Previous studies have suggested that female voices may impede verbal processing. For example, words were remembered less well and lexical decision was slower when spoken by a female speaker. The... Show morePrevious studies have suggested that female voices may impede verbal processing. For example, words were remembered less well and lexical decision was slower when spoken by a female speaker. The current study tried to replicate this gender effect in an auditory semantic/associative priming task that excluded any effects of speaker variability and extended previous research by examining the role of two voice features important in perceived gender: pitch and formant frequencies. Additionally, listener gender was included in the experimental design. Results show that, contrary to previous findings, there is no evidence that a lexical decision of a target word is slower when spoken by a female speaker than by a male speaker for female and male listeners. Additionally, the semantic/associative priming effect was not affected by speaker gender, neither did female mean pitch or formants predict the semantic/associative priming effect. At the behavioural level, the current study found no evidence for a gender effect in a semantic/associative priming task. Show less
This paper analyzes predicative constructions expressing location, existence and possession in Hamar, a South Omotic language spoken in South-West Ethiopia. The semantic domain location-existence... Show moreThis paper analyzes predicative constructions expressing location, existence and possession in Hamar, a South Omotic language spoken in South-West Ethiopia. The semantic domain location-existence-possession is conveyed in Hamar by one and the same lexeme, but in different constructions. The distinction between location and existence in particular is expressed by variation in the syntax and information structure, reflecting the different conceptualization and perspectivization of the abstract relation between a figure and a ground. The semantic and syntactic properties of these constructions are analyzed and compared to the findings of Creissels’ typology of “inverse locational predication” (2013) and Koch’s constructional typology (2012). The analysis of existential predication in Hamar confirms that there is a contrast between the languages of the Sudanic belt and those of North Eastern Sub-Saharan Africa (Creissels 2018a; 2019), and it suggests that Hamar, like other Afro-Asiatic languages (Koch 2012:585), belongs to languages which do not express informational salience, nor propositional salience. A closer look however reveals that Hamar existential constructions display special morpho-syntactic features: the different conceptualization of the figure-ground relationship is encoded not only by means of word order alternations, but also by means of gender marking on the figure and the ground, and different aspectual marking on the predicator. Show less
Many languages are said to possess “gender”, that is, a morphosyntactic system in which nouns induce formal marking on other words beyond the noun itself (adjectives, verbs, etc.). Gorwaa (gow;... Show moreMany languages are said to possess “gender”, that is, a morphosyntactic system in which nouns induce formal marking on other words beyond the noun itself (adjectives, verbs, etc.). Gorwaa (gow; South-Cushitic; Tanzania) possesses a gender system which is interrelated with number in a complex manner. Following the line of reasoning that biological (semantic) sex, grammatical (syntactic) gender, and (morphological) form-class are “interrelated but autonomous domains of linguistic generalization” set out in Harris’(1991) examination of Spanish, and establishing that number and gender are interrelated in a complex manner, this paper considers the morphophonological word-markers of Gorwaa, a language whose nominal morphology is considerably different from that of Spanish. Following a discussion of gender and number in Gorwaa, all word-markers and their associated gender and number values are identified. In addition to being a useful exercise in arranging the empirical data, this paper sheds light on some surprising surface patterns of a little-studied language. Show less
