Language Production

http://wuhpnet.googlepages.com/psycholinguisticshttp://groups.google.com/group/linguistics_nwnu

College of Foreign LanguagesNorthwest Normal University

Lanzhou, 2007

Key points highlighted

Language comprehension and language production

Complexity of language production Stages of speech production Models of speech production

Language comprehension and production Language comprehension:

From symbol (visual or aural) to meaning Language production

From meaning to symbol (visual or aural) Speech production is NOT merely the reversal of

comprehension Production use different neural and anatomical structure

Considerable body of research on comprehension, language production not well understood Most of the production processes are outside consciousness. Harder to control output than input

Production…

“Why did Ken set the soggy net on top of his deck?”

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Complexity of speech production

How complex? …speaking

“Why did Ken set the soggy net on top of his deck?”

1. Select words that will express the concept• soggy vs. wet; deck vs. patio; set vs. put

2. Arrange them into the appropriate phrases• …set the net on his deck NOT

…set the deck on his net3. Look up and arrange their sound struct

ure• soggy net NOT noggy set

4. Add appropriate prosody• WHY did ken…vs. why DID ken…vs. why did

KEN… 5. Code the final product in motor comm

ands

Complexity of speech production

Speech production

Message source

Speech articulation

Select wordsConstruct phrases

Insert sound structureAdd inflection

Insert prosodic structure

Are these separate levels of processing?

Or handled in one big translation process?

Stages of speech production

Four stages are involved in speech productionConceptualizing a thoughtFormulating a linguistic planArticulating the planMonitoring the speech

Conceptualizing a thought

William JamesSpeech production involves two processes

The thought processes: global and holistic, thinking in mentalese

The speech process: serial and linear assemblage of the units of language

A process of holistic-to-sequential transition

Evidence from eye movement

Griffin and Bock used picture sets Pictures that portrayed active events

The mouse is squirting the turtle with water Pictures that portrayed active-passive events, depending on whe

ther the human is the agent or the patient in the scene. The mailman is being chased by the dog The mailman is chasing the dog

Subjects are asked to describe the pictures under four conditions Extemporaneous speech: describing while viewing the pics. Prepared speech: viewing while preparing, then reporting Patient detection: finding the person or thing being acted upon Inspection: viewing the pics without particular tasks

Evidence from eye movement Findings:

when speaking extemporaneously, speakers begin fixating on the pictured elements less than a second before naming them in their description, consistent with sequential encoding.

Eye movements also anticipate the order of mention despite changes in picture orientation

Speakers’ initial eye-movement and those of subjects performing the nonspeaking patient detection task suggest that response-relevant information is rapidly extracted from the pictures, permitting them to select grammatical subjects based on their comprehension of the event rather than salience. (The inspection task)

The inspectors did not fixate on one region of the picture during the first 1200 ms after the picture onset when they fixated on the patient.

Extemporaneous speakers began fixating on picture elements less than a second before naming the actors in their descriptions, the subject first and then the object.

These suggest that speakers rapidly extracted the event structure and that there is a very orderly linkage between successive fixations during event viewing and word order in speaking.

Formulating a linguistic plan

Generating a framework on which to hang the units of speech.

This process has three phases: Identifying the meaning and finding the wordsSelecting a syntactic structureGenerating an intonation contour.

Finding the words--Findings from picture naming tasks Picture naming

More difficult than word reading since written words have a more direct access to the lexicon than pictures

Involves presentation of two stimuli A picture A spoken or printed distractor word

Semantically related sheep-goat Phononlogi8cally related sheep-street Unrelated: sheep-house Target words: sheep-sheep

Results indicated the naming response was delayed when semantically related distractors were presented, relative to unrelated distractors.

Early distrctors slowed down semantic reaction times but phonological distractors had no effect

With concurrent presentation, semantifc distractors had no effect but phonological distrctors speeded up raction times

At delayed interval, semantic distractors had no effect but phonological distractors speeded up reaction times even more.

Semantics are activated during lexical access before phonological aspects are activated, confirming the serial model.

Finding the words-evidence from TOT phenomenon

Subjects given the definition of an unusual word and asked to name what word fits the definition.

The list of guesses generated in TOT showed how subjects searched memory in lexical selection. TOT is universal, spanning all ages Can be induced in many ways, such as by giving a de

finition and seeking the proper words, showing a face and seeking names, etc.

Words related to the target often come to mind and are usually about 50 percent of TOTs are successfully resolved without about one minute.

TOT findings suggest that lexical access is a two-stage process wherein conceptual semantic and syntactic sources of information are retrieved prior to phonological information.

The slips of the tongue一天，我开车在路上，车胎没气了，问乘车同事哪里有充气的，同事说：“街上到 处都是打胎的啊！”

俺碰到一个心仪已久的女孩从澡堂里出来，想套近乎，憋了半天憋出一句：“你洗澡啊，里面男人多不多啊？”

公司养一狗叫小白。某天大家逗狗，同事甲拿着一饼干对狗说到：“小白，整个办公室只有你喂我哦。”三秒钟后，整个办公室暴笑！

有一次 , 我同学询问我另一个同学在医院是哪一科的 , 我记不太清楚了 , 觉得又像是内科又像是针灸科 , 结果就说她是 : 内疚科的 .

大学时候 , 一同学和我争论问题 , 一时处于下风 , 情急中一拍桌子起身大叫 :你胡说 , 我又不是不傻 !

一小学生 , 看到被老师点到念作文的同学 , 特别羡慕 , 总盼着老师也能让自己念一回 . 机会终于来了 ." 某某 , 把你的作文给大家念一下 ! 小学生 " 腾 " 地一下站起来 :" 我的老师 . 老师 , 我多象你的妈妈 ......"

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Evidence from slips of the tongue

Slips of the tongue as clues to the process of speech production

Lots of different varieties:Anticipations: cuff of coffee (cup of coffee)Perseverations: gave the goy (gave the boy)Exchanges: teep a cape (keep a tape)

with this wing I do red…

*note: don’t plan just one word at a time!

Evidence from slips of the tongue

Slips occur among several different sized units:• Phrases: I wouldn’t buy kids for the macadamia n

uts • Words: I have to fill up the gas with car. • Morphemes: Oh, that’s just a back trucking out. • Syllables: canpakes (pancakes), butterpiller and catt

erfly• Phonemes: fost and lound (lost and found); we’re

going to have to fart very fide (fight very hard)• Features: mity the due teacher (pity the new teacher

; nasal-stop exchange)

*suggests that speech planning is carried out a several different levels of analysis

Slips of the tongue as clues to the process of speech production

Slips can provide information about the size and structure of planning units at the various stages:

• Sound exchanges tend to occur within a clause• Word exchanges can occur across clausal boundaries• Sound exchanges respect syllable structure: onsets exchange

with onsets, rhymes with rhymes, etc., • Sound exchanges do not respect grammatical form class of

words: sounds can exchange between nouns & verbs, etc.• Word exchanges tend to respect grammatical form class, when

exchanges cross phrasal boundaries, but not when they occur within a clause

Implementing the plan: articulation Plan implementation: saying what is intended Planning and implementing plans are alternated,

as is evidenced by the alternation of hesitation and fluency in our speech. Suggesting that we tend to express a portion of our

intended message, pause to plan the next portion, articulate that portion, pause again, and so on.

Linguistic planning is very cognitively demanding and it’s hard to plan an entire utterance at once.

Where do we pause when speaking: Periods of high uncertainty Number of words from which we choose Morphological complexity Lexical ambiguity

Models of plan implementation Incremental processing

If we plan unit x before we articulate unit x, our implementation of linguistic plans is serial.

If we plan unit x+1 units before articulating unit x, the processing is parallel.

What constitute a unit? Clauses, phrases, words, syllables, phonemes? Depending on the amount of resources needed for a given p

ortion of the message An unfamiliar word A cliché or routinized phrase

Two competing viewpoints: Syntactical approach: syntactic structure is laid out in advanc

e than then content words are fitted into the structure. Lexical approach: the production process may begin with wor

ds that are conceptually accessible, which then trigger the syntactic strcture, not the other way around.

Speech monitoring

Self-repairs: overtly monitor, edit and correct our speech. Self interruption: Interrupt after an error is detected

64% of the errors were corrected Interruptions occurs very shortly after the error occurs, usuall

ty made at the first word boundary after the error Editing expressions: Utter one of the various editing e

xpressions Uh, sorry, I mean

Self repairs: Repair the utternce

Models of speech production

The Fromkin Garret Model The Levelt Model The Dell Model

The Fromkin Garret Model

Meaning to be conveyed and intentions of a speaker are chosen

Syntactic structures of the sentence and its constituent slots is created

Intonation contour and what word slots are stressed Lexical selection of content words are selected Affixes and function words are selected Phonological segmetns are selected according to phonol

ogical rules

The Levelt Model

The message level captures the intended meaning and provides output for grammatical encoding

Grammatical encoding combines functional and positional sets of information. Functional processing uses lexical selection, which captures the

lexical concepts that are appropriate to convey the intended meaning, and function assignments, which involves assignment of gramamtical roles or syntactic functions.

Positional processing creates an ordered set of word slots and inflection or morphological slots

The phonological encoding stage creates the phonological structure of the message in terms of phonological units of words.

Levelt’s (1989) “Blueprint for the Speaker”CONCEPTUALIZER

messagegeneration

monitoring

grammaticalencoding

phonologicalencoding

preverbal message

FORMULATOR

LEXICON

lemmas

forms

phonetic plan(internal speech)

ARTICULATOR AUDITION

parsed speech

discourse model,situation knowledge,

encyclopediaetc.

phonetic string

overt speech

SPEECH-COMPREHENSION

SYSTEM

surfacestructure

The Dell Model

A connectionist model of speech production Spreading activation over multiple levels of nodes Words are the main nodes in the network, with connections to

the conceptual words and then to sounds The spreading activation principle is bidirectional, permitting

interactions between semantic and phonological units. During the planning of a sentence, several nodes will be

activated at four different levels. They will remain activated for a while but will eventually degraded to zero activation.

Connectionist ModelsConnectionist Models

N

S

VP

V

NP

det N

SYNTACTIC LEVEL

WORD WORD

Sdet

SN

WORD

Stem

SV Af

MORPHOLOGICAL LEVEL

Co

SYL

RimeOn

Nu

PHONOLOGICAL LEVEL

TACTIC FRAMES

pastVN pl.

Stem

Af1 2

THESdet S

CAT

LEXICAL NETWORK

kOn

æNu

tCo

THE CAT JUMPDet N

Past

V

JUMPSV

–EDAf

-S

sCo

Plural

Af1 2

The End

Thanks.