4. Experiment 1
4.2 General method and method PNT
4.2.2 Material
The experimental material consisted of 114 concrete nouns (72 noncognates, 42 cognates) that could be easily depicted and belonged to the basic vocabulary of an L2 learner (cf. next paragraph). A complete list of experimental stimuli can be found in section 10.1. The same nouns in Spanish and in German were used. There were three “Gender Compatibility conditions”: one gender-congruent condition and two gender-incongruent conditions. In the congruent condition, nouns had the same grammatical gender in German and Spanish. In the two gender-incongruent conditions, nouns had different grammatical genders across the two languages. In one of the two incongruent conditions, termed the “incongruent condition”, nouns with female gender in German had masculine gender in Spanish and vice versa. In the second incongruent condition, the “incongruent neutral condition”, nouns had neutral gender in German but masculine or female gender in Spanish. For noncognates, there were 24 nouns in each Gender Compatibility condition, for cognates 14 nouns. Items were judged as cognates when they were orthographically and/or phonologically very similar in the two languages, while for noncognates this similarity was small. In noncognate conditions, the number of feminine and masculine items was balanced. For cognates, there were five feminine and nine masculine Spanish items in the incongruent condition, two feminine and twelve masculine Spanish items in the incongruent neutral condition. Due to the limited number of incongruent cognates that would belong to the basic vocabulary of a language learner and that could be depicted, this imbalance could not be avoided.
In order to assure that even beginning L2 learners would know most of the items, I tried to mainly select nouns from basic vocabulary. The learner dictionary “Langenscheidt Grundwortschatz Spanisch” (Langenscheidt Basic Vocabulary Spanish, Duenas de Haensch, 1999) was used as a reference as it comprises a vocabulary selection of 4000 words for beginning learners of Spanish, selected according to “frequency, up-to-dateness and practical value” (p. 9). Yet, because of the many requirements the material had to fulfill, it was not possible to only use words from the Langenscheidt Grundwortschatz. Of the final selection, 90 % of the items in all the noncognate
conditions and 62 % of the items in the cognate conditions belonged to Langenscheidt´s basic vocabulary selection. Furthermore, as mentioned above, only concrete nouns were used because they can usually be depicted well. Research has also shown that concrete words are easier to learn (Groot & van Hell, 2005), which makes it more likely that they are known even by low-proficient language speakers.
Items were matched across both languages and across conditions for number of letters and syllables and (logarithmic) item frequency. Frequency measures were obtained from the CELEX database (Baayen, Piepenbrock, & Gulikers, 1995). Because the CELEX frequency data did not seem to intuitively match the experience of an L2 learner17, I decided to additionally use the frequency data18 of Projekt Deutscher Wortschatz (PDW) of the University of Leipzig (e.g., Biemann, Bordag, Heyer &
Quasthoff, 2004; http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/). For the Spanish items, frequency data were obtained from “BuscaPalabras" (Davis & Perea, 2005; http://www.uv.es/mperea/)19. A matching across cognate status, however, could not be achieved as cognate words tended to have more letters and syllables than noncognates (cf. Table 4.5 and Table 4.7). A complete list of the items can be found in Appendix 10.1. Spanish items were also matched regarding gender transparency of the noun endings20. However, due to the great number of matching criteria, for German items, ending transparency (e.g., /ə/ (schwa), cf. section 4.1.1) for a fairly salient transparent ending) could not be considered in the matching process21. Matching was achieved by using the software Match (Van Casteren & Davis, 2007).
17 Quite a few very common words that – in my opinion – should be known by even beginning L2 learners such as Rücken (back) or CD have a frequency of 0 (i.e., do not appear) in the CELEX data base, while a few very uncommon words have a higher frequency, e.g., Rückblick (retrospection, frequency = 0.77820) or Schädelbruch (skull fracture, frequency = 0.30100). The frequency measures of PDW did at least in some cases seem more convincing in comparison: Rücken (7634, frequency class: 9), CD (2855, frequency class: 11), Rückblick (945, frequency class: 12), Schädelbruch (77, frequency class: 16). In each case, none of the two corpora were developed to reflect word exposure of language learners but with using two different corpora for the German words (in addition to the Spanish corpus) I tried to obtain more representative frequency measures. Therefore, all items were matched for three different frequency measures.
18 In the PDW corpus, absolute frequency counts of the query word in the corpus are given, e.g., Haus (house) has a frequency of 32011 in the corpus. In addition, a frequency class is reported. The frequency class of Haus is 7, which means that der (the most frequent word in the German language) is approximately 2^7 times more frequent than Haus. Experimental items were matched using the logarithmic frequency and the frequency class of words.
19 The frequency data of BuscaPalabras, in turn, are based on the frequency data of the LEXESP corpus (Sebastián-Gallés, Martí, Cuetos, & Carreiras, 2000).
20 The simplest and probably first rule a beginning L2 learner of Spanish learns regarding noun endings and grammatical gender in Spanish is that nouns ending in -o are usually masculine and nouns ending in -a are usually feminine. Even though there are more rules regarding noun endings and grammatical gender, only these two most salient gender-marked noun endings were taken into account for matching transparency across conditions.
21 Note that after matching was completed, unfortunately, it turned out that overall (for pooled noncognates and cognates) there were more German nouns with the transparent ending /ə/ in the congruent condition (14;
53.8 %) than in the incongruent (12; 46.2 %) and incongruent neutral condition (0; 0 %). This difference across conditions was significant (F(2, 111) = 9.821, p < 0.001) presumably rendering the congruent condition easier than the incongruent conditions. However, t-tests (Bonferroni-corrected) revealed that the difference between the congruent and incongruent condition was not significant (t = 0.478, df = 74, p = 1.000). Only the differences between the congruent and incongruent neutral condition and the incongruent and incongruent neutral condition was significant (t = 4.646, df = 74, p < 0.001and t = 4.132, df = 74, p < 0.001, respectively). Considering that the error rates in the offline gender assignment task (cf. section 4.5.2) were 15 % in the congruent
4.2 General method and method PNT
In the following section, an overview of the characteristics of the noncognate and cognate items in the different conditions is given.
Noncognates
An overview of the characteristics of the Spanish and German noncognate items is given in Table 4.5.
Congruent Incongruent Incongruent n
Mean (SD) Range Mean (SD) Range Mean (SD) Range
Spanish
Frequency
BuscaPalabras 1.28 (0.47) 0.19 - 2.43 1.30 (0.60) 0.28 - 2.83 1.40 (0.45) 0.47 - 2.29
# of syllables 2.54 (0.59) 1 - 3 2.50 (0.59) 2 - 4 2.67 (0.70) 1 - 4
# of letters 5.88 (1.60) 3 - 9 6.04 (1.30) 4 - 8 6.25 (1.57) 3 - 9
German
Frequency
CELEX 1.39 (0.54) 0.30 - 2.61 1.25 (0.75) 0 - 2.99 1.39 (0.40) 0.78 - 2.26 Frequency PDW 3.19 (0.61) 2.18 - 4.84 3.20 (0.74) 1.89 - 4.98 3.31 (0.41) 2.61 - 4.19 Frequency class
PDW 11.58 (2.04) 6 - 15 11.63 (2.41) 6 - 16 11.17 (1.34) 8 - 13
# of syllables 1.58 (0.50) 1 - 2 1.58 (0.50) 1 - 2 1.38 (0.50) 1 - 2
# of letters 5.17 (1.13) 3 - 8 4.92 (1.44) 2 - 8 5.21 (1.35) 3 - 8 Table 4.5 The mean, standard deviation, and range of the frequency data of the different corpora, number of syllables and letters of Spanish and German noncognates per Gender Compatibility condition (congruent, incongruent, incongruent neutral). All frequencies are logarithmic frequencies.
Of the Spanish items, 83 % (20 out of 24) had a transparent gender ending in the congruent condition and 88 % (21 out of 24) in each of the incongruent conditions.
An ANOVA was carried out with the variables number of syllables, number of letters, and the (logarithmic) frequency measures of the three corpora (BuscaPalabras, CELEX, PDW). There were no significant differences between the conditions regarding any of these variables (all F < 1, except for number of syllables in German (F = 1.386), where the incongruent neutral condition had a lower number of syllables on average, cf. Table 4.5). The results of the ANOVA are summarized in Table 4.6.
condition, 25 % in the incongruent condition, and 28 % in the incongruent neutral condition, this imbalance across conditions probably had little biasing effect on the results.
df F p
Spanish
Transparency 2,69 .112 .895
Frequency
BuscaPalabras 2,69 .347 .708
# of syllables 2,69 .456 .635
# of letters 2,69 .379 .686
German
Frequency
CELEX 2,69 .496 .611
Frequency PDW 2,69 .273 .762
Frequency class
PDW 2,69 .393 .677
# of syllables 2,69 1.386 .257
# of letters 2,69 .346 .709
Table 4.6 Results of the ANOVA for logarithmic frequencies of the different corpora, number of syllables and letters of Spanish and German noncognates, as well as for transparency of noun endings for Spanish items.
Cognates
An overview of the characteristics of the Spanish and German cognate items is given in Table 4.7.
Congruent Incongruent Incongruent n
Mean (SD) Range Mean (SD) Range Mean (SD) Range
Spanish
Frequency
BuscaPalabras 1.04 (0.39) 0.19 - 1.61 1.06 (0.54) 0.19 - 2.27 1.13 (0.37) 0.44 - 1.81
# of syllables 2.79 (0.80) 2 - 4 3.07 (1.14) 1 - 5 2.71 (0.83) 1 - 4
# of letters 6.29 (1.59) 4 - 8 6.86 (2.45) 3 - 11 6.36 (2.17) 3 - 11
4.2 General method and method PNT
German
Frequency
CELEX 0.95 (0.42) 0.48 - 1.97 0.97 (0.63) 0 - 2 1.01 (0.49) 0 - 2.07 Frequency PDW 3.02 (0.41) 2.44 - 3.77 3.00 (0.89) 1.11 - 4.54 3.04 (0.62) 2.21 - 4.02 Frequency class
PDW 12.21 (1.37) 10 - 14 12.07 (2.87) 7 - 18 12.07 (2.06) 9 - 15
# of syllables 6.29 (1.33) 4 - 8 6.50 (1.91) 4 - 10 5.86 (1.79) 4 - 9
# of letters 2.57 (0.76) 1 - 4 2.71 (0.99) 1 - 4 2.36 (0.63) 1 - 3 Table 4.7 The mean, standard deviation, and range of the frequency data of the different corpora, number of syllables and letters of Spanish and German cognates per Gender Compatibility condition (congruent, incongruent, incongruent neutral). All frequencies are logarithmic frequencies.
Of the Spanish items, in each condition 43 % (6 out of 14) of the items had a transparent gender ending.
An ANOVA revealed that there were no significant differences between the conditions regarding any of these variables (all F < 1). The results of the ANOVA are summarized in Table 4.8.
df F p
Spanish
Transparency 2,39 .000 1.000
Frequency
BuscaPalabras 2,39 .176 .839
# of syllables 2,39 .571 .570
# of letters 2,39 .308 .737
German
Frequency
CELEX 2,39 .048 .953
Frequency PDW 2,39 .012 .988
Frequency class
PDW 2,39 .020 .980
# of syllables 2,39 .522 .597
# of letters 2,39 .692 .507
Table 4.8 Results of the ANOVA for logarithmic frequencies of the different corpora, number of syllables and letters of Spanish and German cognates, as well as for transparency of noun endings for Spanish items.
The conditions were very similar also according to more subjective measures. In a translation task (cf. section 4.2.3), more than 85 % of the Spanish and German items in each condition were translated correctly and with the intended translation equivalent. Word familiarity, as indicated in the offline gender assignment task (cf. section 4.5.1), was also very high and similar across conditions. More than 85 % of the words received a score of no less than 6 out of a 0 to 7 scale (0 =
not familiar at all, 7 = very familiar) in every condition for the German items. For the Spanish items, more than 85 % of the words received a score of at least 5 in every condition, except for the cognate incongruent neutral condition. In this condition, items were apparently somewhat less familiar and only about 75 % received a score of at least 5 and approximately 85 % received a score of at least 4.
Material PNT
The material for the PNT consisted of black and white line drawings of objects depicting the nouns also used in the LDT. Pictures were obtained from different sources: from the online picture data base of the International Picture-Naming Project at the Center for Research in Language of the University of California in San Diego (Szekely et al., 2004; available for download at:
http://crl.ucsd.edu/experiments/ipnp/method/browsepics/separately/view.html), with kind permission from Xavier Alario (Alario, Ferrand, et al., 2004) and from Katharina Spalek (Lemhöfer, Spalek, & Schriefers, 2008). Additional pictures were obtained from the internet and changed with picture editing software to match the other pictures. Picture size was approximately 6 x 6 cm (200 - 250 x 200 - 250 pixels) with a resolution of 37.8 pixels per cm. The pictures were presented as black line drawings on a white background. As practice items, 24 additional pictures were used.
In total, there were 114 pictures, 64 with Spanish masculine gender, 50 with Spanish feminine gender. In German the distribution was as follows: 36 with masculine gender, 40 with feminine gender, 38 with neutral gender. There were 72 noncognates and 42 cognates. Additionally, at the beginning of both experimental blocks, two warming-up pictures which were not analyzed were presented. (Two of the warming-up pictures had German masculine gender, two had German neutral gender. All four had Spanish feminine gender.