The impact of grammatical gender on the categorization of extralinguistic reality in bilingual speakers: evidence from Croatian–Italian, Slovenian–Italian, and Italian–Slovenian bilinguals

The role of grammatical gender in shaping the perception of extralinguistic reality among monolingual and bilingual speakers has been widely examined from multiple perspectives and through diverse methodological approaches (Bassetti & Nicholadis, 2016). Previous studies have shown that monolingual speakers of languages with grammatical gender tend to conceptualise entities as “masculine” or “feminine,” depending on the grammatical gender of the corresponding nouns (Bassetti, 2007: 215). Among bilingual speakers, evidence indicates cross-linguistic transfer: gender distinctions from a gendered language can influence a language without grammatical gender, and masculine or feminine classifications can be applied to entities that are neuter in another language (Andonova, Gosheva, Schaffai & Janyan, 2007; Bassetti & Nicholadis, 2016; Segel & Boroditsky, 2011, among others).

The present study investigates whether such grammatical gender effects occur to the same extent and in the same ways across comparable groups of bilingual and monolingual participants. To address this question, identical experimental tasks will be administered to Croatian–Italian, Italian–Slovene, and Slovene–Italian bilinguals, as well as to monolingual speakers of Croatian, Italian, and Slovene. Particular focus is placed on the influence of Italian, a two-gender language, on neuter nouns in Croatian and Slovene, both of which have three grammatical genders. Data from sociolinguistic questionnaires, along with results from the experimental tasks (e.g., voice and name attribution), will be analysed to determine whether the observed patterns of grammatical gender effects on categorisation are coincidental, or whether they reflect broader, systematic cognitive influences beyond the scope of a single bilingual language pair.