A purple giraffe is faster than a purple elephant: Inconsistent phonology affects determiner selection in English

• Published in: Cognition Vol. 114; no. 1; pp. 123 - 128
• Main Authors: Spalek, Katharina, Bock, Kathryn, Schriefers, Herbert
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 2010; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adult; Analysis of Variance; Attention - physiology; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition - physiology; Concept Formation - physiology; Context Effect; Determiner competition; English; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Grammar; Humans; Language; Language Processing; Language Tests; Naming; Naming Task; Nouns; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology; Phonological consistency; Phonology; Photic Stimulation; Production and perception of spoken language; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychomotor Performance - physiology; Reaction Time - physiology; Speech; Speech production; Speech Production Measurement; Verbal Behavior - physiology; Speech production; Phonological consistency; Determiner competition; Competition; Human; English; Language; Speech; Phonology; Cognition; Verbal production; Experimental study
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.09.011
• EISSN: 1873-7838
• ISSN: 0010-0277

The form of a determiner is dependent on different contextual factors: in some languages grammatical number and grammatical gender determine the choice of a determiner variant. In other languages, the phonological onset of the element immediately following the determiner affects selection, too. Previous work has shown that the activation of opposing determiner forms by a noun’s grammatical properties leads to slower naming latencies in a picture naming task, as does the activation of opposing forms by the interaction between a noun’s gender and the phonological context. The present paper addresses the question of whether phonological context alone is sufficient to evoke competition between determiner forms. Participants produced English phrases in which a noun phrase’s phonology required a determiner that was the same as or differed from the determiner required by the noun itself (e.g.,
a
purple giraffe;
an orange giraffe
). Naming latencies were slower when the phrase-initial determiner differed from the determiner required by the noun in isolation than when the phrase-initial determiner matched the isolated-noun determiner. This was true both for definite and indefinite determiners. The data show that during the production of a determiner–noun phrase, nouns automatically activate the phonological forms of their determiners, which can compete with the phonological forms that are generated by an assimilation rule.