Abstract
Interference effects from semantically similar items are well-known in studies of single word production, where the presence of semantically similar distractor words slows picture naming. This article examines the consequences of this interference in sentence production and tests the hypothesis that in situations of high similarity-based interference, producers are more likely to omit one of the interfering elements than when there is low semantic similarity and thus low interference. This work investigated language production in Mandarin, which allows subject noun phrases to be omitted in discourse contexts in which the subject entity has been previously mentioned in the discourse. We hypothesize that Mandarin speakers omit the subject more often when the subject and the object entities are conceptually similar. A corpus analysis of simple transitive sentences found higher rates of subject omission when both the subject and object were animate (potentially yielding similarity-based interference) than when the subject was animate and object was inanimate. A second study manipulated subject-object animacy in a picture description task and replicated this result: participants omitted the animate subject more often when the object was also animate than when it was inanimate. These results suggest that similarity-based interference affects sentence forms, particularly when the agent of the action is mentioned in the sentence. Alternatives and mechanisms for this effect are discussed.
Highlights
An important tool to understand the mapping from conceptual to lexical representations during language production is the pictureword interference paradigm, in which speakers name a picture and attempt to ignore a word printed on it
This result is interpreted to support the claim that lexical selection is a competitive process and is subject to interference from other activated words, in this case the highly semantically similar distractor word dog, making it harder to settle on the correct item for the utterance plan
If similarity-based interference affects the rate of subject omission in production, we should find a similar pattern to the one in the corpus analysis: more subject omission when both the agents and the patients of the action are animate
Summary
An important tool to understand the mapping from conceptual to lexical representations during language production is the pictureword interference paradigm, in which speakers name a picture and attempt to ignore a word printed on it. One classic result is that naming of a target picture (e.g., cat) is slower when the distractor word is of the same semantic category (e.g., dog) than when the word is semantically unrelated (e.g., clock; e.g., Rosinski et al, 1975; Glaser and Düngelhoff, 1984, and many studies since) This result is interpreted to support the claim that lexical selection (settling on the word cat to name the picture) is a competitive process and is subject to interference from other activated words, in this case the highly semantically similar distractor word dog, making it harder to settle on the correct item for the utterance plan. The picture-word paradigm yields a mix of interference and facilitation effects from phonological similarity, depending on timing and other factors (e.g., Schriefers et al, 1990; Meyer and Schriefers, 1991), phonological overlap in phrase and sentence production yields longer latencies and more errors (Wilshire, 1998; Acheson and MacDonald, 2009; Janssen and Caramazza, 2009; Jaeger et al, 2012)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
