The elusive lemma: on the representation of syntactic information in the mental lexicon

According to Levelt, W. J., Roelofs, A., and Meyer, A. S. [(1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(1), 1–38.] theory of lexical access, word production begins with the selection of a lemma, which gives access to the syntactic properties of the word. The notion of the lemma is well motivated on theoretical grounds and within Roelofs’ computational model WEAVER++, which captures central aspects of the theory [Roelofs, A. (1992). A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval in speaking. Cognition, 42(1–3), 107–142.; Roelofs, A. (2014). A dorsal-pathway account of aphasic language production: The WEAVER++/ARC model. Cortex, 59, 33–48.]. But what is the evidence for access to syntactic word representations? The author provides a comprehensive review of the relevant experimental evidence and concludes that, in spite of much research effort, it is still unknown whether or not speakers access abstract syntactic information during single-word access, and that further work within the established research paradigms is unlikely to change this picture. A fruitful way forward may be to broaden the perspective and explore how the syntactic properties of lexical items are retrieved when speakers produce longer utterances, where access to syntactic information is mandatory.