Léo Varnet @leovarnet@qoto.org

The findings indicated that gender-unmarked forms do not fully neutralize the masculine bias. For example, “l'enfant” has no fixed grammatical gender, still our participants mostly interpreted it as "male child". This is probably because, in everyday language, gender-unmarked forms are often used as generic masculine terms (“Ils ont eu un enfant”) or carry underlying masculine stereotypes (e.g. "citizen" in George Bush’s “We cannot tolerate attacks on the wife of an American citizen”). (5/7) #EcritureInclusive #GenderFair #GenderNeutral #GenderFairLanguage

We employed a sentence evaluation paradigm, where the participants had to decide whether a second sentence starting with a gendered personal pronoun (“il” or “elle”) was a sensible continuation of the first sentence written in a gender-fair form, either a gender-unmarked form or a contracted double form. (4/7)

There are two main strategies to counteract gender biases in language: neutralization (using gender-unmarked forms such as “l'enfant” in French) or re-feminization (contracted double forms such as “un·e enfant”). Here, we explored the relative efficiency of these strategies. (3/7)
@linguistics #EcritureInclusive #GenderFair #GenderNeutral

In languages with grammatical gender, it has been evidenced that using masculine forms as a generic reference induces a bias favoring masculine-specific representations. It is worth repeating that this statement is a well-established scientific result, not a matter of conjecture or debate (See my previous thread here: https://qoto.org/@leovarnet/110457249392068688) (2/7)

I'm thrilled to annouce that our latest article on #GenderFairLanguage has been published in #Frontiers in #Psychology! You can read it here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1256779/full?&utm_source=Email_to_authors_&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=T1_11.5e1_author&utm_campaign=Email_publication&field=&journalName=Frontiers_in_Psychology&id=1256779
As one of the coauthors, I'd like to share some key insights from our research as a thread 🔽
#openaccess @psychology @psycholinguistics @linguistics #EcritureInclusive #GenderFair #GenderNeutral @tract_linguistes

Two upcoming workshops in #acoustics and #audition in Paris. Both free of charge (or very cheap) and both in late November:
- Auditory Development Workshop organized by Axelle Calcus and Laurianne Cabrera https://audidev.sciencesconf.org/ (20-21 November)
- Journées Perception Sonore co-organized by #SFA and #IRCAM https://sites.google.com/view/jps-2023/accueil?authuser=0 (21-22 November)
@psycholinguistics #psychoacoustics #psycholinguistics #developmental @psychology

Cherry on the cake, all experiments are fully reproducible and all analyses entirely replicable using our home-made toolbox fastACI https://github.com/aosses-tue/fastACI, and the data is openly available on #Zenodo https://zenodo.org/record/7865424 #OpenScience #OpenData #OpenAccess (6/6)

For the French speakers here, a little demo of the effect. By modifying the prosody of a sentence we can radically change its meaning. http://dbao.leo-varnet.fr/demo-cest-lamie-cest-la-mie/ (5/X)

Oops there seems to be a problem with the link... here'sthe correct one: https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jel/article/3/9/095205/2912705/Prosodic-cues-to-word-boundaries-in-a-segmentation

Sorry, wrong identifier... @AcousticalSocietyofAmerica

...we were able to measure the typical prosody interpreted as "c'est l'ami" vs. the one interpreted as "c'est la mie". This is our main result. In a nutshell, the fundamental frequency and duration of the initial vowel ("a") determine if you will hear the sound as one word ("l'ami") or two ("la mie"). And this works with other pairs of words too! (4/X)

To reveal this acoustic difference (or "segmentation cue"), we simply generated many new utterances with a random prosody and had participants to categorize them as "c'est l'ami" or "c'est la mie". Then, by relating the exact prosody in each trial and the corresponding response of the observer... (3/X)

We used ambiguous speech stimuli in french, like the sentence "c'est l'ami" (this is the friend) which can also be understood as "c'est la mie" (this is the crumb). The two sentences have exactly the same phonetic content. Still, listeners are generally able to distinguish between them, which indicates that there should be some subtle acoustic differences they can rely on. (2/X)

New #OpenAccess article published in JASA-EL @AcousticalSocietyofAmerica! We used a new technique to explore how listeners segment continuous speech sounds into words. A thread and a demo ⬇️

https://pubs-aip-org.insb.bib.cnrs.fr/asa/jel/article/3/9/095205/2912705/Prosodic-cues-to-word-boundaries-in-a-segmentation
@psycholinguistics @psychology @linguistics #psycholinguistics #linguistics