How grammatical gender supports efficient communication

The apparent redundancy of grammatical gender systems presents a puzzle to which information theory offers a solution: since nouns are the least predictable part of language, dividing nouns into semi-arbitrary classes reduces the uncertainty associated with them. Corpus studies show both how gendered articles make nouns more predictable, and how in languages that lack noun class, prenominal adjectives serve a similar function. This raises the question of whether language users are sensitive to this information and actually employ it in communication. In an elicitation study, we manipulated the contextual information provided by gendered articles to German speakers, and compared their behavior to English speakers (whose articles are always uninformative). When German articles were uninformative, German and English speakers produced prenominal adjectives at the same rates. However, when articles were informative, German prenominal adjective production decreased. These results illustrate how languages use both articles and prenominal adjectives to support communicative efficiency.