Universität Bielefeld - Sonderforschungsbereich 360

Grammatical gender in the production of noun phrases

Herbert Schriefers

Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information (NICI)
Nijmegen University

Montag, 08.11.1999, 16 Uhr c.t., Hörsaal 9

Recently, Miozzo and Caramazza (1999, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition) have proposed a distinction between early- and late selection languages. In early selection languages, the grammatical gender of a noun unambiguously specifies the definite determiner of a noun phrase, and thus the determiner can be selected in early stages of the production process. According to Miozzo and Caramazza, Dutch and German are early-selection languages. In late-selection languages, by contrast, specification of the definite determiner not only depends on the noun's grammatical gender, but also on the phonological form of the word following the definite determiners. Thus, selection of the determiner can only occur in a later stage when the phonological form of the noun phrase is known. Italian and Catalan can be seen as candidates for late-selection languages. In the present presentation, I will consider the proposed distinction between early- and late-selection languages on the basis of evidence from our lab (German, Dutch, and French) as well as other recent evidence from Italian, Catalan, and Spanish.

Anke Weinberger, 1999-10-13