Word order does not constrain phonological activation in single word production

Abstract

It has recently been claimed that the canonical word order of a given language constrains phonological activation processes even in single word production (Janssen, Alario, & Caramazza, 2008). This hypothesis predicts for languages with canonical adjectiveÁnoun word order that naming an object (i.e., noun production) is facilitated if the task-irrelevant colour of the object (i.e., adjective) is phonologically similar to the object name (e.g., blueÁboat as compared to redÁboat). By contrast, there should be no corresponding effect in naming the colour of the object (i.e., adjective production). In an experiment with native speakers of German, however, we observed exactly the opposite pattern. Phonological congruency facilitated colour naming but had no effect on object naming. Together with extant data from other languages our results suggest that object colour naming is affected by the phonology of the object name but not vice versa, regardless of the canonical word order in the given language.

The “BIG BIRD” of the “YELLOW YOUNG” Man: Do Nontarget Properties Cascade?

“…In line with previous findings (Dumay & Damian, 2011;Kuipers & La Heij, 2009;Mädebach et al, 2011), the present study provides support for a limited-cascading account of spoken word production (Bonin et al, 2012). More precisely, an object's identity cascades automatically through the lexical system, whereas object properties do not cascade to the phonological level, unless the speaker has the intention to name them.…”

“…This finding suggests that, although colour and object differ in dimension and grammatical class, both concepts transmit some activation at the phonological level during colour naming. In contrast, Kuipers and La Heij (2009; see also Mädebach, Alekseeva, & Jescheniak, 2011) failed to observe a PFE when naming coloured pictures in Dutch. The phonological relationship between the name of an object and the name of its colour did not affect objectnaming latencies in Dutch speakers.…”

“…More precisely, it appears that the object's name activates its phonology even when the task only requires the naming of one of its visual properties, such as its colour (Kuipers & La Heij, 2009;Navarrete & Costa, 2005). In contrast, the name of an object's colour does not seem to be phonologically activated during object naming (Dumay & Damian, 2011;Mädebach et al, 2011). In the present study, we designed three experiments involving several naming tasks to test whether an object's properties can be processed in a cascaded fashion.…”

“…However, recent studies have cast doubt on Janssen et al's findings. First of all, Kuipers and La Heij (2009; see also Mädebach et al, 2011) reported a PFE in colour naming in Dutch. Colour naming was facilitated by the phonological overlap between colour and object names, whereas object naming was not.…”

Features of Speech Reactions to Mental State Concepts

“…The average time of speech associative reaction to the names of mental states, which made 2114.68 milliseconds, is much larger than the reaction time found in various psycholinguistic studies, the task of which was to name the stimuli presented on the computer monitor in the form of individual words, connected phrases or entire sentences (Mädebach et al, 2011).…”