Gender context effects in noun recognition: grammatical cues or co-occurrence effects?

Determiners with congruent gender facilitate the recognition of the following noun. We examine two explanations of this effect: either gender information is retrieved and influences lexical access, or gender effects are due to the determiner-noun co-occurrence. French nouns are either feminine or masculine and are preceded by feminine or masculine determiners in the singular. Plural articles are unmarked for gender. Because some nouns (peanuts) occur more frequently in the plural than in their singular, they frequently co-occur with determiners that do not provide gender information. Conversely, nouns that occur more frequently in their singular form (cathedral) co-occur more frequently with gender-marked determiners. We examined the recognition of plural- and singular-oriented nouns preceded by gender-marked and unmarked determiners. Singular-oriented nouns were recognised faster after gender-marked (singular) articles than after gender-unmarked (plural) ones. However, plural-oriented nouns were recognised faster after gender-unmarked (plural) articles, suggesting that articles/nouns co-occurrence outweigh abstract gender cue.

带有一致性性别标记的限定词（determiner）可促进后续名词的识别。本研究针对该效应提出了两种解释：其一为性别信息被提取并影响词汇通达（lexical access）过程；其二为性别效应源于限定词与名词的共现（co-occurrence）关联。
法语名词分为阴性与阳性两类，单数形式前需搭配阴性或阳性限定词，而复数冠词无性别标记。部分名词（如peanuts，花生）的复数使用频率高于单数形式，因此常与不提供性别信息的限定词共现；反之，单数使用频率更高的名词（如cathedral，大教堂）则更常与带有性别标记的限定词搭配。
本研究考察了分别由性别标记限定词和无性别标记限定词修饰的、偏向复数和偏向单数的名词的识别情况。结果发现，偏向单数的名词在性别标记（单数）冠词后的识别速度快于无性别标记（复数）冠词后；而偏向复数的名词在无性别标记（复数）冠词后的识别速度更快，这表明限定词与名词的共现关联强于抽象的性别提示线索。