Word production Flashcards
When did the systematic study of speaking begin, and what was the first theory based on?
The end of the 19th century, Wilhelm Wundt (1900)’s theory was based on introspection.
What did Meringer & Mayer (1896) do?
Collected and analysed spontaneously produced word errors for the first time.
What is lexical access a core component of?
Theories of speaking.
How many words does the mental lexicon contain in a normal literate adult?
50-100,000 (Miller, 1991).
How many errors do we make when speaking?
1-2 every 1000 words (Levelt, 2001).
How many words does the average person produce per second?
2-4 words per second.
What does the fact that Fran Capo can say 11 words per second suggest?
That it is a highly automatic process.
What key book summarised all speaking research and devised a general theory?
Speech production process (Levelt, 1989).
What are the three levels of Levelt (1989)’s theory of speaking?
- Conceptualisation
- Formation
- Articulation
What happens in the conceptualisation level of Levelt (1989)’s theory of speaking?
- Determine what to say
- Form an intention
- Select relevant information in preparation for construction of intended utterance
- Product of this process is a preverbal message
What happens in the formation level of Levelt (1989)’s theory of speaking?
- Translate the conceptual representation into a linguistic form
- Lexicalisation: selection of individual words
- Syntactic planning: words are put together to form a sentence
- Phonological encoding: turn words into sounds
- Product of this process is a phonetic plan
What happens in the articulation level of Levelt (1989)’s theory of speaking?
Speech.
What is important about speech errors?
They were the first source of theories and models and they provide evidence for the units, stages and cognitive computations involved in speech production, as some types of errors are more common than others - there is lexical bias.
Where are speech errors collected?
On databases, e.g. the Fromkin speech error database.
How can speech errors be categorised?
By considering the linguistic unit and the mechanism involved.
What are the units that can be involved in speech errors?
Phonemic features, phonemes, syllables, words/morphemes, phrases.
What types of errors are there?
Anticipations (later segment takes the place of an earlier one), perseverations (earlier segment replaces a later one), exchanges, shifts, additions, deletions, substitutions and blends.
Give an example of a phonemic feature error.
“Pity the new teacher” -> “mitty the due teacher”
- [-nasal] /p/ -> [+nasal] m
- [+nasal] /n/ -> [-nasal] d
What kinds of phonemic segment errors are there?
Consonants and vowels, divided further by error type.
Give an example of an anticipation error.
A reading list -> a leading list.
Give an example of a perseveration error.
A phonological rule -> a phonological fool
Give an example of an exchange error.
A brake fluid -> a blake fruid.
Give an example of a deletion error.
Speech error -> peach error.
Give an example of a syllable error.
Tremendously -> tremenly (hapology)
Give an example of a word error.
Tend to turn out -> turn to tend out (exchange)
What kinds of morpheme errors are there?
Inflection and derivational.
Give an example of a morpheme error.
I’d forgotten about that -> I’d forgot abouten that (inflection)
Give an example of a grammatical rules error.
I knew about it -> …I knowed about it
Give an example of a phrase error.
A hummingbird was attracted by the red colour of the feeder -> the red colour was attracted by the hummingbird of the feeder
What did Poulisse (1999) study?
Slips of the tongue in second languages, where the first language was Dutch (L1) and the second English (L2).
What did Poulisse (1999) find?
L1 based slips in L2, L1 lexical substitutions, L1/L2 substitutions, and L1/L2 blends, which seem to occur language independently.
What four key points can be made about analysis of speech errors?
- Not all logically possible speech errors occur
- Units which interact in speech errors are of one and the same type
- Units in speech errors have characteristics in common
- Distance between source and intrusion depends on unit type
What does the fact that not all logically possible speech errors occur imply?
That there’s a mechanism that monitors the phonological legality of the utterance.
What does the fact that units which interact in speech errors are of one and the same type imply?
There must be processing components that are dedicated to these types of units.
Elaborate on the concept that units in speech errors have characteristics in common.
Exchanged words belong to the same syntactic category (e.g. verb, noun), but don’t necessarily share phonological similarity, whereas exchanged phonemes are phonologically similar and often found in a phonologically similar environment.
What does the fact that units in speech errors have characteristics in common imply?
That processes that work with particular types of units are sensitive to certain context characteristics (e.g. phonology/syntactic category) and not others.
Describe the idea that distance between source and intrusion in speech errors depends on unit type. What does it suggest?
When phonemes are exchanged, they’re often from neighbouring words, whereas word exchanges span larger distances. This distinction supports the idea that there are different levels of processing.