. When these
principles contradict semantics usually takes precedence over syntactic criteria but in general
they show extensive overlap. Another way in which languages differ that is closely connected to
the former is the type and scope of their agreement domain, the constituents that can show the
gender. They might be restricted to the noun phrase itself or extend to various other elements of
which the noun phrase is an argument. A noun’s gender may thus have an influence on the
modification of constituents like definite/indefinite articles, numerals, demonstratives,
possessives, and adjectives as well as on participles, verbs, (relative and personal) pronouns,
adverbs, pre-/postpositions, and even complementizers (Corbett; 1991; for review van Berkum,
1996). The realization of gender on these elements is primarily reflected by inflectional affixes,
as they do not have a gender by themselves, e.g. stylo [pen] is masculine in French and mainly
the article and adjective, but other constituents, too, have to agree with the noun and carryout the
agreement (gender) marking (Grosjean, Dommergues, Cornu,Guillelmon, &Besson, 1994): Le
styloauquelj’écrisest vert. [The(masc.) pen with which (masc.) I write is green(masc.).]
French language gender system
French language, like many languages of the world, organizes all nouns into grammatical gender
categories. In French, all nouns are categorized into two classes: masculine and feminine. The
attribution of the nouns to the gender classes is largely arbitrary, although some principles play a
role. There are semantic cues carried by the nouns that refer to male or female entities, morpho-
7. phonological cues carried by the endings of some nouns, and morpho-syntactic cues carried by
words syntactically related to the noun (determiners, adjectives).
German language gender system
Most Indo European languages are organized around two or three genders typically labeled
masculine/feminine or masculine/feminine/neuter, such as French and Italian or Russian and
German. German belonging to the Indo European language family employs a three gender
system, i.e. each noun is either masculine feminine or neuter. Some homonymies are of two
genders in which a category shift is meant to resolve ambiguities (der Leiter[the(masc.) chief]
and die Leiter[the (fem.) ladder]der Gehalt[the(masc.) concentration] and das Gehalt[the (neut.)
salary]die Steuer[the(fem.) tax] and das Steuer[the (neut.) steering wheel]). Only a couple of
nouns may have double gender with no difference in meaning (e.g. der/das Liter the (masc.
/neut.) liter] das/der Dotter [the (neut. /masc.) yolk] (Lübke, 1999)), but typically one form is
regarded to be more colloquial and the other more formal and less common. Taken word
frequency into account genders are almost equally distributed with the neuter gender appearing
only slightly less (26%) than feminine (35%)or masculine (39%) gender (Schiller &Caramazza,
2003).In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought
reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl.(Mark Twain, 1880)
Behind this arbitrariness at first glance, there emerges a complex combination of semantic,
morphological, and phonological principles (Corbett, 1991; Köpcke, 1982). The most obvious
semantic principle concerns natural gender: Gender reflects sex almost without exceptions.
Nouns referring to males receive masculine assignment and to females feminine respectively
(Köpcke & Zubin, 1996). This holds for human beings as well as for animals. But here we also
find the most common and cited exception as well. The German word Mädchen takes neuter
gender assignment (das Mädchen[the(neut.)girl]) because the diminutive “chen” as its
morphological suffix is usually neuter. Nevertheless it may take the feminine personal pronoun
sie(MeinFreund hat einkleines Mädchen, das/*die einMeerschweinchen hat. [My friend has
a(neut.)girl that (neut.)/*that (fem.) has a guinea pig.] Mein Freund hat einkleines
Mädchen.Es/Sie hat ein Meerschweinchen. [My friend has a (neut.) girl. It(neut)she(fem.) has
guinea pig.]). In this case where a noun does neither take agreement of one consistent pattern nor
belongs to more genders than one. This noun is supposed to be a hybrid noun (Corbett, 1991).
Morphological rules, like the one above are often not clearly distinguishable from semantic ones
because they sometimes have a meaning on their own. Other examples are the very productive
suffix “heit”(status, nature) that always carries feminine assign mentor “tum” demonstrates
membership to group which is always neuter (Weber,2001).
In German the associated gender is not overt on the noun itself but has morpho-syntactic
repercussions on constituents of the noun phrase instead which is called noun inherent gender
(nomeninhärentes Genus Weber, 2001)or covert gender (van Berkum, 1996). Constituents
showing gender marking can be found among almost all pronouns numerals, adjectives and
articles. Only the latter will be discussed a bit further as it is meant to be the one that reflects
gender primarily. Gender is not the only nominal category however that determines the inflected
8. alignment of constituents in a sentence. sAll three nominal categories together, where number
and case are the other two have to be chosen in their respective context (by the speaker) and
generate congruency within a sentence, and especially within a noun phrase. In German, as a
relatively richly inflected language, the information about these three categories merges together
in only one inflectional morpheme which is generally not unambiguous at all. For 16 possible
functions in gender, number, and case gender differences only occur in the singular and
disappear in the plural. There are only six different inflectional elements in the case of the
German definite articles. Hence, no form is a unique combination of gender, number, and case.
Spanish language gender system
Spanish is completely binary. It's a two gender system with no gender neutral nouns or pronouns.
We get by with a bone deep sense of distinction between grammatical gender and social or
biological gender. Number and nouns are masculine or feminine, the gender cannot be changed.
The exception is animals, el perro, and laperra. (laperra can mean something bad too).The
adjective must conform to the noun. (la mesa corta, el perroguapo).Some nouns appear to have
both genders, but their meaning changes with the gender. Cometa, for example La cometa is a
kite (the toy not the bird). El cometa is a comet. You cannot change the gender of cometa without
changing the meaning of the noun. It doesn't mean something bad. It's simply extremely rude to
apply it to a person. (Most people would also consider it "bad" to call a woman a "cow" or a
"pig".). There are at least handfuls (probably around a hundred or so) of nouns in Spanish which
can take either gender without changing the meaning. These nouns are classified as being
"ambiguous" (nombresambíguos en cuanto al género) with regard to gender.
4. Methodology
For this purpose a questionnaire containing forty nouns (thirteen from French, thirteen from
German and fourteen from Spanish) was developed and fired among twenty one people from
different walk of life and they were requested to assign (Masculine or Feminine) to every noun and
also tick the skill by which they are assigning gender to nouns of different languages given in the
questionnaire. Their name, Age, sex, mother tongue and educational status were also demanded.
The people responded the questionnaire joyfully and whole heartedly. The responses are
analyzed and presented over here. The questionnaire is also given after the analysis.
5. Analysis of the responded and collected data
French Nouns
1. Pluie: - /plɥi/ Feminine means rain. Out of twenty one responses thirteen recognized this
noun as a feminine while eight recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized it as
a feminine because of its morphology and its phonology.
9. 2. Etudiante: - /etydjɑ̃//ɑ̃t/ Used for both masculine and feminine means student. Out of
twenty one responses seventeen recognized this noun as a masculine while four
recognized it as a feminine. More people recognized it as a masculine because of its
morphology.
3. Parole: - /paʀɔl/ Feminine means spoken word. Out of twenty one responses fifteen
recognized this noun as a masculine while six recognized it as a feminine. More people
recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology.
4. Trait: - /tʀɛ/ Masculine means line or feature. Out of twenty one responses eleven
recognized this noun as a masculine while ten recognized it as a feminine. More people
recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology.
5. Revanche: - /ʀ(ə)vɑ̃ʃ/ Feminine means revenge. Out of twenty one responses thirteen
recognized this noun as a feminine while eight recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a feminine because of its morphology and its phonology.
6. Fille: - /fij/ Feminine means daughter. Out of twenty one responses twelve recognized
this noun as a feminine while nine recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized
it as a feminine because of its morphology.
7. Pont: - /pɔ̃/ Masculine means bridge. Out of twenty one responses eighteen recognized
this noun as a masculine while three recognized it as a feminine. More people recognized
it as a masculine because of its morphology.
8. Depense: - /depɑ̃s/ Feminine means expenditure. Out of twenty one responses fourteen
recognized this noun as a masculine while seven recognized it as a feminine. More
people recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
9. Cle: - /kle/ Feminine means key. Out of twenty one responses ten recognized this noun as
a feminine while eleven recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized it as a
masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
10. Espece: - /ɛspɛs/ Feminine means type or species. Out of twenty one responses nine
recognized this noun as a feminine while twelve recognized it as a masculine. More
people recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
11. Bonheur: - /bɔnœʀ/ Masculine means happiness. Out of twenty one responses nine
recognized this noun as a feminine while twelve recognized it as a masculine. More
people recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology.
12. Voeu: - /vø/ Masculine means desire or wish. Out of twenty one responses ten recognized
this noun as a feminine while eleven recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology.
13. Dieu: - /djø/ Masculine means god. Out of twenty one responses twelve recognized this
noun as a feminine while nine recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized it as
a feminine because of its morphology.
German Nouns
10. 14. Sohn: - /sohn/Masculine means son. Out of twenty one responses four recognized this
noun as a feminine while seventeen recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized
it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
15. Hund; - /hund/Masculine means dog. Out of twenty one responses six recognized this
noun as a feminine while fifteen recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized it
as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
16. Stadt: - /stadt/Feminine means city. Out of twenty one responses fourteen recognized this
noun as a masculine while seven recognized it as a feminine. More people recognized it
as a masculine because of its morphology.
17. Koffer: - /koffer/ Masculine means suitcase. Out of twenty one responses four recognized
this noun as a feminine while seventeen recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
18. Buch: - /buch/ Neuter means book. Out of twenty one responses seven recognized this
noun as a feminine while fourteen recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized
it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
19. Wein: - /wein/ Masculine means wine. Out of twenty one responses sixteen recognized
this noun as a feminine while five recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized
it as a feminine because of its morphology and its phonology.
20. Luft: - /luft/ Feminine means air. Out of twenty one responses nine recognized this noun
as a feminine while twelve recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized it as a
masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
21. Mann: -/mann/ Masculine means a man. Out of twenty one responses nine recognized
this noun as a feminine while twelve recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
22. Tisch: - /tisch/ Masculine means a table. Out of twenty one responses fourteen recognized
this noun as a feminine while seven recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a feminine because of its phonology.
23. Gestein: - /gestein/ Neuter means rock. Out of twenty one responses twelve recognized
this noun as a feminine while nine recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized
it as a feminine because of its morphology and its phonology.
24. Frau: - /frau/ Feminine means woman. Out of twenty one responses ten recognized this
noun as a feminine while eleven recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized it
as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
25. Sonne: - /sonne/ Feminine means sun. Out of twenty one responses fifteen recognized
this noun as a feminine while six recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized it
as a feminine because of its morphology and its phonology.
26. Frage: - /frage/ Feminine means question. Out of twenty one responses nine recognized
this noun as a feminine while twelve recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
Spanish Nouns
11. 27. Aeropuerto: - /aeropuerto/ Masculine means airport. Out of twenty one responses six
recognized this noun as a feminine while fifteen recognized it as a masculine. More
people recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
28. Panadería: - /panadería/ Feminine means bakery. Out of twenty one responses twelve
recognized this noun as a feminine while nine recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a feminine because of its morphology and its phonology.
29. Playa: - /playa/ Feminine means beach. Out of twenty one responses seven recognized
this noun as a feminine while fourteen recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
30. Fábrica: -/fabrĭca/ Feminine means factory. Out of twenty one responses thirteen
recognized this noun as a feminine while eight recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a feminine because of its morphology and its phonology.
31. Gardín: - /jardín/ Masculine means garden. Out of twenty one responses five recognized
this noun as a feminine while sixteen recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
32. Officina: - /oficina/ Feminine means office. Out of twenty one responses twelve
recognized this noun as a feminine while nine recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a feminine because of its morphology and its phonology.
33. Ciudad: - /ciudad/ Feminine means city. Out of twenty one responses three recognized
this noun as a feminine while eighteen recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
34. Barco: - /barco/ Masculine means boat. Out of twenty one responses seven recognized
this noun as a feminine while fourteen recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
35. Coche: - /coche/ Masculine means car. Out of twenty one responses twelve recognized
this noun as a feminine while nine recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized
it as a feminine because of its morphology and its phonology.
36. Casa: - /casa/ Feminine means house. Out of twenty one responses eight recognized this
noun as a feminine while thirteen recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized it
as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
37. Sala: - /sala/ Feminine means living room. Out of twenty one responses eight recognized
this noun as a feminine while thirteen recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
38. Cocina: - /cocina/ Feminine means kitchen. Out of twenty one responses seventeen
recognized this noun as a feminine while four recognized it as a masculine. More people
recognized it as a feminine because of its morphology and its phonology.
39. Cara: -/cara/ Feminine means face. Out of twenty one responses ten recognized this noun
as a feminine while eleven recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized it as a
masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
12. 40. Ojo: - /ojo/ Masculine means eye. Out of twenty one responses eight recognized this
noun as a feminine while thirteen recognized it as a masculine. More people recognized it
as a masculine because of its morphology and its phonology.
Conclusion
It is concluded through this survey that the assignment of gender is often more related to the
sound and written form of the word than to its meaning especiallyto unknown and unheard
words.Another thing which was experienced during the survey that Morphology, in some cases,
may override meanings and reader or listener mostly recognizes the morph first.
We Urdu, Punjabi, Saraiki and Potohari speakers have a gender assignment system and nodes
through which we can recognize a word and assign it a gender due to our own built in gender
assignment perceptions. So in this survey it is experienced that most of the respondents,
responded according to their mother tongues gender perceptions and system.
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Questionnaire
Dear Respondent
There is always a system at work in gender assignment process for even unseen and unheard
words. So the researcher wants to search how we assign gender to any noun of any language.
You are requested to assign (Masculine or Feminine) to every noun and also tick the skill
(Reading or speaking) by which you are assigning the gender to nouns of different languages
given in the questionnaire.
Name (Optional) ________________________________ Age_______________ (Male/Female)
Mother Tongue___________________________ Educational Status________________
I am a student of M. Phil (Applied Linguistics) in UMT Lahore. I will highly be thankful to you
for your co-operation and I assure you that the data given by you will only be used for this
research and never be enclosed to anyone else.
No. Nouns Masculine Feminine Reading Speaking
French Nouns
1 la pluie
2 uneetudiante
3 la parole
4 le trait
5 la revanche
14. 6 la fille
7 un pont
8 la depense
9 la cle
10 uneespece
11 le Bonheur
12 le voeu
13 le dieu
German Nouns
14 Sohn
15 Der Hund
16 Stadt
17 Koffer
18 Bücher
19 Wein
20 Luft
21 Mann
22 Tisch
23 Stein
24 Frau
25 Sonne
26 Frage
Spanish Nouns
27 el aeropuerto
28 Lapanadería
29 la playa
30 la fábrica
31 el gardín
32 la officinal
33 la ciudad
34 en barco
35 en automovíl
36 la casa
37 la sala
38 la cocina
39 la cara
40 el ojo