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This paper discusses what it would.mean to have a psychological model of the language production process: what such a model would have to account for, what it would use as evidence. It outlines and motivates one particular model including: presumptions about the input to the process, a characterization of language production as a process of selection under constraint, and the principle stipulations of the model. This paper is an introduction, which is largely nontechnical and uses only simple examples. A detailed presentation of the architecture of the model, its grammar, and its interface to the speaker will be forthcoming in other papers. A. I. Laboratory Working Papers are produced for internal circulation, and may contain information that is, for example, too preliminary or too detailed for formal publication. Although some will be given a limited external distribution, it is not intended that they should be considered papers to which references can be made in the literature