Question on adult bilinguals and codeswitching

[eva eppler]

same for German, Maria.
I.e. borrowed nouns most frequently get assigned a grammatical gender and
in the vast majority of cases it seems to be the gender of the closest
translation equivalent.
I am working on this systematically at the moment. Results might take
another 6 months.

just two examples - (I deliberately chose examples where the translation
equivalents are very similar)

English accent is German der Akzent (masculine)
in the following example the accent is the direct object and therefore we
get the accusative and masculine on the determiner
*DOR:   and at 2 (1)alle at 4 haben at 4 wir at 4 so at 4 einen at 4 (1)accent at 2 # 0als at 4
         moechten at 4 wir at 4 gerade at 4 von at 4 Oesterreich at 4 gekommen at 4 sein at 4 .

English mentality, German die Mentalitaet f. ==> accusative femine die
*DOR:   you at 2 know at 2,, (1)wir at 4 haben at 4 die at 4 selbe at 4 # ahm at u nicht at 4 nur at 4
         die at 4 sprache at 4 die at 4 selbe at 4 (1)mentality at 2 .

But if you would like to have a look yourself, check out
the German-English data on http://talkbank.org/data/LIDES/

Eva Eppler


>Still, it would be interesting to know why this is not the rule in
>Italian: borrowed nouns, be it from French, English or other languages,
>take different genders (according to their supposed translation into
>Italian?)  Examples of feminine borrowed nouns: la creme, la soubrette, la
>mousse, la lobby, la performance, la policy, la candid camera, la mission,
>la glasnost, la  siesta, etc... (too many to be exceptions). The same
>happens in code-switching by bilinguals.
>Any suggestion?
>Maria Luisa Lorusso
>
>Maria Luisa Lorusso
>Psychologist and Neurolinguist
>Unit of Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology
>Dept. of  Neuroriabilitation II
>Scientific Institute "E. Medea"
>23842 Bosisio Parini (LC) - Italy
>Tel. 0039-(0)31-877581
>Fax 0039-(0)31-877499
>E-mail: mluisa at bp.lnf.it
>
>
>