A new study from the University of Kansas suggests that depending on the sex of the speaker, language with grammatical gender may be interpreted and understood differently among listeners.

To test this scientifically controversial hypothesis, University of Kansas scientists set up an experiment using Spanish, a language in which words ending in "o" are typically masculine and "a" are typically feminine. When there was a mismatch between the sex of the speaker and the gender of the word, listeners involved in the study had more difficulty accurately and quickly identifying a word grammatically.

According to Michael Vitevitch, a KU professor of psychology who co-authored the research, our brains do not process grammar and syntax automatically no matter the speaker or the speaker's dialect, but rather, uses examplars (or models) to code and index information about not only the words we hear but the speaker pronouncing them.

"Our study shows that all that other information does influence not just word recognition processing, but higher-level processes associated with grammar," Vitevitch said in a press release

The question of whether or not and how language processing is affected by a speaker has long been debated among linguists and psychologists, though Vitevitch points out that "we didn't evolve to be efficient...we evolved to get the job done," meaning that we "need both systems" of abstract and exemplary memory in order to process information.

The new study was published in in the journal PLOS ONE on Nov. 13.