The specific-word frequency effect: Implications for the representation of homophones in speech production

In a series of experiments, the authors investigated whether naming latencies for homophones (e.g., /nAn/) are a function of specific-word frequency (i.e., the frequency of nun) or a function of cumulative-homophone frequency (i.e., the sum of the frequencies of nun and none). Specific-word but not cumulative-homophone frequency affected picture-naming latencies. This result was obtained in 2 languages (English and Chinese). An analogous finding was obtained in a translation task, where bilingual speakers produced the English names of visually presented Spanish words. Control experiments ruled out that these results are an artifact of orthographic or articulatory factors, or of visual recognition. The results argue against the hypothesis that homophones share a common word-form representation, and support instead a model in which homophones have fully independent representations. Homophones are words that have the same pronunciation but differ in meaning, spelling, or grammatical class. How are homo-phones represented and accessed in speech production? Two hy-potheses have been proposed. One view holds that homophones share a common lexical-phonological representation, but because they have different meanings and often also different grammatica