Can independence be observed in a dependent system? The case of tip-of-the-tongue states

Caramazza and Miozzo (1997) found that speakers experiencing tip-of-the-ton gue states are able to report phonological information independently from s yntactic information. They used this finding to reject sequential models of production, in which syntactic units (lemmas) are retrieved before form un its (lexemes). To see whether this conclusion is warranted, we performed tw o simulation experiments based on sequential architectures. Both models we simulated produced statistically uncorrelated syntax and phonology despite sequentially retrieving lemmas and lexemes. Finally, we analyzed a corpus o f Spanish errors, finding syntactic constraints on phonological word substi tution errors that are not easily explained without sequentiality. (C) 1999 Academic Press.