LINGUIST List 16.597

Tue Mar 01 2005

Qs: Gender in Creole Langs; Visual Recognition Task

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Directory

1. Cristina Martínez-Sanz, Gender in Creole Languages
2. Tolya Kharkhurin, Continuous visual recognition task

Message 1: Gender in Creole Languages

Date: 27-Feb-2005
From: Cristina Martínez-Sanz <cristy45

hotmail.com>
Subject: Gender in Creole Languages

Dear all:

It is generally assumed that distinctions of grammatical gender in creole
languages were not maintained, as seen in (1), apart from the preserved
natural gender oppositions in specific nouns, as in (2), the natural gender
distinctions indicated through the juxtaposition of a noun indicating sex,
which Holm (1989) treated as calques on African idioms, as in (3), or the
feminine adjectives preserved with a distinction in meaning, as in (4):
[examples taken from Holm (1989)]

(1) un kasa má bonito [Palenquero]
'a prettier house'
(cf. Spanish 'una casa más bonita', being 'house' feminine)
(2) a. rei ('king', cf. Spanish 'rey', 'king') [Papiamentu]
b. reina ('queen', cf.Spanish 'reina', 'queen')
(3) a. mucha homber [Papiamentu]
'boy' (cf. Spanish 'muchacho','boy', and 'hombre', 'man')
b. mucha muhe (cf. Spanish 'mujer', 'woman')
(4) a. gró [Guyanais]
'fat' (cf. French 'gros', 'fat')
b. gros
'pregnant' (cf. French 'grosse', 'fat.feminine'

However, I would like to know if there are any creole languages that have
grammaticalized gender, that is to say, if any creole language has gender
markers such as free or bound morphemes, or any other grammatical ways of
marking gender.

Thanks a lot,

Cristina Martínez-Sanz
Department of Modern Languages
University of Ottawa, Canada

Linguistic Field(s): Morphology

Message 2: Continuous visual recognition task

Date: 28-Feb-2005
From: Tolya Kharkhurin <akharkhurin

gc.cuny.edu>
Subject: Continuous visual recognition task

Dear all,

We would like to use a continuous visual recognition task to test effects
of native phonology on word recognition, and have several methodological
questions about the task: How to select the optimal size of the lag(s)? How
to randomize stimuli from different stimulus groups among the legs? How to
do the analysis?

We would appreciate suggestions from those who have used this task before
or references to papers describing this method.

Please send your ideas to akharkhurin

gc.cuny.edu

Thank you,

Tolya

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science
                            Phonology
                            Psycholinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (ENG)
                            Russian (RUS)

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