PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Language Production: Theories and models

Exam 2 Don’t forget that Exam 2 is 1 week from today (April 3) I’ll put together a “review” quiz, based on the question sets used in the other quizzes, will NOT count for credit, just a tool for studying

From thought to speech Propositions to be communicated Message level Morphemic levelSyntactic level Phonemic level Articulation Selection and organization of lexical items Morphologically complex words are constructed Sound structure of each word is built

From thought to speech The inflection stayed in the same location, the stems moved Inflections tend to stay in their proper place Do not typically see errors like The beeing are buzzes The bees are buzzing Message level Syntactic level Morphemic level Phonemic level Articulation Stranding errors I liked he would hope you I hoped he would like you

From thought to speech Closed class items very rare in exchanges or substitutions Two possibilities Part of syntactic frame High frequency, so lots of practice, easily selected, etc. Message level Syntactic level Morphemic level Phonemic level Articulation Stranding errors

From thought to speech Message level Syntactic level Morphemic level Phonemic level Articulation Consonant vowel regularity Consonants slip with other consonants, vowels with vowels, but rarely do consonants slip with vowels The implication is that vowels and consonants represent different kinds of units in phonological planning

From thought to speech Message level Syntactic level Morphemic level Phonemic level Articulation Consonant vowel regularity Frame and slots in syllables Similar to the slots and frames we discussed with syntax LEXICON /d/, C /g/, C, V Onset Word Rhyme VCC PHONOLOGICAL FRAME Syllable

From thought to speech Message level Syntactic level Morphemic level Phonemic level Articulation Consonant vowel regularity Frame and slots in syllables Evidence for the separation of meaning and sound Tip of the tongue Picture-word interference

Uhh… It is a.. You know.. A.. Arggg. I can almost see it, it has two Syllables, I think it starts with A ….. Tip-of-the-tongue

William James ( ) a pioneering psychologist and philosopher "It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term." … “… the rhythm of the lost word may be there without the sound to clothe it; or the evanescent sense of something which is the initial vowel or consonant may mock us fitfully, without growing more distinct.”

Low-frequency words (e.g., apse, nepotism, sampan), prompted by brief definitions. “To keep eggs warm until hatching” On 8.5% of trials, tip-of-the-tongue state ensued: Had to guess: word's first or last letters the number of syllables it contained which syllable was stressed Brown & McNeill (1966) Tip-of-the-tongue

Total of 360 TOT states: 233 ="positive TOTs" (subject was thinking of target word, and produced scorable data 127 = "negative TOTs" (subject was thinking of other word, but could not recall it) 224 similar-sound TOTs (e.g., Saipan for sampan) 48% had the same number of syllables as the target 95 similar-meaning TOTs (e.g., houseboat for sampan). 20% had same number of syllables as target. Tip-of-the-tongue Brown & McNeill (1966)

Similar words come to mind about half the time But how much is just guessing? First letter: correct 50-71% of time (vs. 10% by chance) First sound: 36% of time (vs. 6% by chance) Tip-of-the-tongue

Results suggest a basic split between semantics and phonology: People can access meaning and grammar but not pronunciation What about syntax? Tip-of-the-tongue

Syntax grammatical category (“part of speech”) e.g. noun, verb, adjective Gender e.g. le chien, la vache; le camion, la voiture Number e.g. dog vs. dogs; trousers vs. shirt Count/mass status e.g. oats vs. flour Tip-of-the-tongue

Vigliocco et al. (1997) Italian speakers presented with word definitions Gender was always arbitrary If unable to retrieve word, they answered How well do you think you know the word? Guess the gender Guess the number of syllables Guess as many letters and positions as possible Report any word that comes to mind Then presented with target word Do you know this word? Is this the word you were thinking of? Tip-of-the-tongue

Vigliocco et al (1997) Scoring + TOT Both reported some correct information in questionnaire And said yes to recognition question - TOT Otherwise Vigliocco et al. (1997)

Vigliocco et al (1997) Results + TOT: 84% correct gender guess - TOT: 53% correct gender guess chance level Conclusion Subjects often know grammatical gender information even when they have no phonological information Supports split between syntax and phonology in production Vigliocco et al. (1997)

Nitty gritty detail of the model Message level Morphemic levelSyntactic level Phonemic level Articulation Central questions: How many levels are there? Are the stages discrete or cascading? Discrete: must complete before moving on Cascade: can get started as soon as some information is available Is there feedback? Top-down only (serial processing) Garrett, Levelt Bottom up too (interactive processing) Dell, Stemberger, McKay

Levelt’s model Four broad stages: Conceptualization Deciding on the message (= meaning to express) Formulation Turning the message into linguistic representations Grammatical encoding (finding words and putting them together) Phonological encoding (finding sounds and putting them together) Articulation Speaking (or writing or signing) Monitoring (via the comprehension system)

Formalization on the Syntax side of the model Works in parallel with the lexicon side Levelt’s model Functional processing: Assignment of roles Direct object Grammatical subject

Formalization on the Syntax side of the model Works in parallel with the lexicon side Levelt’s model Positional processing: Build syntactic tree NP VP S VNP

Tip of tongue state when lemma is retrieved without word-form being retrieved Levelt’s model Involves lexical retrieval: Semantic/syntactic content (lemmas) Phonological content (lexemes or word-forms) Formalization on the Lexicon side of the model

has stripesis dangerous TIGER (X) Fem. Nouncountable tigre /tigre/ /t//I//g/ Lexical concepts Lemmas Lexemes Phonemes Levelt’s model

has stripesis dangerous TIGER (X) Levelt’s model: conceptual level Conceptual stratum is not decomposed one lexical concept node for “tiger” instead, conceptual links from “tiger” to “stripes”, etc.

TIGER (X) Fem. Nouncountable tigre Levelt’s model First, lemma activation occurs This involves activating a lemma or lemmas corresponding to the concept thus, concept TIGER activates lemma “tiger”

TIGER (X) Fem. Noun tigre Levelt’s model First, lemma activation occurs This involves activating a lemma or lemmas corresponding to the concept thus, concept TIGER activates lemma “tiger” But also involves activating other lemmas TIGER also activates LION (etc.) to some extent and LION activates lemma “lion” LION (X) lion

TIGER (X) Fem. Noun tigre Levelt’s model First, lemma activation occurs Second, lemma selection occurs LION (X) lion Selection is different from activation Only one lemma is selected Probability of selecting the target lemma (“tiger”) ratio of that lemma’s activation to the total activation of all lemmas (“tiger”, “lion”, etc.) Hence competition between semantically related lemmas

Morpho-phonological encoding (and beyond) The lemma is now converted into a phonological representation called “word-form” (or “lexeme”) If “tiger” lemma plus plural (and noun) are activated Leads to activation of morphemes tigre and s Other processes too Stress, phonological segments, phonetics, and finally articulation /tigre/ /t//I//g/

Modularity Later processes cannot affect earlier processes No feedback between the word-form (lexemes) layer and the grammatical (lemmas) layer Also, only one lemma activates a word form If “tiger” and “lion” lemmas are activated, they compete to produce a winner at the lemma stratum Only the “winner” activates a word form (selection) The word-forms for the “losers” aren’t accessed Model’s assumptions

Dell’s interactive account Dell (1986) presented the best-known interactive account other similar accounts exist (e.g., Stemberger, McKay) Network organization 3 levels of representation Semantics (decomposed into features) Words and morphemes phonemes (sounds) These get selected and inserted into frames

Dell (1986) A moment in the production of: “Some swimmers sink”

as well as “downwards” information Interactive because information flows “upwards” Dell (1986) Cascading because processing at lower levels can start early

these send activation back to the word level, activating words containing these sounds (e.g., “log”, “dot”) to some extent Dell (1986) this activation is upwards (phonology to syntax) and wouldn’t occur in Levelt’s account FURRYBARKS doglog /a//g//d//l/ MAMMAL e.g., the semantic features mammal, barks, four-legs activate the word “dog” this activates the sounds /d/, /o/, /g/ dot /t/

Model comparisons Levelt’s Dell’s Similar representations Frames and slots Insertion of representations into the frames Serial Modular Interactive Cascaded Similarities Differences

tiger Picture-word interference task Participants name basic objects as quickly as possible Distractor words are embedded in the object participants are instructed to ignore these words Experimental tests

Semantically related words can interfere with naming e.g., the word TIGER in a picture of a LION Experimental tests tiger

However, form-related words can speed up processing e.g., the word liar in a picture of a LION Basic findings liar

Experiments manipulate timing: picture and word can be presented simultaneously liar time liar or one can slightly precede the other We draw inferences about time-course of processing liar

Schriefers, Meyer, and Levelt (1990) SOA (Stimulus onset asynchrony) manipulation -150 ms (word …150 ms … picture) 0 ms (i.e., synchronous presentation) +150 ms (picture …150ms …word) Auditory presentation of distractors DOT phonologically related CAT semantically related SHIP unrelated word

Schriefers, Meyer, and Levelt (1990) Auditory presentation of distractors DOT phonologically related CAT semantically related SHIP unrelated word Early Only Semantic effects

Schriefers, Meyer, and Levelt (1990) Auditory presentation of distractors DOT phonologically related CAT semantically related SHIP unrelated word Late Only Phonological effects

Schriefers, Meyer, and Levelt (1990) DOT phonologically related CAT semantically related SHIP unrelated word Early Only Semantic effects Late Only Phonological effects Evidence against interactivity

Schriefers, Meyer, and Levelt (1990) Also looked for any evidence of a mediated priming effect hat dog DOG (X)CAT (X) cat /cat//hat/ /t//a//k//h/ Found no evidence for it Evidence against interactivity

Early semantic inhibition Late phonological facilitation Fits with the assumption that semantic processing precedes phonological processing No overlap suggests two discrete stages in production an interactive account might find semantic and phonological effects at the same time Interpretation

Mixed errors Both semantic and phonological relationship to target word Target = “cat” semantic error = “dog” phonological error = “hat” mixed error = “rat” Occur more often than predicted by modular models if you can go wrong at either stage, it would only be by chance that an error would be mixed Evidence for interactivity

Dell’s explanation The process of making an error The semantic features of dog activate “cat” Some features (e.g., animate, mammalian) activate “rat” as well “cat” then activates the sounds /k/, /ae/, /t/ /ae/ and /t/ activate “rat” by feedback This confluence of activation leads to increased tendency for “rat” to be uttered Also explains the tendency for phonological errors to be real words (lexical bias effect) Sounds can only feed back to words (non-words not represented) so only words can feedback to sound level Evidence for interactivity

A number of recent experimental findings appear to support interaction under some circumstances (or at least cascading models) Damian & Martin (1999) Cutting & Ferreira (1999) Peterson & Savoy (1998)

Damian and Martin (1999) Picture-Word interference The critical difference: the addition of a “semantic and phonological” condition Picture of Apple peach (semantically related) apathy (phonologically related) apricot (sem & phono related) couch (unrelated) Evidence for interactivity peach

Results Damian & Martin (1999) early semantic inhibition couch (unrelated) peach (semantically related) apathy (phonologically related) apricot (sem & phono related)

Results Damian & Martin (1999) late phonological facilitation (0 and ms) early semantic inhibition couch (unrelated) peach (semantically related) apathy (phonologically related) apricot (sem & phono related)

Results Damian & Martin (1999) late phonological facilitation (0 and ms) Shows overlap, unlike Schriefers et al. early semantic inhibition couch (unrelated) peach (semantically related) apathy (phonologically related) apricot (sem & phono related)

Cutting and Ferreira (1999) Picture-Word interference The critical difference: Used homophone pictures Related distractors could be to the depicted meaning or alternative meaning “game” “dance” “hammer” (unrelated) Only tested -150 SOA Evidence for interactivity dance

ball BALL (X) ball /ball/ Evidence against interactivity DANCE (X) dance GAME (X) game Cascading Prediction:danceball/ball/ Cutting and Ferreira (1999)

Results Early semantic inhibition Cutting and Ferreira (1999)

Results Early Facilitation from a phonologically mediated distractor Early semantic inhibition Cutting and Ferreira (1999) Evidence of cascading information flow (both semantic and phonological information at early SOA)

Peterson & Savoy (1998) Slightly different task Prepare to name the picture If “?” comes up name it Evidence for interactivity ?

Peterson & Savoy (1998) Slightly different task Prepare to name the picture If “?” comes up name it If a word comes up instead, name the word Evidence for interactivity liar Manipulate Word/picture relationship SOA

Peterson & Savoy (1998) Used pictures with two synonymous names Evidence for interactivity Used words that were phonologically related to the non dominant name of the picture sofacouch DominantSubordinat e soda

Peterson & Savoy Found evidence for phonological activation of near synonyms: Participants slower to say distractor soda than unrelated distractor when naming couch Soda is related to non-selected sofa Remember that Levelt et al. assume that only one lemma can be selected and hence activate a phonological form Levelt et al’s explanation: Could be erroneous selection of two lemmas? Evidence for interactivity

Can the two-stage account be saved? Evidence for interaction is hard to reconcile with the Levelt account However, most attempts are likely to revolve around the monitor Basically, people sometimes notice a problem and screen it out Levelt argues that evidence for interaction really involves “special cases”, not directly related to normal processing

Levelt et al.’s theory of word production: Strictly modular lexical access Syntactic processing precedes phonological processing Dell’s interactive account: Interaction between syntactic and phonological processing Experimental evidence is equivocal, but increasing evidence that more than one lemma may activate associated word-form Overall summary