The Selection of Determiners in Noun Phrase Production

Picture-word interference experiments conducted with Italian speakers investigated how determiners are selected in noun phrase (NP) production. Determiner production involves the selection of a noun's syntactic features (mass or count, gender), which specify the type of determiner to be selected, and the subsequent selection of a particular phonological form (e.g., the/a in English). The research focused on the syntactic feature of gender. Results repeatedly failed to replicate the gender-congruity effect in NP production reported with Dutch speakers (longer latencies for target-distractor noun pairs with contrasting as opposed to the same gender). It is proposed that the discrepant results reflect processing differences in lexical access in Italian and Dutch: The selection of determiners in Italian, but not in Dutch, depends on phonological properties of the word that follows it in the NP. Evidence consistent with this explanation was obtained in an experiment in which determiner selection in NP production was hindered by conflicting phonological information in the NP.