The Perception of Number and Gender in the Japanese Language

Abstract

This article investigates how native speakers of Japanese interpret number and gender in a language lacking obligatory morphological marking for either category. Based on a questionnaire completed by 47 native speakers, it analyses the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors guiding interpretation. The findings show that number is primarily determined by contextual and grammatical cues, whereas gender is largely shaped by cultural stereotypes and world knowledge. The study demonstrates that Japanese nominal interpretation relies on contextual inference rather than morphological encoding.