ERIC Number: EJ1217791
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Jul
Pages: 29
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
EISSN: N/A
Representation and Selection of Determiners with Phonological Variants
Bürki, Audrey; Besana, Tea; Degiorgi, Gaëlle; Gilbert, Romane; Alario, F.-Xavier
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v45 n7 p1287-1315 Jul 2019
The aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of cross-linguistic differences in the time course of determiner selection during language production. In Germanic languages, participants are slower at naming a picture using a determiner + noun utterance ("die Katze" "the cat") when a superimposed distractor is of a different gender (gender congruency effect). In Romance languages in which the pronunciation of the determiner also depends on the phonology of the next word, there is no such effect. This difference is traditionally assumed to arise because determiners are selected later in Romance languages ("late selection hypothesis"). It has further been suggested that in a given language, all determiners are either selected late or early ("maximum consistency principle"). Data on French have challenged these 2 hypotheses by revealing a gender congruency effect when participants name pictures using the definite singular determiner "le-la" ("l'" before vowels) and a noun, at positive stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), that is, when there is a delay between the presentation of the picture and that of the distractor. We examined this finding further and investigated whether it generalizes to the indefinite determiner un-une. Results of 4 picture-word interference experiments reveal that gender congruency effects in French are not restricted to the definite determiner or positive SOAs, but can be hard to detect in experiments which do not account for the variability in reading and naming times across participants and trials. We discuss the implications of these results for the modeling of determiner selection across languages.
Descriptors: Phonology, Phonological Awareness, Language Skills, Interference (Language), Pronunciation, Nouns, Vowels, Gender Issues, Grammar, Pictorial Stimuli, Generalization, French, College Students, Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Switzerland (Geneva)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A