The timing of verb selection in English active and passive sentences

The current study reports the results from an extended picture-word interference task that examines the timing of verb planning in English active and passive utterances. The pattern of semantic interference on verbs suggests that advance planning of verbs occurs selectively before the onset of passive sentences. This pattern of advance verb planning cannot be explained by other factors including the linear position of verbs or limitations in cognitive resources. It is argued that the abstract linguistic relationships between words in a sentence guide the timing of lexical planning above and beyond these factors. This challenges an important premise of strongly incremental models of sentence production: that the production of a word in a sentence needs no advance planning of later coming words.

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