Language and Gender Research in Poland

Error‐Correction Mechanisms in Language Learning: Modeling Individuals

“…In the past tense, verbs are marked for the grammatical gender of the subject according to the following rules: If one of the referents is masculine personal (e.g., “man”), then the gender of the subject as a whole is – li , which is sometimes referred to as the masculine personal ending. If the referents are feminine animate (e.g., “duck”), feminine personal (e.g., “girl”), or neuter (e.g., “child”), then the gender of the subject is – ły , which is sometimes referred to as the nonmasculine personal ending. Prescriptive grammars and native speakers of Polish disagree as to what form should be assigned to a subject that includes multiple masculine animate referents that are not persons (e.g., “the dog and the cat went for a walk”) or mixes masculine animate and feminine personal referents (e.g., “the girl and the dog went for a walk”). Grammar textbooks prescribe the use of – ły whereas native speakers appear to favor the use of – li , according to Kiełkiewicz‐Janowiak and Pawelczyk (2014). …”

“…Prescriptive grammars and native speakers of Polish disagree as to what form should be assigned to a subject that includes multiple masculine animate referents that are not persons (e.g., “the dog and the cat went for a walk”) or mixes masculine animate and feminine personal referents (e.g., “the girl and the dog went for a walk”). Grammar textbooks prescribe the use of – ły whereas native speakers appear to favor the use of – li , according to Kiełkiewicz‐Janowiak and Pawelczyk (2014).…”

“…For the purpose of designing our simplified natural language learning task, we implemented the first two rules but assumed that a subject consisting of masculine animate referents should be used with the masculine personal form, as suggested by Kiełkiewicz‐Janowiak and Pawelczyk (2014). We made such a concession to improve the testability of our task from a learning perspective, as explained in the task design below.…”

“…Finally, let us return to the question of why we adopted Kiełkiewicz‐Janowiak and Pawelczyk's (2014) rule, whereby any subject combination that contains a masculine referent takes the masculine personal plural form. First, having the combination “MA1 + MA2 + MA3” associated with “mp” rather than “np” made it possible to have a balanced number of mp and np events both within the full task and within each block.…”

Norms for gender stereotypically congruent, stereotypically incongruent, semantically correct, and semantically incorrect sentences in Polish and English

“…While gender stereotypes can serve an adaptive function, facilitating categorization and anticipation processes regarding others [4,5], they often induce an incorrect assessment of other people's skills and unique qualities, thus positively or negatively affecting expectations we generate towards someone's performance [6,7]. Importantly, gender stereotypes are strongly transmitted and reinforced through language [8,9]. Previous research has consistently shown that gender stereotypes are automatically accessed in the process of language comprehension and are difficult to suppress [10][11][12].…”