Affiliation:
1. Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany
2. Institut für Linguistik, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
Abstract
In previous picture naming tasks, semantically related distractor words (co-hyponyms to the target word) induce interference, which is usually taken as evidence for lexical competition. In an online picture-word-interference experiment, we showed that distractor words that share a feature with the target (here: their natural prototypical color), also induced interference. Pictures were not named with single words but with short descriptive sentences (“The heart is red”). Focus on the noun modulated the interference effect. In particular, when target and distractor were presented simultaneously, the interference effect was significantly reduced in the narrow focus condition, compared to broad focus. We discuss our findings for focus production against the findings on language comprehension reported in the literature, which mostly observed facilitatory effects of focus marking on the comprehension of focus alternatives.
Funder
European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics
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