Effects of Semantic Integration on Phrase and Word Ordering Errors in Production

Two experiments investigated the locus of the effects of semantic integration (the conceptual relatedness between utterance constituents) on grammatical encoding during language production. In an ordering-error elicitation paradigm, participants produced descriptions of picture stimuli that varied in degree of integration. For both phrase and word ordering errors, integrated stimuli were more error-prone than unintegrated stimuli. The phrase error results support integration effects on phrasesized units at the functional level. The word error results suggest integration effects on individual lexical items and provide preliminary evidence for positional level integration effects. Implications of the penetration of semantic integration effects through the functional and positional levels are discussed.