SERIAL ORDER IN PLANNING THE PRODUCTION OF SUCCESSIVE MORPHEMES OF A WORD

Five implicit priming experiments examined whether the speech producti on system can plan noninitial morphemes of a word in advance of initia l ones. On each trial, subjects had to produce one word out of a set o f three words as quickly as possible. In a homogeneous condition, the responses shared part of their form, whereas in a heterogeneous condit ion they did not. The first experiment shows that the task is sensitiv e to morphological planning. In producing disyllabic simple and compou nd nouns, a larger facilitatory effect was obtained when a shared init ial syllable constituted a morpheme than when it did not. The next thr ee experiments suggest that successive morphemes are planned in serial order. In producing nominal compounds, no facilitation was obtained f or noninitial morphemes. In producing: prefixed verbs, facilitation wa s obtained for the prefix but not for the noninitial base. Sharing mor phemes often implies semantic overlap. The fifth experiment shows that semantic similarity per se yields inhibition rather than facilitation . Computer simulations show that the WEAVER model of word-form encodin g (Roelofs, 1992b, 1994, submitted-a) accounts for the findings. (C) 1 996 Academic Press, Inc.