A Contrastive Study of Grammatical Gender in English, German and Slovene: Grammatical Gender in Common Nouns and Linguistic RelativityKošmrlj, Lea (Avtor) Sicherl, Eva (Mentor) Krevs Birk, Uršula (Mentor) grammatical genderEnglishGermanSlovenelinguistic relativitycommon nounsGrammatical gender is a central grammatical feature of nouns in many languages. While English exhibits a limited system of grammatical gender that primarily reflects the biological sex of the noun referent, the grammatical gender systems of Slovene and German rely on a tripartite division into masculine, feminine, and neuter gender which is determined by both the form and meaning of a noun. The present thesis examines the grammatical gender systems of English, German, and Slovene from a contrastive perspective. To this end, we first define the category of grammatical gender based on an overview of grammatical gender systems across world languages, and describe factors influencing the formation of noun classes and grammatical gender assignment, as well as the functions of grammatical gender. We briefly outline the development of grammatical gender in Proto-Indo-European and highlight agreement as the key characteristic of gendered languages. In the second part of the thesis, we compare the grammatical gender systems of English, German, and Slovene, focusing first on their diachronic development and then studying them from a synchronic perspective. Grammatical gender is then examined through the lens of linguistic relativity, often referred to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which posits that language, including grammatical gender, influences human cognition. Gender-sensitive language use is also addressed. We provide an overview of empirical research that studies the influence of grammatical gender on cognition experimentally, with special attention paid to the experimental paradigm of the voice choice task, which we replicate with native Slovene speakers in both English and German in the empirical section of the thesis. Finally, we present the methodology, analysis, and results of the completed behavioral experiment, and contextualise the findings within the ongoing scientific discourse on linguistic relativity. The findings of the present thesis indicate that, despite a common linguistic ancestor, the grammatical gender systems of English, German, and Slovene differ significantly. They share a tripartite division into masculine, feminine, and neuter genders, with the masculine gender functioning as the default gender. While English predominantly exhibits referential gender assignment, gender assignment in Slovene and German relies heavily on the morphophonological properties of nouns. Although grammatical gender only occasionally aligns with biological sex, empirical findings suggest that the latter plays a non-negligible role in grammatical categorization and particularly in the perception of common nouns. Based on the results of the behavioral experiment with native Slovene speakers, we conclude that grammatical gender in one’s native language influences the voice choice, that is the attribution of gender to nouns denoting inanimate objects, in foreign languages such as English and German, which could indirectly lend support to the hypothesis that grammatical gender influences noun conceptualisation, and speaking more broadly, that language affects thought. The thesis demonstrates that grammatical gender as a central feature of nouns needs to be studied beyond its role as a mere grammatical category, and underscores the need for examining it from a contrastive, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic perspective.20252025-07-10 12:49:24Magistrsko delo/naloga170619sl