Timed picture naming was compared in seven languages that vary along dimensions known to affect lexical access. Analyses over items focused on factors that determine cross-languageuniversals and cross-languagedisparities. With regard to universals, number of alternative names had large effects on reaction time within and across languages after target-name agreement was controlled, suggesting inhibitory effects from lexical competitors. For all the languages, word frequency and goodness of depiction had large effects, but objective picture complexity did not. Effects of word structure variables (length, syllable structure, compounding, and initial frication) varied markedly over languages. Strong cross-language correlations were found in naming latencies, frequency, and length. Other-language frequency effects were observed (e.g., Chinese frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times) even after within-language effects were controlled (e.g.,Spanish frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times). These surprising cross-language correlations challenge widely held assumptions about the lexical locus of length and frequency effects, suggesting instead that they may (at least in part) reflect familiarity and accessibility at a conceptual level that is shared over languages.

Two new procedures were employed to investigate the effects of semantic and grammatical gender on lexical access in Italian and to investigate the interaction of gender with other factors that are known to influence lexical access in other languages. The gender-monitoring task requires a conscious decision about the gender of each noun, whereas the word repetition task does not require explicit attention to gender. In both tasks, single words are presented out of context, under speeded conditions. Both procedures proved to be sensitive indices of word recognition, with reaction times that are closely tied to the point at which words can be uniquely identified (although some processing before and after the uniqueness point was seen). In both tasks, reaction times were strongly affected by phonological factors (e.g., length, number of syllables, and presence of frication on the initial consonant). Phonological transparency of gender marking had a reliable effect on gender monitoring but had no effect on word repetition, suggesting that explicit attention to gender may be a factor affecting utilization of this phonological cue. Semantic factors (including semantic gender) had no effect on performance. Frequency and age of acquisition had very small effects when other factors were controlled. Implications for current models of lexical access are discussed, with special reference to the role of gender.Gender marking is a pervasive phenomenon in many of the world's languages, but its role in lexical and grammatical processing is still poorly understood. In most of the languages that incorporate some form of productive gender marking, the relationship between grammatical and semantic gender is indirect at best. To offer one widely cited example (e.g., Maratsos, 1981), who can explain why, in the German language, the term for the flute (die Fldte] is This research was supported by NIDCD Grant PHS DC00216-09 to E.B., and by a grant from the Clinica e Centro di Ricerca Santa Lucia to L.P.During manuscript preparation, E.B. was a visiting scholar at the Istituto di Psicologia, Consiglio Nazionale di Ricerca, in laboratories directed by Virginia Volterra at the Istituto Statale Sordo-Muti, Via Nomentana 56, Rome, Italy. We are grateful to Bob Buffington, Larry Juarez, and Meiti Opie for assistance in stimulus preparation and data collection, to Angela Friederici and Michele Kail for advice and criticism in the design phases of this study, and to Uli Frauenfelder and William Marslen-Wilson for their advice and criticism during analysis and manuscript preparation. Any errors of design or interpretation that remain are, of course, our own. Please address correspondence to E. Bates, Center for Research in Language 0526, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0526. feminine, whereas the term for the little girl (das Mddchen) is neuter? Or why the term for the ocean is neuter in German (das Meer), feminine in French (la mer), and masculine in Italian (it mare'[l) If gender serves no systematic semantic functio...

Results from two separate norming studies of lexical access in Italian were merged, permitting a comparison of word-reading and picture-naming latencies and the factors that predict each one for an overlapping subsample of 128 common nouns. Factor analysis of shared lexical predictors yielded four latent variables: a frequency factor, a semantic factor, a length factor, and a final factor dominated by frication on the initial phoneme. Age of acquisition (AoA) loaded highly on the first two factors, suggesting that it can be split into separate sources of variance. Regression analyses using factor scores as predictors showed that word reading and picture naming are both influenced by the frequency/AoA factor. The semantics/AoA factor influenced only picture naming, whereas the length and frication factors influenced only word reading. Generalizability of these results to other languages is discussed, including potential effects of cross-language differences in orthographic transparency.