Gender and grammar and gender in grammar: Challenges and limits

Our research project examines a popular proposal of Gender-Inclusive Language in Italian, which involves using the symbol schwa, ‘ə’, to replace the final vowel of gendered words that, in the case of those referring to people, commonly indicate the referent’s gender. The overarching goal is to understand the efficacy and feasibility of such a proposal in a richly inflected gendered language, by discussing how gender—as a grammatical trait—is processed within the language itself, also acknowledging the challenges of a strictly binary linguistic gender system for gender non-conforming individuals. After summarizing studies conducted on role nouns in isolation, we report preliminary findings of an eye-tracking study to test subject-verb gender agreement during the reading of sentences in which role nouns in subject positions are gender-neutralized by schwa (e.g., maestrə ‘schoolteacher’, instead of maestro/maestra ‘male/female schoolteacher’). Results suggest a limited efficacy of schwa in neutralizing the role noun and overriding its gender stereotypical associations. Evidence also suggests the possibility of a female bias associated with the use of ‘ə’.