Linguistische Berichte Heft 282

Previous studies generally considered grammatical gender in French as a binary system, consisting of a masculine and a feminine gender, both reflected beyond the nouns themselves on e.g. determiners and adjectives. However, a glance at the French system reveals that the existence of two forms does not provide adequate evidence for the assumption of a bipartite underlying system (Loporcaro 2020) and that there is still evidence for inflectional classes in Frenchas well (Lowenstamm 2012). The present study considers the possibility of a tripartite gendersystem in French by taking into consideration the results of two psycholinguistic experiments.The first experiment indicates that French native speakers process feminine nouns faster and more accurately than masculine nouns. Since this result is surprising, former Latin neuter nounswere selected from the masculine nouns of the first experiment and considered as a separategroup in a second experiment. This group of nouns is processed significantly longer and lessaccurately than feminine nouns and the remaining masculine nouns. The results of these experiments allow the discussion of which form should be considered marked in the French systemand of why the tripartite gender system of Latin survived in nowadays French. Moreover, thenotion of default as well as the role of a default gender in language processing are discussed.Considering the French tripartite gender system as proposed in Lowenstamm (2008) in the framework of the epigenetic model by Biberauer, Holmberg, Roberts and Sheehan (2014), aparametric description of language change is proposed. The results of the current study allow anew perspective on the French gender system and provide insights into the role of the grammatical gender and inflectional class features in French.

This article explores the role of five expressive punctuation marks – multiple exclamation marks (!!!), exclamation mark (!), full stop (.), ellipsis (...), and null punctuation (ø) – as cues to writer attitudes in CMC. Specifically, it investigates how the underlying meaning of expressive punctuation influences the perceived emotional valence of discourse referents within exclamative constructions. In a 1x5 between-subjects repeated measures design, valence ratings were collected for 120 discourse referents embedded in exclamative constructions manipulated by message finale punctuation mark (e. g., What a view!!!/!/./…/ø) on a 1 (negative) to 9 (positive) scale. For inherently positive discourse referents, a clear positivity hierarchy in the overall valence of embedded discourse referents emerges, indicating a differential influence of punctuation on perceived valence: multiple exclamation marks > exclamation marks > null punctuation > full stop > ellipsis. For inherently negative discourse referents, the differences between the conditions are less distinct. Notably, only multiple exclamation marks yield a significantly lower valence rating within that range of values. While the findings for inherently positive referents align with prior assumptions on the expressive meaning of different punctuation marks in CMC, the observed pattern for inherently negative referents cannot be readily explained by existing literature on expressive punctuation in CMC.

Ideophones are prime examples of linguistic iconicity, that is, the resemblance between aspects of form and meaning in language. Yet, ideophones do not merely resemble events or perceptions; they actively “depict sensory imagery” (Dingemanse 2019). This paper presents a new, openly accessible dataset of ideophone-like marked words collected from German children’s literature. Building on work reported in Ćwiek (2022, Chapter 4), I outline the motivations, data collection methods, and preliminary observations. While extensive research has documented ideophones in languages such as Japanese, Bantu languages, Quechua, and others (Akita 2009; Childs 1988; Dingemanse 2011; Nuckolls 1996; Reiter 2011; Westermann 1937), their role in German remains largely unexplored. Thus, rather than referring to these items as established ideophones, I term them “ideophone-like marked words” to acknowledge uncertainty regarding their grammatical status and iconic potential in German. The dataset is freely available on OSF at https://osf.io/6udxz/ (Ćwiek 2024), offering researchers a valuable resource for investigating the nature and function of ideophone-like expressions in German and beyond.