Psycho 08 Production of Speech and Language

Difference between comprehension & production

Ways to study language production Error analysis Lab study

The Slip of the Tongue We all occasionally make mistakes in speech: Spoonerism (1) You have hissed my mystery lectures. I saw you fight a liar in the back quad. In fact, you have tasted the whole worm.

Types of Speech Errors TypeExample ShiftThat’s so she’ll be ready in case she decide to hits it (decides to hit it). ExchangeFancy getting your model renosed (getting your nose remodeled). AnticipationBack my bike (take my bike). PerseverationHe pulled a pantrum (tantrum). AdditionI didn’t explain this clarefully enough (carefylly enough) DeletionI’ll just get up and mutter intelligibly (unintelligibly). SubstitutionAt low speeds it’s too light (heavy). BlendThat child is looking to be spaddled (spanked / paddled).

Common Properties of Speech Errors Similar linguistic environment Similar element Consistent with the phon0logical rules Consistent stress patterns

Causes of speech errors The Freudian explanation: two ideas (conscious intended meaning and a more disturbing thought) compete for the representation. Usually the disturbing thought would be censored. Sometimes the intrapsychic conflict leads to a slip of the tongue.

Psycholinguistic Explanation Fromkin (1971): The changed segments are linguistic units that constitute planning units during the production. Errors reveal something in various stages of language production.

Formulating Linguistic Plans Serial models vs. parallel models

Serial Models of Linguistic Planning Four stages 1.Conceptualizing 2.Formulating 3.Articulating 4.Self-monitoring

Conceptualization Origin of idea: we have no idea. prelinguistic form of idea: agreement on the existence of mentalese, but disagreement on the properties of mentalese.

Formulation Fromkin's six-stage model 1 Identification of meaning—a meaning to be conveyed is generated. 2 Selection of a syntactic structure—a syntactic outline of the sentence is constructed, with word slots specified. 3 Generation of intonation contour—the stress values of different word slots are assigned. 4 Insertion of content words—appropriate nouns, verbs, and adjectives are retrieved from the lexicon and placed into word slots. 5 Formation of affixes and function words—function words (articles, conjunctions, prepositions), prefixes, and suffixes are added. 6 Specification of phonetic segments—the sentence is expressed in terms of phonetic segments, according to phonological rules.

Independence of Stages The vast majority of speech errors contain mistakes at only one level of planning. (9) singing sewer machine (Singer sewing machine) (stage 5) (10) Stop beating your brick against a head wall. (Stop beating your head against a brick wall.) (stage 4)

Sequence of Planning Units (11) It certainly run outs fast (runs out). The phonological accommodation (outs) reveals that the phonetic representation of the sentence (stage 6) is formulated after the level at which the error occurs (stage 5). Most sounds and morpheme exchanged occur within zero to one word (stage 5), whereas exchanges of words take place over longer stretches (stage 4). Most errors occur within clauses or all exchange. Exchanges tend to preserve the grammatical class of the item.

Sequence of Planning Units Phrase interruptions lead to more agreement errors than clause interruptions. (15) The report of the destructive fires were accurate. (16) The report that they controlled the fires were printed in the paper. Clauses are planned as complete units even if words in the clause end up separated in the final utterances.

Editing Process Lab studies show that editing processes exist and intervene between the planning of an utterance and its articulation, in order to determine whether the planned utterance is linguistically and socially acceptable.

Parallel Models of Linguistic Planning Dell (1986): four levels of nodes in permanent memory: semantic, syntactic, morphological and phonological. Separate representations of the intended message occur at each level but work in parallel. As a mode at one level becomes activated, it may activate other nodes at the same level or at other levels.

Parallel Models of Linguistic Planning Parallel models accounts for lexical bias effect— when we make speech errors, the errors results more in words than in nonwords. Parallel models also account for the phonemic similarity effect— the tendency for intruding phonemes to be phonemically similar in their distinctive feature composition to the target phonemes.

Parallel Models of Linguistic Planning Parallel models explain the fact that slow speaking rates are generally associated with fewer speech errors because there is more time for activation to spread from the current morpheme to the correct sounds and for the activation of previously activated sounds to decay.

Articulating: Planning and Production Cycles

Henderson (1966) found all of the participants showed the cycle of hesitation and fluency. We plan our utterances in cycles: we express a portion of our intended message, pause to plan the next portion, articulate that portion, pause again.

Variables in the Cycle Lounsbury (1965): we pause at periods of high uncertainty. Levelt (1983): pauses occur more often before low-frequency words than before high-frequency words.

Variables in the Cycle Schacter (1991): number of words—during lectures humanists used more filled pauses (uh, ah) than social scientists or natural scientists. The humanities have a far richer vocabulary than the sciences and thus humanists have more options during speech production, leading to more filled pauses. Other variables: morphonoligcal complexity, lexical ambiguity, age of acquisition, recency of usage.

Incremental Processing We plan unit x before we articulate unit x. In this sense, our implementation of linguistic plans is serial. But at the same time that we are articulating unit x, we are planning unit x+1. In this sense, processing is parallel.

Units in the Processing A unit can be a clause, phrase, word, syllable, phoneme. The unit of production depends in part on the amount of recourses needed for a given portion of the message.

Self-monitoring Three stages of self-repairs 1. we interrupt ourselves after we have detected an error in our speech. 2. we usually utter one of various editing expressions (uh, sorry, I mean) 3. we repair the utterance.

Self-interruptions Nooteboom’ s findings (1980): 64% of the errors were corrected. Some errors were more likely to be corrected than others: e.G. Anticipations more often than perseverations. Most interruptions occur very shortly after the error, usually at the first word boundary after the error.

Self-interruptions Levelt’ s findings 18% of the corrections were within a word. (17) 51% occurred immediately after the error. (18) 31% were delayed by one or more words. (19) (17) we can go straight on to the ye —, to the orange node. (18) straight on to green — to red. (19) and from green left to pink — er from blue left to pink.

Editing Expressions James (1972) and DuBois (1974) found that editing expressions reveal the type of editing the speaker is doing. uh in (20): the speaker paused to try to remember the exact number f people. oh in (21): the speaker did not know the precise number but was trying to choose a number that was approximately correct.

Editing Expressions that is in (22): to further specify a potentially ambiguous referent. rather in (23): substitute similar in meaning to the original, but close to the speaker’s meaning. uh: a symptom of trouble rather than a signal with a specific communicative meaning. uh: to keep the floor.