Psycholinguistics

SPEECH  PRODUCTION
Speech  production
Speech  production
Conceptualization
Formulation
◦ Grammatical  encoding  (syntax  &  lexical  items)
◦ Phonological  encoding  (phonetic  form)

Execution
◦ articulation

(Levelt 1989)
Speech  errors  
1901  Sigmund  Freud:  The  Psychopathology  of  Everyday  Life
◦ Substitution  of  words
◦ Source:  repressed,  unconscious  desires
◦ Questioned  “whether  the  mechanisms  of  this  (speech)  disturbance  cannot  
also  suggest  the  probable  laws  of  the  formation  of  speech.”

Later/additional  research:  
◦ characteristics  of  slips  result  from  the  information-­‐processing  requirements  
of  producing  language
◦ slips  tell  us  about  language  structure  and  use

Freudian  slips  video

 Speech  errors
Entire  units  moved,  added,  deleted
Units:  phonetic  features  (e.g.  voicing),  sounds,  syllables,  part-­‐syllables  
(i.e.,  onsets,  codas),  morphemes,  words,  phrases
Evidence  for  the  psychological  reality  of  such  units  and  the  organization  
of  the  speech  signal  into  these  units
 Speech  errors
Anticipations Metathesis
◦ Cable  of  contents ◦ Glean  and  pright (for  clean  and  bright)
◦ Ice  cone  cream
Perseverations
◦ Spoonerisms  (see  next  slide)
◦ Rule  of  rum
Shifts:  unit  moves  locations
Addition
◦ Soap  studs Substitutions:  replace  one  unit  with  
another
Deletion
◦ “pacific”  (for  specific) Blends:  two  words  fuse
◦ Buddhiaism
William  Archibald  Spooner  (1844–1930)
◦ Anglican  clergyman  and  warden  of  New  College,  
Oxford

Spoonerism:  metathesis  of  the  first  sounds  (or  

syllable  onsets)  of  two  separate  words
Spoonerisms  on  youtube
What  errors  tell  us
Mental  lexicon
◦ Word  substitutions  often  share  semantic  features
◦ Word  substitutions  often  share  phonological  features
◦ Malapropism
>>Semantic  &  phonological  relationships  present  in  organization  of  the  mental  
lexicon

Lexical  bias  effect:  phonological  errors  give  rise  to  real  words  more  
often  than  predicted  by  chance
>>Feedback  in  the  system
How  can  we  study  errors?
Not  *that*  common  (.1-­‐.2%)
◦ Garnham et  al.  (1981)

-­‐Collections  of  recorded  errors

-­‐Corpora  of  errors  derived  from  recordings
-­‐Experimental  induction
◦ Speeded  repetition  of  word  pairs
◦ Tongue  twisters
 Experimental  induction
Read  the  following  list  (LàR):
ball doze
bash door
bean deck
bell dark
darn   bore

(Baars et  al.  1975)

 Experimental  induction
Read  the  following  list  (LàR):
big dutch
bang doll
bill deal
bark dog
dart   board

(Baars et  al.  1975)

 Models  of  speech  production:  
Serial  models

Fromkin (1971)
Function  
Meaning   Syntactic   Intonation   Content   Phonetic  
words  &  
identified frame contour words segments
affixes
Parallel  models
Levelt (1989)
◦ Conceptualization
◦ Formulation
◦ Grammatical  encoding  (syntax  &  lexical  items)
◦ Phonological  encoding  (phonetic  form)
◦ Articulation

Feedback  occurs  in  both  directions

Exercises
P.  395  &  following
1-­‐3,  6,  8,  9