Scope of Message Planning: Evidence From Production of Sentences With Heavy Sentence-Final NPs.

ABSTRACT: Speaking begins with the generation of a preverbal message. While a common assumption is that the scope of message-level planning (i.e., the size of message-level increments) can be more extensive than the scope of sentence-level planning, it is unclear how much information is typically encoded at the message level in advance of sentence-level planning during spontaneous production. This study assessed the scope and granularity of early message-level planning in English by tracking production of sentences with light versus heavy sentence-final NPs. Speakers produced SVO sentences to describe pictures showing an agent acting on a patient. Half of the pictures showed one-patient events, eliciting sentences with unmodified patient names (e.g., "The tailor is cutting the dress"), and half show

SUBMITTER: Konopka AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12519050 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature