Dominance affects determiner selection in language production

Abstract

Janssen and Caramazza (2003) show that when producing diminutives or plurals in Dutch, determiner information about the corresponding (singular) base form is active. This is reflected in a time cost for producing the plural or the diminutive with a gender-marked determiner when these forms and the corresponding singular or base form require different determiners. No such cost is observed when singular and plural or base form and diminutive require the same determiner. In a series of picture naming experiments we show that this competition effect is modulated by the relative dominance of the morphological forms. The results can be explained within an extension of the "primed unitised activation account" proposed by Alario and Caramazza (2002).