Usage-based theories assume that all aspects of language processing are shaped by the distributional properties of the language. The frequency not only of words but also of larger chunks plays a major role in language processing. These theories predict that the frequency of phrases influences the time needed to prepare these phrases for production and their acoustic duration. By contrast, dominant psycholinguistic models of utterance production predict no such effects. In these models, the system keeps track of the frequency of individual words but not of co-occurrences. This study investigates the extent to which the frequency of phrases impacts naming latencies and acoustic duration with a balanced design, where the same words are recombined to build high- and low-frequency phrases. The brain signal of participants is recorded so as to obtain information on the electrophysiological bases and functional locus of frequency effects. Forty-seven participants named pictures using high- and low-frequency adjective–noun phrases. Naming latencies were shorter for high-frequency than low-frequency phrases. There was no evidence that phrase frequency impacted acoustic duration. The electrophysiological signal differed between high- and low-frequency phrases in time windows that do not overlap with conceptualization or articulation processes. These findings suggest that phrase frequency influences the preparation of phrases for production, irrespective of the lexical properties of the constituents, and that this effect originates at least partly when speakers access and encode linguistic representations. Moreover, this study provides information on how the brain signal recorded during the preparation of utterances changes with the frequency of word combinations.

基于用法的理论假设语言处理的所有方面都是由语言的分布特性塑造的。不仅单词的频率，而且更大的块的频率在语言处理中也起着重要作用。这些理论预测，短语的频率会影响这些短语的制作准备时间及其声学持续时间。相比之下，话语产生的主导心理语言模型预测没有这种影响。在这些模型中，系统跟踪单个单词的频率，但不跟踪共现。本研究通过平衡设计调查短语频率对命名延迟和声学持续时间的影响程度，其中相同的单词重新组合以构建高频和低频短语。记录参与者的大脑信号，以获得有关频率效应的电生理基础和功能轨迹的信息。四十七名参与者使用高频和低频形容词-名词短语命名图片。高频短语的命名延迟比低频短语短。没有证据表明短语频率会影响声学持续时间。在不与概念化或发音过程重叠的时间窗口中，高频和低频短语之间的电生理信号不同。这些发现表明，无论成分的词汇特性如何，短语频率都会影响用于生产的短语的准备，并且这种影响至少部分源于说话者访问和编码语言表示。而且，