The Influence of the Native Language (L1) on the Cognitive Processing of the Grammatical Gender of the Russian Language (L2) by Russian-Turkic Bilinguals

The article discusses the influence of the native language grammatical structure with the missing grammatical category of gender (Turkic language) on the processing of nouns of a second language (Russian), contrasted by gender, by Russian-Turkic bilinguals. The authors test the hypothesis about the bias effect of the first language (Tatar language) on the manifestation of linguistic, social and contextual factors of Russian nouns processing opposed to particular meanings of the grammatical gender. Two experiments were conducted with two groups of respondents: native Russian speakers vs Russian-Turkic bilinguals (native Tatar or Khakass speakers). Based on the hypothesis, four categorical variables were chosen in the design of the experiments: (1) the factor of the special grammatical meaning of the grammatical gender (male, female, neuter); (2) the factor of the semantic sphere (male, female); (3) the prime factor (image of a person (man, woman). The reaction time was used as the dependent variable. The following effects were obtained. In the group of native Russian speakers, the effect of marking members of grammatical oppositions was found, this effect was not found in the Russian-Turkic bilingual group. However, the influence of the semantic sphere factor in the categorization of masculine words by Russian-Turkic bilinguals has been revealed. The analysis shows differences in the pattern of the influence of priming on the processing of the grammatical gender. For monolinguals, the woman's face priming speeds up the processing of masculine and feminine words, for bilinguals it is vice versa. The hypothesis about the influence of the native Turkic language (L1) on the cognitive processing of Russian words in the second language (L2) was confirmed. The influence of factors acting in the group of native Russian speakers and in the group of non-native Russian speakers is different. The results of the experiments indicate the strengthening of the semantic component in the grammatical category of gender of Russian-Turkic bilinguals. At the same time, the processing speed of unmarked members of the opposition by native Russian speakers is higher compared to the marked ones. The special cognitive status of the words of the neuter grammatical gender is also revealed. Russian monolinguals and Russian-Turkic bilinguals maintain the same pattern of processing of nouns with the neuter grammatical gender. Perhaps this is due to the idea of contrasting the animate and the inanimate nouns.