Grammatical gender in noun phrase production: The gender interference effect in German

Languages appear to differ in the way definite determiners are selected dur ing noun phrase production. M. Miozzo and A. Caramazza (1999) proposed that a distinction should be made between early- and late-selection languages. In early-selection languages, the noun's gender uniquely specifies the defi nite determiner, whereas in late-selection languages the definite determine r can be specified only during the phonological encoding of the noun phrase . This hypothesis predicts that in picture-word interference experiments on noun phrase production in early selection languages like German, one shoul d obtain a gender interference effect. In 2 experiments on German, this pre diction is confirmed. The implications of these results for the proposed di stinction between early- and late-selection languages are discussed.