A speaker-centric motivation for the use of optional adjectives during language production

Speakers often make choices to alleviate planning difficulty during language production. We investigate the use of adjectives as optional words that speakers can use implicitly and strategically to provide extra planning time during periods of planning difficulty. Speakers described target objects in an array that either contained a different-colored competitor, so producing a color adjective was necessary to identify the target item, or did not have a different-colored competitor. Target items crucially differed in name agreement. Objects with high name agreement have a single, dominant label (candle) and are easier to produce than objects with low name agreement, which have multiple possible labels (coat/jacket). Speakers predictably produced a high rate of adjectives when describing high and low name agreement items in arrays containing a different-color competitor. However, when the array did not contain a different-color competitor, so adjectives were not necessary to identify the target, participants produced more adjectives preceding low name agreement objects. Further, when speakers produced adjectives, the duration of those adjectives were longer preceding low name agreement objects. We interpret these results as suggesting that the use of optional adjectives may sometimes have a speaker-centric motivation, to alleviate planning difficulty during language production.