Optimal Categorisation: The Origin and Nature of Gender From a Psycholinguistic Perspective, 2018-2023

As part of the attempt to understand the linguistic origin and cognitive nature of grammatical gender, we designed six psycholinguistic experiments for our language sample from Vanuatu (Merei, Lewo, Vatlongos, North Ambrym) and New Caledonia (Nêlêmwa, Iaai). Each language differs in number of classifiers, and whether nouns can freely occur with different classifiers, or are restricted to just one classifier (similar to grammatical gender).

Free-listing: participants heard a possessive classifier and listed associated nouns. This revealed the different semantic domains of classifiers, the salient nouns associated with each classifier, and showed whether participants listed the same noun with different classifiers.

Card-sorting: Participants free-sorted sixty images, followed by a structured sort according to which classifier they used with each picture. We compared whether similar piles were made across sorting tasks to reveal whether the linguistic classification system provides a structure for general cognition.

Video-vignettes: Participants described 24 video clips which showed different interactions between an actor and their possession, evoking a classifier. This tested both typical and atypical interactions to see if the same or different classifiers were used.

Possessive-labelling: Participants heard 140 nouns in their language and responded by saying the item belonged to them, which meant using a classifier. This measured* inter-speaker variation in the use of classifiers for particular items, reaction times and inter-speaker variation for different possessions.

Storyboards: eight four-picture storyboards were presented to participants. We recorded participant responses, uncovering if the same classifier was used in consecutive parts of the larger story and whether the classifiers were used anaphorically.

Eye-tracking: eight line-drawn pictures were combined in a paired-preference design. An eye tracker recorded fixation times. Participants heard the auditory cue of a classifier before being presented with a pair of images. This provided objective measures of automatic processing to identify patterns in attention.