This special issue presents an overview of recent research conducted in the field of language production. Its articles are based on talks presented at the first edition of the International Workshop on Language Production (Marseille, France, September 2004). The articles in the special issue deal with three different topics of general interest for models of language production: A. the general organizational principles of the language production system (representations, spread of activation, monitoring), B. several aspects of the lexical selection process and C. the representations and processes used during syntactic encoding.