Grammatical gender in noun phrase production: the gender interference effect in German.
Languages appear to differ in the way definite determiners are selected during noun phrase production. M. Miozzo and A. Caramazza (1999) proposed that a distinction should be made between early- and late-selection languages. In early-selection languages, the noun's gender uniquely specifies the definite determiner, whereas in late-selection languages the definite determiner can be specified only during the phonological encoding of the noun phrase. This hypothesis predicts that in picture-word interference experiments on noun phrase production in early selection languages like German, one should obtain a gender interference effect. In 2 experiments on German, this prediction is confirmed. The implications of these results for the proposed distinction between early- and late-selection languages are discussed.
Schriefers
H
H
Nijmegen University, Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, The Netherlands. schriefers@nici.kun.nl
Teruel
E
E
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003657:Decision Making; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics