Chapter 8

Psycholinguistics – Chapter 8  Introduction o takes intention and effort to produce words that we hear o consists of four major stages  conceptualizing a thought to be expressed  formulating a linguistic plan  articulating the plan  using the muscles in the speech system  monitoring one's speech  to assess whether it is what we intended to say and how we wanted to say it o production more difficult to study than comprehension  Slips of the Tongue o otherwise known as speech errors o some people are more prone to speech errors than others o everyone makes speech errors  more likely to occur when we are tired, anxious or drunk o Types of Speech Errors  shift  one segment disappears from it's appropriate spot and appears somewhere else  that's so she'll be ready to hits it if she decide to  exchange  double shifts, two linguistic units exchange places  Are you excited to get your model rehoused?  anticipation  when later segments take place of earlier segments  bake my bike  perseveration  when earlier segment replaces a later item  he pulled a pantrum  addition  add linguistic material  I didn't explain this clarefully enough  deletion  leave something out  I’ll just get up and mutter intelligibly (unintelligibly)  substitution  occurs when one segment is replaced by an intruder  at low speeds it's too light (heavy)  blend  occurs when more than one word is being considered and two intended items blend into a single item  that's so grool (great and cool)  errors tend to occur only at one linguistic level per utterance  example - substitution  sentence is still syntactically, prosodically and phonologically intact o Common Properties of speech errors  4 generalizations about speech errors  elements that interact with one another tend to come from similar linguistic environments  beginnings of words will exchange with beginnings, middles with middles, ends with ends  children interfere with your nife lite 1 Psycholinguistics – Chapter 8  more comment when preceding segments are similar  elements that interact with one another tend to e similar to one another  sesame street crackers (Sesame seed crackers)  slips that produce novel linguistic items are generally consistent with phonological rules of the language  slippery/slick = slickery (nonword that is a word)  segments are exchanged for one another typically both receive major stress in the word or phrase in which they reside o Explanations of speech errors  Freudian Explanation  argued that errors arose from concurrent actions of two different intentions  caused by intrusion of repressed ideas from the unconscious into the conscious' speech output  simple slips like anticipation and perseveration may just be simple reasons  complicated slips may need more explanation (emotional slips)  Psycholinguistic Explanation  understanding language mechanisms from study of speech errors rather than unconscious motivations  provide insights for normal language functioning  Formulating Linguistic Plans o What form do ideas exist before they are put into words?  some form of mentalese exists  representational system different from language o serial models of linguistic planning  process of planning speech can be viewed as series of stages  1. begins with the meaning we wish to convey  2. set up syntactic structure of sentence, with word slots specified (outline of sentence)  3. generation of intonation contour (stress values of different word slots are assigned)  4. content words are then added (appropriate nouns, verbs, adjectives...etc are retrieved from lexicon)  5. function words and affixes are then added (articles, conjunctions, prepositions, prefixes and suffixes)  6. phonetic characteristics of the utterance are then identified ( sentence is expressed in terms of phonetic segments )  independence of planning units  How do we know that stages are independent of one another?  errors typically only happen on one level of planning  example would be if suffixes were exchanged for one another  She’s already packs two trunked. (~s exchanged with ~ed)  no other level of planning has changed  phonological switch errors are less likely to occur than phonemic switches  Sequence of planning units  accommodation  elements that are shifted or deleted are accommodated to their error- induced environment 2 Psycholinguistics – Chapter 8  phonetic representation of the sentence (stage 6) is formulated after the level at which the error occurs (stage 5)  word exchanges are distinct from sound and morpheme exchanges  word exchanges happen over longer stretches while sound/morpheme over zero to one word  Role of Working Memory  four stages of production  conceptual stage  speakers determine the conceptual features that constitute the message they wish to express  lemma stage  syntactic features of words are activated  lexeme stage  morphological features such as suffixes are activated  phoneme stage  specific phonetic segments are activated  tasks associated with the early stages slowed performance on a concurrent task  tasks associated with phoneme selection produced no interfer