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Processing difficulty with nonbinary they: ERP evidence

Poster E16 in Poster Session E, Saturday, October 8, 3:15 - 5:00 pm EDT, Millennium Hall

Peiyao Chen¹, Olivia Leventhal², Sadie Camilliere³, Kali Blain¹, Amanda Izes⁴, Daniel Grodner¹; ¹Swarthmore College, ²University of California San Diego, ³University of Chicago, ⁴Hofstra University

The pronoun they has been used to refer to a non-specific antecedent or an individual of unknown gender since the 1300s. Recently, they has emerged as a personal pronoun for individuals who identify as gender nonbinary and a coherent subset of English speakers will accept they when referring to a specific, antecedent of known gender. However, online behavioral measures indicate some processing difficulty with the singular use of they. The present study employs ERPs to identify the type of the processing difficulty with nonbinary they when referring to a specific antecedent. Sentences were constructed where binary (he/she) and nonbinary (they) pronouns matched or mismatched the subject in the sentence. For the binary pronoun, we manipulated the gender of the antecedent by using name that were strongly associated with either male or female identifies (Sarah/Robert slept because he was tired.) For the nonbinary pronoun, we manipulated the number of the subject by using one or two names (Sarah/Sarah and Robert slept because they were tired.) Participants were 78 undergraduates attending a school where every student is taught about nonbinary gender identities as part of orientation. They were told they were going to read sentences about named individuals who would be referenced with their preferred pronouns. After the EEG session, participants completed an acceptability survey of they with various antecedents. All analyses and the study design were preregistered. We found that both mismatched binary and nonbinary pronouns elicited a larger posterior positivity compared to their matched controls during the 450-1150 ms time window (i.e., P600 effects). The mismatched binary pronoun, but not the mismatched nonbinary pronoun, also elicited a larger frontal negativity, consistent with an Nref effect. This finding suggests that both types of mismatch triggered processing difficulty, but the mismatching binary pronoun also initiated additional referential work. Intriguingly, offline acceptability judgments did not affect online ERPs. We compared 26 participants who were accepting of they with various singular named antecedents with 44 participants who rejected they in these contexts. These two groups did not show reliable differences in their P600 and Nref effects. To summarize, monbinary they elicits substantial online processing difficulty, but does not lead to referential failure like binary pronouns. This processing difficulty does not decrease even among individuals who are robustly accepting of singular they. We are currently exploring the underlying cause of the processing difficulty with nonbinary they. One possibility is that they is considered syntactically plural and any use with singular antecedents causes processing difficulty. The other possibility is that they is inherently ambiguous in terms of plural vs. singular use and the difficulty arises in resolving this ambiguity. In the follow-up study, we manipulated the degree of gender bias of the antecedent (i.e., the gender stereotypicality of the name). Preliminary data from 31 participants showed that gender bias of the antecedent did not influence the P600 effect, suggesting that the processing difficulty with nonbinary they may be associated with syntactic violation and they is coded as plural grammatically.

Topic Areas: Syntax, Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics