The Production of Noun Phrases in English and Spanish: Implications for the Scope of Phonological Encoding in Speech Production

Abstract

The role of the phonological word as a planning unit in the production of noun phrases (NPs) was investigated in three picture-word interference experiments. We addressed this issue cross-linguistically by asking Spanish and English speakers to produce simple (determiner + noun [in English]) and complex (determiner + adjective + noun [in English] or determiner + noun + adjective [in Spanish]) NPs while ignoring phonologically related or unrelated distractors. The results showed that naming latencies are faster when the distractor is phonologically related to the noun or to the adjective irrespective of the type of NP tested. The results suggest that NP naming latencies are affected by the level of activation of the phonological content of the lexical nodes of the NP, regardless of whether they belong to the first or second phonological word. The results are interpreted in the framework of theories of phonological encoding.