Fine-grained differences in gender-cue strength affect predictive processing in children: Cross-linguistic evidence from Russian and Bulgarian.

Tanya Ivanova-Sullivan, Natalia Meir, Irina Sekerina

Abstract:

We tested predictive gender agreement processing in adjective–
noun phrases by 45 4- to 6-year-old Russian- and Bulgarianspeaking
children using the visual world eye-tracking paradigm.
Russian and Bulgarian are closely related languages that have three
genders but differ in the nature and number of gender cues on
adjectives. Analysis of the proportion and time course of looks to
the target noun showed that only Bulgarian children used gender
cues to predict the upcoming noun. We argue that the crosslinguistic
difference in the gender cue strength is revealed through
the operation of economy, transparency, and interdependence in a
gender complexity matrix. The documented advantage for
Bulgarian children in gender agreement processing and acquisition
underscores the need for a comparative language acquisition
approach to typologically close languages.