LINGUISTICSPSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE: SPEECH PRODUCTION AND COMPREHENSION

Psycholinguistics (psychology of language) - to discover how knowledge of language is represented in the mind/ brain of a fluent speaker (competence model) - how this information is utilized in the production and comprehension of expressions (performance model) - how speakers acquire these abilities (acquisition model)

SPEECH PRODUCTION The speaker thinks of a message, plans how to express it, and finally articulates the expression with the vocal tract.

Conceiving the message (1) Cognitive background The speaker has a variety of beliefs and desires concerning such factors as

a. the nature and direction of the talk-exchange b. the social and physical context of the utterance c. the hearer’s beliefs in general, beliefs relevant to the speaker’s utterance in particular, and whatever contextual beliefs the hearer shares with the speaker

(2) Pragmatic intentions a. refer to something (referential intent) b. perform some communicative acts (communicative intent) c. perform these acts literally, nonliterally, directly, or indirectly d. have various effects on the thought or actions of the hearer (perlocutionary intent)

Planning the expression: Speech errors

hesitation – buy time one error in about every 1,000 words errors are consistent William A. Spooner (1844-1930) a. ‘‘Work is the curse of the drinking class’’ for ‘‘Drink is the curse of the working class’’

b. ‘‘Noble tons of soil’’ for ‘‘Noble sons of toil’’ c. ‘‘You have hissed all my mystery lectures. I saw you fight a liar in the back quad; in fact, you have tasted the whole worm’’

a. Exchange errors

hissed all my mystery lectures

b. Anticipation errors

a leading list (reading list)

c. Perseveration errors

A. phonological fool (phonological rule)

d. Blends

moinly (mostly, mainly), impostinator (imposter, impersonator)

e. Shifts

Mermaid moves (mermaids move) their legs together.

f. Substitutions

sympathy for symphony (form), finger for toe (meaning)

a. Phonetic features (voicing) glear plue sky (clear blue sky) pig and vat (big and fat) b. Stress Stop beating your BRICK against a head wall. (Stop beating your

HEAD against a brick wall.) c. Syntactic features (indefinite) a meeting arathon (an eating

marathon) d. Stem and affix He favors pushing busters. (busting pushers)

e. Negation I disregard this as precise. (I regard this as imprecise.)

f. Past tense Rosa always date shranks. (dated shrinks)

These examples illustrate important features of speech errors as evidence for the speech-planning process. First, errors usually involve the alteration of some linguistic unit. Rarely are the speech error data completely random, and this suggests that the speech-planning process uses linguistic units in its planning operations. Second, the errors reveal that the planning system must be looking ahead.

Patterns of errors 1. Word exchange errors occur predominantly between phrases, and in fact between words of the same syntactic category (noun, verb, etc.).

2. Sound exchange errors occur predominantly within phrases and do not respect syntactic categories.

3. Morpheme exchange errors are of both types. If they occur between phrases, then the morphemes are from words of the same category. If they occur within phrases, then the morphemes are rarely from words of the same category.

4. Exchange errors for words, morphemes, and sounds are restricted mainly to major (open, content) categories such as noun, verb, adjective.

5. Shift errors are restricted mainly to minor (closed, function) categories.

6. Substitution errors can be either form-related or meaning-related.

Slips of the Ear a. Do you know about reflexes?

Perceived: Do you know about Reith lectures?

b. It’s about time Robert May was here.

Perceived: It’s about time to drop my brassiere.

c. If you think you have any clips of the type shown . . .

Perceived: If you think you have an eclipse . . .

d. A girl with kaleidoscope eyes

Perceived: A girl with colitis goes by

SPEECH COMPREHENSION Signal Speech recognition capacity Lexical access and syntactic parsing capacity Semantic interpretation capacity Pragmatic interpretation capacity Recognition of communicative intention

The speech recognition capacity identifies as much about the speech sounds as it can from the sound wave.

The syntactic parsing capacity identifies the words by their sounds and analyzes the structure of the sentence

The semantic interpretation capacity puts the meaning of the words together in accordance with these syntactic relations.

The pragmatic interpretation capacity selects a particular speech act or communicative intent as the most likely.

If the hearer is right, communication is successful; if not, there has been a breakdown.

Speech perception - the hearer, having heard an expression uttered by the speaker, must now recover its meaning(s).

- sentences are, physically, continuous streams of sound, not broken down into the convenient discrete units that we call words

- Chinese; travelers

- ski/ -ar/ -ool/

- The state governors met with their respective legislatures convening in the capitals

- songs: They hae slain the Earl Amurray, And laid him on the green vs. They hae slain the Earl Amurray, and Lady Mondegreen.

Accessing the mental lexicon is systematic

1. The mental lexicon appears to some extent to be ordered by sounds—much as a normal dictionary is ordered by the alphabet

2. Lexical access seems sensitive to how frequently one has heard the word (more frequent words are accessed more quickly, and it also depends how recently one has heard the word)

3. Various kinds of prior context can favorably influence the speed and accuracy of lexical access (priming): repeated words prime themselves, doctor primes nurse, banjo primes harp, and even couch primes touch (orthographic priming)

4. Lexical access is implicated in the recognition of the very letters that make up the word being recognized 5. Possible but nonfactual words such as obttle are rejected more slowly than clear non-words such as xnit.

Ambiguity and disambiguation - most of the words in English are ambiguous - hearers typically access all of the meanings of the words they hear; by the end of a clause, the most plausible meaning is selected and the processing continues. If this should turn out to be the wrong choice, then the processor must go back and try again: He gave the girl the ring impressed the watch.

When we process sentences, all known meanings of each word are first automatically activated, then some as yet poorly understood process selects the most appropriate one based on various cues. The steward greeted the girl with a smile.

Semantic Interpretation: Mental Representation of Meaning

How does the mind represent the meaning of words or morphemes, and how does it combine these to represent the meaning of phrases and sentences?

Word and Phrase Meaning: Concepts The role in thought. Categorization: - group things that are similar in some respect into classes - abstract away from irrelevant details to the properties that are important for thought and action

Concepts also combine to form complex concepts and ultimately complete thoughts.

MISCHIEVOUS and BOYS = MISCHIEVOUS BOYS / BOYS ARE MISCHIEVOUS / BOYS NOT BE MISCHIEVOUS

concepts are taken to be the mental representation of the meaning of words

some concepts are taken to be the mental representation of the meaning of phrases (phrasal concepts)

Thoughts are taken to be the mental representation of the meaning of (declarative) sentences.

Concepts: The Traditional View a. Concepts can be either simple or complex. (red) b. Simple concepts are derived from sensation and perception. c. Complex concepts are composed ultimately out of simple concepts. d. Each of these simpler concepts is equally necessary for the complex concept, and the simpler concepts together are jointly sufficient for the complex concept.

e. Something is an instance of a complex concept just when it is an instance of the simpler constituent concepts.

f. Concepts are the meaning of words and phrases; and understanding a word or phrase is grasping its associated concept.

It explains: - how concepts can be learned (one combines simpler concepts one already knows), - how concepts can correctly apply to things (by those things falling under the simpler constituent concepts), and - how communication can be successful

definitional decomposition

Problems with the Traditional View of Concepts: Decomposition and Typicality Effects

- it is very implausible that all complex concepts can be analyzed or decomposed into sensory or perceptual properties (chair and hat / bachelor)

- there is experimental evidence against the idea that understanding words, phrases, and sentences involves activating the kinds of complex defining concepts that the traditional view requires

a. If practically all of the men in the room are not married, then few of the men in the room have wives.

b. If practically all of the men in the room are bachelors, then few of the men in the room have wives.

Evidence against definitional decomposition

- subjects are experimentally sensitive to differences or ‘‘shifts’’ between surface grammatical relations and deeper grammatical relations

a. John expected Mary to write a poem.

b. John persuaded Mary to write a poem.

a. John expected a poem to be written by Mary.

b. *John persuaded a poem to be written by Mary.

a. John saw the glass.

b. John broke the glass.

- the internal structure of many lexical concepts does not resemble that of definitions (i.e., of equally necessary and sufficient conditions)

concepts possess an internal structure favoring typical members over less typical ones

Table 10.1 a. A doll is a toy. (typical) b. A skate is a toy. (atypical)

Typical versus atypical members of a class tend to be: (1) more likely categorized correctly (2) learned first by children (3) recalled first from memory (4) more likely to serve as cognitive reference points (e.g., an ellipse is judged ‘‘almost a circle,’’ rather than a circle being judged ‘‘almost an ellipse’’)

(5) likely to share more characteristics and so have a high ‘‘family resemblance.’’

Alternative Theories: Prototypes and Fuzzy Concepts

- distinguishing a conceptual core of defining concepts from an identification procedure that is sensitive to typicality characteristics

- probabilistic model of concepts - prototype or exemplar model of concepts, wherein concepts are structured around descriptions or images of typical/focal instances of the concept (says ‘who’)

Categories are composed of a ‘‘core meaning’’ which consists of the ‘‘clearest cases’’ (best examples) of the category, ‘‘surrounded’’ by other category members of decreasing similarity to that core meaning.

GRANDMOTHER LIVING IN A LARGE AMERICAN CITY?

Fuzzy set theories Objects belong to a set to a certain extent, and the notion of set membership is a graded notion

Critics In particular, such an account must: (1) relate to categorization, typicality effects, and so forth, (2) relate to how words apply to objects and events in the world, and (3) relate to how words and concepts can combine to form more complex expressions, concepts, and thoughts.

Nonliteral communication Children up to the age of 10 have considerable difficulty giving the figurative meaning of even the most common proverbs.

Additional layer of processing and as such takes additional time.

However, the situation is unclear. You are a big help.

(literally or sarcastically; took them the same amount of time

Indirection and politeness When we speak indirectly we mean more than we say, and we expect our audience to infer what we mean on the basis of what we have said plus contextual information. Reasons for indirection: 1. to be polite 2. to avoid being rude 3. to show deference and respect

Attentiveness Hypothesis The more attentive the hearer is to all aspects of the speaker’s remark, within limits, the more polite it is.

a. May I ask you where Jordan Hall is?

b. Do you know where Jordan Hall is?

c. Do you want to tell me where Jordan Hall is?

a. Certainly, it’s around the corner.

b. It’s around the corner.

c. No.

Literal and direct context Literal and direct context: Mrs. Smith was watering her garden one afternoon. She saw that the house painter was pushing a window open. She didn’t understand why he needed to have it open. A bit worried, she went over and politely asked:

Target: ‘‘Must you open the window?’’

Paraphrase: ‘‘Need you open the window?’

Indirect context: One morning John felt too sick to go to school. The night before he and his friends had gotten very drunk. Then they had gone surfing without their wetsuits. Because of this he caught a bad cold. He was lying in bed when his mother stormed in. When she started to open the window, John groaned:

Target: ‘‘Must you open the window?’’

Paraphrase: ‘‘Do not open the window.’’

Study questions 1.Conceiving the message 2.Types of errors 3.Speech errors 4.Speech Comprehension (STAGES) 5.Mental Lexicon 6. Ambiguity 7.Semantics *Mental representation of meaning *Concepts