production_ho

7/30/2019 production_HO

1/9

(Introduction to) Language History and Use Psycholinguistics

Sentence Production

Rachael-Anne Knight 1

Sentence Production

I. Introduction

This lecture covers how a spoken sentence is produced from the formation of an idea in thespeakers mind to the moment before it is articulated. We will discuss the processes involved

and the methods by which these can be examined.

A. Why is sentence production interesting?The storage space of the brain is finite. This means that it cannot store the infinite number of

sentences that we may ever need to produce. From this it follows that we must somehow

construct sentences from smaller parts or units before we are able to say them. The main

issues then concern the processes by which units come to be selected and then combined in a

particular order.

B. Processes of Speech Production (after Levelt 1989)

The three main areas of speech production are:

1. Conceptualisation

The speaker must decide on the message to be conveyed. Very little is known about

this stage. The end point is a stage at which the message itself has been decided but it

has no linguistic form. It is also called the preverbal message or the message level of

representation. This stage is often represented by a thought bubble.

2. Formulation

The speaker must convert their message into a linguistic form. This stage involves

Lexicalisation selecting the appropriate word

Syntactic planning putting the words in the right order and adding

grammatical elements.

3. Articulation / Execution

The speaker must plan the motor movements needed to convey the message.

Figure 1 The Processes of Speech Production

Conceptualisation

Formulation

Articulation

Syntactic Planning

Lexicalisation


2/9


Sentence Production


C. Where does our evidence come from?Its hard to study speech production as its very difficult to get inside someones head as they

plan a sentence.

1. Normal speech

Speech errors

Dysfluencies

2. Lab speech

Speech Errors

Dysfluencies

3. Non-normal speech

Aphasic Speech

II. Speech Errors (Slips of the tongue)These are the types of errors that are relatively common in normal speech production.

Errors are categorised by the mechanism and the unit involved in the error.

A. Deletion

A unit is missed out from the intended target1. The chimney catches fire The chimney catch fire (affix deletion)

2. Background lighting Backgound lighting (phoneme deletion)

B. Perseveration

A unit occurs both in the right place and later in the utterance3. A phonological rule A phonological fool (phoneme /f/)

C. AnticipationA unit occurs in the right place and earlier in the utterance

4. A reading list A leading list (phoneme /l/ anticipation)

D. ExchangeTwo units are swapped over

5. Do you feel really bad Do you reel feally bad (phoneme/onset

exchange)

6. Guess whose name came to mind Guess whose mind came to name (wordexchange)

7. I sampled some randomly I randomed some samply (morpheme

exchange)

E. BlendTwo units are combined

8. The children / young of today The chung of today (word blend)

9. Miss you very much / a great deal Miss you a very much (phrase blend)

F. SubstitutionA word is substituted for a different word


3/9


Sentence Production

Rachael-Anne Knight 310. Give me a spoon Give me a fork

11. I think they are equivalent I think they are equivocal

12. Get me the catalogue Get me the calender

G. Cognitive IntrusionsUnits from outside the message level are inserted into the utterance

13. Ive read all my library books Ive eaten all my library books

(produced when the speaker was hungry)

14. Get out of the car Get out of the clark (produced when

the speaker was looking at a shop called Clarks)

III.Hesitation analysisWe make lots of pauses while we speak. Sometimes these pauses are periods of

silence (unfilled pauses) or they may contain repetitions or items such as umm or I

mean (filled pauses).

A. Pauses before words

These pauses seem to be to do with retrieving individual words

They occur more frequently and are longer before words that are less

predictable.

During such pauses people often make appropriate hand gestures that

describe the word they are about to say.

Such pauses are sometimes described as a difficulty in microplanning

1. Tip-of-the-tongue state (TOT)

This state is an extreme version of a microplanning pause. The speaker knows they

know what the word is (they have a feeling of knowing) and can provide semantic

information about it but cannot remember the exact phonological form. Speakers may

know some information about the phonological form (such as first sound or number of

syllables) or produce interlopers (near phonological neighbours).

B. Pauses for sentence planning

These pauses seem to be to do with planning the syntactic and semantic

content of speech. There are fluent and hesitant phases of production.

There are more and longer pauses in the hesitant phases.

There are more of these pauses if the task is difficult or there is a high

cognitive load.

These pauses are sometime described as difficulties in macroplanning.

IV. Syntactic PlanningWhen we speak we must put our words in a certain order and add grammatical

elements to our utterance.


4/9


Sentence Production


A. What evidence must models of syntactic planningaccount for?

Look at the famous error below

15. A weekend for1maniacs A maniac for1weekends

Three things to note

a. The position of stress was unchanged the primary stress and the nuclear accent remained

on the final word. Suggests that prosody is generated independently of the words

themselves.

b. The plural morpheme has stayed at the end of the utterance rather than moving with

the stem maniac. We say the morpheme has been stranded. Suggesting that content

words and function words are accessed and processed separately.

Another indication that content and function words are processed differently is that they show

different patterns of exchange errors. Word exchanges arent constrained by distance whereas

sound exchanges are not. Furthermore, words tend to exchange with others of the samesyntactic class.

c. The plural morpheme is pronounced as /z/. This is appropriate for the phonological

environment of weekend rather than maniac. We say it shows phonological

accommodation to the environment Suggests that the phonological form of function words

is specified after that of content words.


5/9


Sentence Production


B. Garretts model of syntactic planningGarrett proposed a model of syntactic planning based primarily on data from speech errors

like the ones above.

1. Main features of Garretts model Processing is serial, that is to say that information can only flow one way.

There are two main stages, functional and positional.

Content and function words are selected at different stages.

Articulatory Instructions

Sound Level

Positional Level

Functional Level

Message Level


6/9


Sentence Production


Form abstract semantic specification and assign syntactic functions

Subject = Verb =

Object =

Generate syntactic frame,

(Det) N1 V [+PAST} (Det) N2 [+PLURAL]

Retrieve phonological forms of content words

// / / / /

Slot phonological forms into syntactic frame

(Det) // / / [+PAST] (Det) / / [+PLURAL]

Specify phonological forms of function words and affixes

// // / / // / /

Message Level

Functional Level

Positional Level

Sound Level

Articulatory Instructions


7/9


Sentence Production


2. How well does Garretts model account for the speecherror evidence?

a) Different processing of content and function words

Content words are processed at the functional stage whereas function words are not

selected until the positional stage

Words can exchange over large distances because they are retrieved before their

position is established. Sounds are not specified until after the positional level which

constrains the distance of their exchanges.

The tendency for words to exchange with others of the same class can be attributed

to errors made when slotting the forms into the syntactic frame.

b) Late phonological specification of function words The phonological form of function words is specified after that of content words.

c) Blends and Cognitive Intrusions

Because the model is serial and modular it cant explain the existence of phrase

blends such as 9 and cognitive intrusions such as 13 and 14.

V. LexicalisationLexicalisation is the process of turning the semantic representation of words into the

phonological specification. In Garretts model this isnt really specified. We know that we

retrieval the phonological forms of content words between the functional and positional levels

but not exactly how this happens.

A. What speech evidence must a model of lexicalisationaccount for?

1. Speech Errors

There are distinct types of substitution errors

Semantic Substitutions:

10. Give me a spoon Give me a fork

Phonologically Related Substitutions (Malapropisms)

11.I think they are equivalent I think they are equivocal

Mixed Errors

12. Get me the catalogue Get me the calender

Mixed errors occur more often than would be predicted by chance

2. Hesitations and TOTs

Speakers can have access to semantic information without having access to the

phonological specification. I.e. they can make appropriate hand gestures during


8/9


Sentence Production


microplanning pauses and may find themselves in a tip-of-the-tongue state. How does

this happen? Also, some small parts of phonological information may be available.

B. One-stage or two?Do we go directly from the semantic representation to the phonological representation or is

there an intervening level? The lemma representation has been posited as an intervening

stage. A lemma is a representation containing syntactic and semantic but not phonological

information.

1. How well does a two stage model explain the evidence?

a) Speech errors

Semantic substitutions come from selecting the wrong lemma, phonologically

related substitutions occur when selecting the phonological representation

This model does not explain why mixed errors occur so frequently

This model doesnt explain why word blends can occur

b) TOTs and Gestures during Hesitation

These can be explained if the lemma has been accessed but the phonological

representation has not.

The model cant explain how some but not all phonological information can beavailable to the speaker. This is due to the autonomous nature of the model.

VI. Modifications to models of syntactic planningand lexicalisationModular, autonomous models such as the ones above can explain many aspects of planning

and lexicalisation. Some parts of evidence, however, support a more interactive approach

where different levels of information interact and where information from outside the model

can be used. Much recent work has concentrated on developing such interactive models.

Such work may focus on modifying existing autonomous models or on designing completely

new models.

Phonological

Representation

Conceptual

Representation

Conceptual

Representation

Phonological

Representation

Lemma

Figure 2 One stage of lexicalisation or two?


9/9


Sentence Production


GlossaryAffix-A morpheme that cannot exist on its own

Phoneme- A sound of the language

Onset The initial consonant or cluster of a syllable

Morpheme - The smallest unit of meaningNuclearAccent The final prominence giving pitch movement in an utterance

PrimaryStress The main stress in an utterance

Prosody Properties of duration, pitch, and loudness

ContentWord The type of open-class words that convey most of the meaning of the

utterance .

FunctionWord The type of closed-class word that does the grammatical work of the

language

References

You should read the starred item and at least one of the additional chapters

*Harley, T. (1995) The Psychology of Language Cambridge CUP, 243-265.

The chapter in the new edition of Harley (2001 349-376) is extensively revised

especially in the treatment of lexicalisation. Its fine to read whichever edition you

can get from the library.

Fromkin, A. and Ratner, N. (1993) Speech Production IN Gleason, J. and Ratner, N.(eds)Psycholinguistics, London: Harcourt Brace, Chapter 7.

Bock, J. and Levelt, W. (1994) Language production:Grammatical encoding. IN

M.Gernsbacher (ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics, San Diego:Academic Press,

945-984

Harris, M. and Coltheart, M.(1989) Language Processing in Children and Adults,

London: Routledge, Chapter 8

Levelt, W. (1989.) Speaking: From intention to articulation Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press

The first Garrett paper is also interesting but is not compulsory.

Garrett, M. (1975) The analysis of sentence production. IN G. Bower, (ed)

Psychology of learning and motivation: Vol. 9. New York: Academic Press

production_ho

Documents