Representation and selection of determiners with phonological variants

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Language Production
• Cross-linguistic Research

Background:

• Germanic languages show gender congruency effects in determiner selection, unlike Romance languages.
• The late selection hypothesis posits later determiner selection in Romance languages.
• French data previously challenged these hypotheses, showing effects with definite determiners at positive stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if gender congruency effects in French extend to indefinite determiners.
• To determine if these effects generalize beyond positive SOAs.
• To explore the impact of response time variability on detecting these effects.

Main Methods:

• Four picture-word interference experiments were conducted.
• Participants named pictures with determiner + noun utterances.
• Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and distractor gender were manipulated.

Main Results:

• Gender congruency effects were observed with indefinite determiners in French.
• These effects were found not to be restricted to positive SOAs.
• Detecting effects was challenging without accounting for participant and trial variability in reading/naming times.

Conclusions:

• French determiner selection exhibits gender congruency effects beyond definite determiners and positive SOAs.
• The findings challenge the late selection hypothesis and maximum consistency principle.
• Accurate modeling of cross-linguistic determiner selection requires accounting for response time variability.