SE367 Course ProjectShourya Sonkar Roy Burman
(Y8487)
Learning Grammatical Gender in an Artificial Language Based
on Hindi
Introduction
Is grammatical gender an arbitrarily defined categorisation?Position: No, grammatical gender is acquired
by an individual based on two cues:Distributional Cues: Co-occurrence with
gender marked articles, verbs, adjective etc. in a certain manner
Phonological Cues: Similar sounding words are acquired as same gender
Objective of the study is to support this position using an artificial language constructed using Hindi syllables and Hindi sentence structures
The Artificial LanguageDesign similar to that of Mirkovic J., Forrest
S. & Gaskell M. G. (2011)Based on Hindi pronounceable syllablesMasculine verbs: पा�तु� and जी�मु� Feminine Verbs: वजी and फो�स Masculine Nouns: Words with 2-3 syllables,
which have no meaning in Hindi, as checked in Google Translate.
Feminine Nouns: Words with 2-3 syllables ending with ू� or ू�, which have no meaning in Hindi, as checked in Google Translate.
Mirkovic J., Forrest S. & Gaskell M. G. (2011). Semantic Regularities in Grammatical Categories: Learning Grammatical Gender in an Artificial Language. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
The Artificial Language
Sentence constructions are [Noun] [verb] है�!
कबू� वजी है�!
The sentences were then recorded in the voice of a UP resident (Bimodal learning)
Modifications to the experiment suggested by Prof. Achla Raina, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Schedule of Tasks
Day Task(s)
1 Word-picture Matching
2Verb selection
Word-picture Matching
3
Word-picture MatchingWord-picture Matching (on
Generalisation set)Verb selection
Participants: Five employees in the Hall 1 Mess
Discussion
The participants are learning the artificial nouns.
The learning rates differed between individuals.
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