Speech Production

The main problems of Speech Production:

1) Lexical selection/morpheme retrieval: How do we choose words and morphemes?

2) Grammatical Encoding: How do we organize it all into a grammatical sentence?

3) Phonological encoding: How do we coordinate our muscles to make the appropriate sounds?

(and…How do we do this so quickly?)

Merrill F. Garrett: archaeologist of speech errors

• Proposed that speech errors could help us form working hypotheses about speech production

• Two most common errors:– word-exchange errors

• I’m sending a brother to my e-mail

– phoneme-exchange errors• teep a kape

Slips of the Tongue

“slips of the tongue can be seen as products of the productivity of language. A slip is an unintended novelty. Word errors create syntactic novelties; morphemic errors create novel words; and sound errors create novel but phonologically legal combinations of sounds” (Dell, 1986, p. 286)

A few example errors

• Taby take me out back• The blicks were blue• Joining our vases with angels• I’m afraid of falling asheep in the

slaugher• Nixed meighbors• The streaky gwease gets the

wheel

Caption: “Good morning, beheaded – oh, I mean beloved”

Was Freud Right?

• Motley (1980)

• Bine foddy Fine body– male participants– more frequent error when experimenter

provocatively clad– more frequent when participants scored

higher on test of sexual anxiety

Fromkin: 6 levels

1 – Identify Meaning

2 – Select syntactic structure

3 – Generate intonation/stress patterns

4 – Insert content words

5 – Put together affixes & function words

6 – Specify phonetic segments, according to phonological rules

A more common model

• 3 levels– conceptualization– formulation:

• functional level• positional level

– articulation

• Almost all speech errors occur within 1 level‘stop beating your brick against a head wall!’

Conceptualization

• Connecting with semantic memory and the world

• Speaker: – conceives intention

– selects relevant information

• Product is preverbal message

Formulation:Functional level

• Builds grammatical “frame”• Content words (N, V, Adj) retrieved and assigned

grammatical functions• NOT lined up in order• No phonological information (just syntax &

semantics)• Grammatical affixes and function words exist as

features

Formulation:Positional Level

• Content words:– inserted into labeled (N,V,Adj) slots in frame– specified phonologically

• Frames contain function words & grammatical affixes (still not phonologically specified)

Articulation

• All sounds are specified

• Muscles are coordinated, and speech is produced!

Evidence for 2 levels of Formulation?Speech Errors!

• Word-exchange errors: (Functional Level)– Words of the same category– Long/Short-distance (even different sentences)

• I’m sending a brother to my e-mail (N-N, long-distance exchange)

• Phoneme-exchange errors: (Positional Level) – Between two content words– Phonetically similar (usually)– Short-distance (can be separated by function word)

• teep a kape (V-N, short-distance exchange)

Evidence for 2 levels of Formulation?Speech Errors!

• Functional Level:– Semantic substitution errors, same syntactic

category• on my knee (on my elbow)

• Positional Level: – Function words – don’t participate in phoneme

exchanges• lite wine for white line, but NOT luh thine for the line

Working Memory?

• Ferreira & Pasher (2002)– Concurrent tone discrimination task

• Slows performance during early stages of word production

• No interference during later stages of word production

– Selecting a response is cognitively demanding, but implementing it is not!

Phoneme exchange demonstration

• Read each pair of words silently to yourself. Once the word RESPOND appears, say the preceding word pair out loud, as quickly as you can.

Give Back

Get Book

Go Booth

Give Booth

Bad Goof

RESPOND

Ball Doze

Bash Door

Bean Deck

Bell Dark

Barn Door

Darn Boor

RESPOND

Ripe Long

Real Log

Long Rice

RESPOND

Big Dutch

Bang Dog

Big Deal

Bang Door

Dart Board

RESPOND

Rack Seal

Road Sale

Real Slick

Soul Rock

RESPOND

Give Book

Go Back

Get Boot

Bad Goof

RESPOND

Ball Doze

Bash Door

Bean Deck

Bell Dark

Darn Bore

RESPOND

Ripe Long

Real Log

Long Rice

RESPOND

Big Dutch

Bang Doll

Bill Deal

Bark Dog

Dart Board

RESPOND

Rack Seal

Road Sale

Real Slick

Soul Rock

RESPOND

Lexical Bias Effect

• Phoneme exchange errors create real words rather than non-words more often than you’d expect

• Darn Bore Barn Door (30%)• Dart Board Bart Doared (10%)

• Evidence for…– parallel activation?– monitoring?– both?

Errors demonstrating lexical bias

• a leading list (reading list)• a phonological fool (phonological rule)• peach error (speech error)• fool the pill (fill the pool)• sea weeded the garden (Sue weeded…)• bop a dromb (drop a bomb)• when you get old your shrine spinks (spine shrinks)

- notice that the lexical bias applies the most strongly to the first word that’s produced! (e.g. last two examples)

Don’t think of pink elephants!

• We often develop more than one speech plan. The “other” plan can interfere

• Lane, Groisman, & Ferreira (2006)– Don’t ‘leak’ privileged information about

the smaller triangle– More mistakes when given “conceal info”

instructions than when no instructions given

Malapropisms - errors in phonological retrieval

• The 1775 Restoration comedy, The Rivals, by Richard Sheridan introduced the humorous character, Mrs. Malaprop (from French mal à propos, “inappropriate”). The self-educated Mrs. Malaprop was always substituting a similar-sounding word for the word that she intended to use. – "Make no delusions to the past." – "Oh! It gives me the hydrostatics to such a degree!" – “The pineapple (pinnacle) of perfection…”– "I have interceded another letter from the fellow.“

• Shakespeare also used malapropisms as with the character “Bottom” in A Midsummer Night's Dream: "'Thisby, the flowers of odious savors sweet.'" (III.i.81) Audiences in Shakespeare's day would have known that Bottom meant "odorous savors sweet" as in sweet smelling, instead of "odious," which means hateful.

Malapropisms in “Peanuts” cartoons

Planning…

• Almost all exchange errors occur with units that are phrases or smaller– the Grand Canyon went to my sister– the red color was attracted by a hummingbird of the feeder

• about 80% of our exchange errors occur within the same clause– (85% - Garrett, 1975; 78% - Fromkin, 1989)

• If we correct ourselves, we tend to do it at the edge of a constituent: – The doctor looked up Joe’s nose – that is, up Joe’s left

nostril.– NOT … “that is, left nostril”

• So planning units seem to be phrases and clauses