ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how we produce language. There has been less research on language production than on language comprehension. Consider the amount of space devoted to these topics in this book: several chapters on input and only one on output. Clearly we do not spend disproportionately more time listening or reading than we do speaking, so why is there this imbalance of research? The investigation of production is perceived to be more difficult than the investigation of comprehension, primarily because it is difficult to control the input in experiments on production. It is relatively easy
to control the frequency, imageability, and visual appearance (or any other aspect that is considered important) of the materials of word recognition experiments, but our thoughts are much harder to control experimentally.
