Objects can almost always be called by more than one name, and the name chosen depends on the context. However, studies of naming in some traditions elicit names by showing objects in isolation and asking merely What is it? If the names produced are not the same as those that would be given in more fully specified communicative contexts, the value of the tasks for understanding object naming is in doubt. The current study examined the effects of different communicative demands on naming of 60 household containers. A standard “free naming” task was contrasted with two other versions. In these two, participants had the goal of getting an addressee to find a target object among others. In one, each object needed to be distinguished from a small set of dissimilar objects, visible to the addressee. In the other, each needed to be distinguished from a large set of similar objects, not visible to the addressee. Responses were sensitive to context in the number of modifiers produced. However, they were insensitive in the head nouns produced. Simple naming tasks such as What is it? can produce results for head nouns equivalent to those from tasks providing more fully specified communicative contexts.

We examined first language (L1) naming of common household objects in three groups of Russian–English bilinguals: early, childhood and late bilinguals. Their naming patterns were compared with those of native speakers of Russian and English, in order to detect possible second language (L2) English influence on L1 Russian naming patterns. We investigated whether such influence is modulated by the speaker's linguistic trajectory, specifically, their age of arrival in the L2 environment, which in turn influences their relative proficiency and dominance in the two languages. We also examined whether the potential for L2 shifts can be linked to specific characteristics of the categories in the L1 or L2. L2 influence was evident in the data, increasing with earlier age of arrival but most pronounced with lowest L1 proficiency. The changes entailed both narrowing and broadening of linguistic categories. These findings indicate that L1 word use is susceptible to L2 influence even for concrete nouns referring to familiar objects, and the nature of the shift for a given word appears to be driven by several factors.

The purpose of this study was to examine regional cerebral blood flow using positron emission tomography (PET) during the performance of tasks related to visual confrontation naming. Ten healthy, young participants were scanned twice in each of 5 conditions; blood flow was measured using standard PET [15O]-water technology. Two major findings have replicated previous studies. First, the naming of visually presented objects, whether covert or overt, requires a region of the left inferior cortex including the fusiform gyrus. Second, during overt naming, there is an increase in activity in the inferior or frontal cortex and insula as a consequence of generating speech code. These data are consistent with other studies demonstrating the importance of the inferior temporal regions for semantic processing, and the frontal cortex for word form generation. (JINS, 1998, 4, 160–166.)