A purple giraffe is faster than a purple elephant: inconsistent phonology affects determiner selection in English.
The form of a determiner is dependent on different contextual factors: in some languages grammatical number and grammatical gender determine the choice of a determiner variant. In other languages, the phonological onset of the element immediately following the determiner affects selection, too. Previous work has shown that the activation of opposing determiner forms by a noun's grammatical properties leads to slower naming latencies in a picture naming task, as does the activation of opposing forms by the interaction between a noun's gender and the phonological context. The present paper addresses the question of whether phonological context alone is sufficient to evoke competition between determiner forms. Participants produced English phrases in which a noun phrase's phonology required a determiner that was the same as or differed from the determiner required by the noun itself (e.g., apurple giraffe; an orange giraffe). Naming latencies were slower when the phrase-initial determiner differed from the determiner required by the noun in isolation than when the phrase-initial determiner matched the isolated-noun determiner. This was true both for definite and indefinite determiners. The data show that during the production of a determiner-noun phrase, nouns automatically activate the phonological forms of their determiners, which can compete with the phonological forms that are generated by an assimilation rule.
Department of German Language and Linguistics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany. katharina.spalek@staff.hu-berlin.de
Katharina
K
Spalek
Kathryn
K
Bock
Herbert
H
Schriefers
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007807:Language Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*