Semantic and phonological activation in noun and pronoun production

Speakers can refer to objects and other entities by nouns or pronouns. The present article investigated the production of gender-marked pronouns in Ge rman. Four picture-word interference experiments are reported, addressing 2 questions. First, is the lemma of a referent noun (i.e., the representatio n of the referent noun's semantic and syntactic properties) accessed when p roducing a pronoun? Second, if so, is this access confined to the lemma, or will the referent noun's phonological form be activated, too? The results suggest that in generating pronouns, speakers accessed the lemma of the ref erent noun, whereas its phonological form was not substantially activated. The results are discussed in the context of other recent experimental studi es of pronoun and noun production.