The use of lexical and syntactic information in language production: Evidence from the priming of noun-phrase structure

Theories of lexical representation in production provide sophisticated accounts of the way in which information is activated during lexical access (e.g., Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999), but there has been little attempt to account for the way in which the structure of the lexical entry affects the formulation processes that underlie the production of complex expressions. This paper first outlines such an account, and then reports three experiments that investigated the priming of noun-phrase structure in dialogue. Experiment 1 showed that speakers used a complex noun phrase containing a relative clause (e.g., “the square that’s red”) more often after hearing a syntactically similar noun phrase than after hearing a simple noun phrase, and that this effect was enhanced when the head noun (“square”) was repeated. Experiment 2 showed an enhanced priming effect when prime and target contained semantically related nouns (e.g., “goat” and “sheep”). Experiment 3 showed no enhanced effect when prime and target bore a close phonological relationship (e.g., “ship” and “sheep”). These results provide support for our account, and suggest that syntactic encoding may be unaffected by phonological feedback.