Semantic substitution errors (e.g., saying “arm ” when “leg ” is intended) are among the most common types of errors occurring during spontaneous speech. It has been shown that grammatical gender of German target nouns is preserved in the errors (E. Marx, 1999). In 3 experiments, the authors explored different accounts of the grammatical gender preservation effect in German. In all experiments, semantic substitution errors were induced using a continuous naming paradigm. In Experiment 1, it was found that gender preservation disappeared when speakers produced bare nouns. Gender preservation was found when speakers produced phrases with determiners marked for gender (Experiment 2) but not when the produced determiners were not marked for gender (Experiment 3). These results are discussed in the context of models of lexical retrieval during production. Speaking involves the retrieval of lexical representations that correspond to our intentions and the development of a syntactically and morphophonologically well-formed frame for the sentence to be uttered. The development of such a frame is, in part, guided by syntactic information specific to each word, for example, its grammatical category, subcategorization requirements of verbs, and, for

A discussion of modularity in language production processes, with special emphasis on processes for retrieving words and building syntactic structures for a to-be-uttered sentence, is presented. The authors’ 1st goal was to assess the extent to which information processing is encapsulated between different processing stages. In particular, they assessed whether the input from one processing stage to the next is minimal and whether the flow of information in the system is strictly unidirectional. On the basis of the reviewed evidence, they conclude that both assumptions have to be revised. Their 2nd goal was to propose an alternative framework that does not assume strict encapsulation but that maintains multiple levels of integration for production. During the past 20 years a “great divide ” (as Boland & Cutler, 1996, p. 309, labeled it) has characterized the psycholinguistic world: Can the processes engaged during comprehension and production of language be conceived of as modular or not? Whereas a number of influential theories that do not assume a modular system have been put forward in the comprehension domain (e.g., MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994; Tabor

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This paper explores the role of semantic similarity in content selection and aggregation of expressions referring to sets. Similarity plays a role in ensuring that a referring expression corresponds to a coherent conceptual gestalt. On the basis of corpusbased and experimental evidence we propose an algorithm which (a) separates content selection and aggregation to avoid a combinatorial explosion; (b) uses similarity between entities to prioritise among search alternatives.

Two procedures were used to explore the effects of semantic and grammatical gender on the recognition and processing of Bulgarian nouns, in relation to other factors that are known to affect lexical access. This study in a three-gender language was modeled on previous work in Italian, a two-gender language (Bates, Devescovi, Pizzamiglio, D’Amico, & Hernandez, 1995). Words were presented auditorily in randomized lists in two tasks: (1) repeat the word as quickly as possible and (2) determine the grammatical gender of the noun as soon as possible and indicate the decision by pressing a button. Reaction times in both tasks were influenced by phonological factors, word frequency, and irregularity of gender marking, but semantic and grammatical gender affected only gender monitoring. The significant contribution of semantic gender to processing in Bulgarian contrasts with previous findings for Italian. Also, we obtained an interaction between sex of the subject and noun gender, reflecting a bias toward one’s own grammatical gender “counterpart ” (especially for females). Reanalysis of the prior study in Italian showed a similar interaction but confirmed no effects of the semantic gender of the noun, suggesting that these two natural gender effects can dissociate. Possible reasons for cross-linguistic differences are discussed, with implications for comparative studies of gender and lexical access. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the nature