Abstract :
Verbs are one of the basic building blocks of grammar, yet few studies have examined the grammatical,
morphological, and phonological factors contributing to lexical access and production of Spanish verb
inflection. This report describes an online data set that incorporates psycholinguistic dimensions for 50
of themost common early-acquired Spanish verbs. Using this data set, predictors of response time (RT)
from stimulus onset and mean differences at offset are examined. Native Spanish speakers, randomly
assigned to one of two tasks, listened to prerecorded verbs and either repeated the verb (single word
shadowing) or produced its corresponding pronoun. Factors such as stimulus duration, number of
syllables, syllable stress position, and specific levels of initial phoneme facilitated both shadowing of a
verb and production of its pronoun. Higher frequency verbs facilitated faster verb repetition, whereas
verbs with alternative pronouns increased RT to pronoun production. Mean differences at offset
(stimulus duration is removed) indicated that listeners begin speaking earlier when the verb is longer
and multisyllabic compared to shorter, monosyllabic words. These results highlight the association
between psycholinguistic factors and RT measures of verb processing, in particular, features unique to
languages like Spanish, such as alternative pronoun and tense.
