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• First language attrition affects Italian null pronouns. • Late bilinguals select the closest available antecedent (i.e., the object). • First language attrition affects processing. This study investigates whether L1 attrition effects on anaphora resolution decrease with L1 re-immersion. A group of 20 Italian-Swedish late bilinguals was tested once before and once after their summer vacation in Italy, and compared with a control group of 21 Italian monolinguals that was also tested once before and once after a similar time interval. Both groups assigned overt and null pronouns to a subject or an object antecedent in a self-paced comprehension task. The results of the study suggest that attrition affects null pronouns, an outcome inconsistent with previous findings wherein attrition effects were limited to Italian overt pronouns (e.g., Tsimpli et al., 2004). This outcome supports the hypothesis that attrition affects processing rather than representations. Moreover, in the second session, both groups improved in terms of antecedent assignment and response times. This finding suggests a task effect rather than a re-immersion effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We discuss whether Chinese given names can be identified as female or male. • The role of specific written Chinese characters in gender identification is discussed. • Gender identification is subject to vocalic sound symbolism. • Reduplication plays a role in gender identification. • We test native speakers' ability to guess gender in different conditions. In this paper we discuss a number of factors that bear on the question if a Chinese given name is more likely to refer to a female or a male. In some cases this can be determined (with some degree of confidence) – in others it cannot. We identify the relevant factors as 1) gender-identifying characters or radicals; 2) sound symbolism and 3) reduplication. We consider the relations between these factors, and test our predictions in a psycholinguistic experiment with native speakers, for both written and spoken Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]