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. 2025 Jul;78(7):1461-1473.
doi: 10.1177/17470218241281868. Epub 2024 Sep 28.

The role of animacy in language production: evidence from bare noun naming

Yufang Wang  1   2 , Jurriaan Witteman  1   2 , Niels O Schiller  1   2   3
Affiliations

The role of animacy in language production: evidence from bare noun naming

Yufang Wang et al. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2025 Jul.

Abstract

According to Levelt's language production model, to name an object, speakers must first conceptualise and lexicalise the object before its name can be articulated. Conceptualisation is conducted through the semantic network that exists at the conceptual level, with the highly activated concept(s) activating lexical items at the lemma level, that is, lexicalisation. So far, research focused mostly on semantic categories (i.e., semantic interference) but less so on animacy-a concept that is correlated with semantic categories. To investigate the role of this semantic feature in language production, we conducted a picture-word interference study in Mandarin Chinese, varying animacy congruency and controlling for classifier congruency while recording behavioural and electrophysiological responses. We observed an animacy interference effect together with a larger N400 component for animacy-incongruent versus congruent picture-word pairs, suggesting animacy-congruent concepts may be in closer proximity and hence lead to a stronger spreading of activation relative to animacy-incongruent concepts. Furthermore, a larger P600 component was observed for classifier-incongruent versus classifier-congruent picture-word pairs, suggesting syntactically driven processing of classifiers at the lemma level.

Keywords: Language production; Mandarin Chinese classifiers; N400; P600; animacy; bare noun naming; picture-word interference.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Naming latencies across the conditions of animacy and classifier congruency.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Mean amplitude of all selected electrodes (F3, FC1, FC5, C3, CP1, CP5, P3, PO3, F4, FC2, FC6, C4, CP2, CP6, P4, and PO4) for animacy-congruent versus animacy-incongruent conditions from −200 to 700 ms after stimulus onset, shadowed in 275–575 ms.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Mean amplitude of all selected electrodes (F3, FC1, FC5, C3, CP1, CP5, P3, PO3, F4, FC2, FC6, C4, CP2, CP6, P4, and PO4) for classifier congruent versus incongruent conditions from −200 to 700 ms after stimulus onset, shadowed in 275–575 ms.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Interaction effect between animacy and classifiers on the amplitude of all selected electrodes (F3, FC1, FC5, C3, CP1, CP5, P3, PO3, F4, FC2, FC6, C4, CP2, CP6, P4, and PO4) at 275–575 ms.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Results of the permutation test across all electrodes from −200 to 700 ms after stimulus onset. The highlighted regions are CP6, C4, and FC6 in the time window of 400–500 ms.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Mean amplitude for all selected channels (CP6, C4, and FC6) for animacy-congruent versus animacy-incongruent conditions from −200 to 700 ms after stimulus onset (the highlighted time window is between 400 and 500 ms) in the exploratory analysis.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
Mean amplitude for all selected channels (CP6, C4, and FC6) for classifier congruent versus incongruent conditions from −200 to 700 ms after stimulus onset (the highlighted time window is between 400 and 500 ms) in the exploratory analysis.
Figure 8.
Figure 8.
Interaction effect between animacy and classifier congruency on the amplitude of all selected channels (CP6, C4, and FC6) at 400–500 ms after stimulus onset in the exploratory analysis.
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