(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Sentence Production
Rachael-Anne Knight
1
Sentence Production
I. Introduction
This lecture covers how a spoken sentence is produced from the formation of an idea in the
speaker’s mind to the moment before it is articulated. We will discuss the processes involved
and the methods by which these can be examined.
A. Why is sentence production interesting?
The storage space of the brain is finite. This means that it cannot store the infinite number of
sentences that we may ever need to produce. From this it follows that we must somehow
construct sentences from smaller parts or units before we are able to say them. The main
issues then concern the processes by which units come to be selected and then combined in a
particular order.
B. Processes of Speech Production (after Levelt 1989)
Conceptualisation
Lexicalisation
Formulation
Syntactic Planning
Articulation
Figure 1 The Processes of Speech Production
The three main areas of speech production are:
1. Conceptualisation
The speaker must decide on the message to be conveyed. Very little is known about
this stage. The end point is a stage at which the message itself has been decided but it
has no linguistic form. It is also called the preverbal message or the message level of
representation. This stage is often represented by a thought bubble.
2. Formulation
The speaker must convert their message into a linguistic form. This stage involves
 Lexicalisation
–
selecting the appropriate word
 Syntactic planning
–
putting the words in the right order and adding
grammatical elements.
3. Articulation / Execution
The speaker must plan the motor movements needed to convey the message.
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Sentence Production
Rachael-Anne Knight
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C. Where does our evidence come from?
It’s hard to study speech production as it’s very difficult to get inside someone’s head as they
plan a sentence.
1. Normal speech
 Speech errors
 Dysfluencies
2. ‘Lab speech’
 Speech Errors
 Dysfluencies
3. Non-normal speech
 Aphasic Speech
II. Speech Errors (Slips of the tongue)
These are the types of errors that are relatively common in normal speech production.
Errors are categorised by the mechanism and the unit involved in the error.
A. Deletion
A unit is missed out from the intended target
1. The chimney catches fire
2. Background lighting


The chimney catch fire (affix deletion)
Backgound lighting (phoneme deletion)
B. Perseveration
A unit occurs both in the right place and later in the utterance
3. A phonological rule

A phonological fool (phoneme /f/)
C. Anticipation
A unit occurs in the right place and earlier in the utterance
4. A reading list

A leading list (phoneme /l/ anticipation)
D. Exchange
Two units are swapped over
5. Do you feel really bad
exchange)
6. Guess whose name came to mind
exchange)
7. I sampled some randomly
exchange)

Do you reel feally bad (phoneme/onset

Guess whose mind came to name (word

I randomed some samply (morpheme


The chung of today (word blend)
Miss you a very much (phrase blend)
E. Blend
Two units are combined
8. The children / young of today
9. Miss you very much / a great deal
F. Substitution
A word is substituted for a different word
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Sentence Production
Rachael-Anne Knight
10. Give me a spoon
11. I think they are equivalent
12. Get me the catalogue


3
Give me a fork
I think they are equivocal

Get me the calender
G. Cognitive Intrusions
Units from outside the message level are inserted into the utterance
13. I’ve read all my library books

I’ve eaten all my library books
(produced when the speaker was hungry)
14. Get out of the car

Get out of the clark (produced when
the speaker was looking at a shop called Clark’s)
III.Hesitation analysis
We make lots of pauses while we speak. Sometimes these pauses are periods of
silence (unfilled pauses) or they may contain repetitions or items such as ‘umm’ or ‘I
mean’ (filled pauses).
A. Pauses before words
 These pauses seem to be to do with retrieving individual words
 They occur more frequently and are longer before words that are less
predictable.
 During such pauses people often make appropriate hand gestures that
describe the word they are about to say.
 Such pauses are sometimes described as a difficulty in microplanning
1. Tip-of-the-tongue state (TOT)
This state is an extreme version of a microplanning pause. The speaker knows they
know what the word is (they have a ‘feeling of knowing’) and can provide semantic
information about it but cannot remember the exact phonological form. Speakers may
know some information about the phonological form (such as first sound or number of
syllables) or produce interlopers (near phonological neighbours).
B. Pauses for sentence planning
 These pauses seem to be to do with planning the syntactic and semantic
content of speech.
 There are fluent and hesitant phases of production.
 There are more and longer pauses in the hesitant phases.
 There are more of these pauses if the task is difficult or there is a high
cognitive load.
 These pauses are sometime described as difficulties in macroplanning.
IV.
Syntactic Planning
When we speak we must put our words in a certain order and add grammatical
elements to our utterance.
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Sentence Production
Rachael-Anne Knight
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A. What evidence must models of syntactic planning
account for?
Look at the famous error below
15. A weekend for 1maniacs  A maniac for 1weekends
Three things to note
a. The position of stress was unchanged – the primary stress and the nuclear accent remained
on the final word. Suggests that prosody is generated independently of the words
themselves.
b. The plural morpheme <s> has stayed at the end of the utterance rather than moving with
the stem ‘maniac’. We say the morpheme has been stranded.  Suggesting that content
words and function words are accessed and processed separately.
Another indication that content and function words are processed differently is that they show
different patterns of exchange errors. Word exchanges aren’t constrained by distance whereas
sound exchanges are not. Furthermore, words tend to exchange with others of the same
syntactic class.
c. The plural morpheme is pronounced as /z/. This is appropriate for the phonological
environment of ‘weekend’ rather than ‘maniac’. We say it shows phonological
accommodation to the environment  Suggests that the phonological form of function words
is specified after that of content words.
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Sentence Production
Rachael-Anne Knight
B. Garrett’s model of syntactic planning
Garrett proposed a model of syntactic planning based primarily on data from speech errors
like the ones above.
Message Level
Functional Level
Positional Level
Sound Level
Articulatory Instructions
1. Main features of Garrett’s model
 Processing is serial, that is to say that information can only flow one way.
 There are two main stages, functional and positional.
 Content and function words are selected at different stages.
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(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Sentence Production
Rachael-Anne Knight
Message Level
Form abstract semantic specification and assign syntactic functions
Functional Level
Subject =
Verb =
Object =
Generate syntactic frame,
(Det) N1 V [+PAST} (Det) N2 [+PLURAL]
Retrieve phonological forms of content words
// // //
Slot phonological forms into syntactic frame
Positional Level
(Det) // // [+PAST] (Det) // [+PLURAL]
Specify phonological forms of function words and affixes
Sound Level
// // // // //
Articulatory Instructions
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(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Sentence Production
Rachael-Anne Knight
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2. How well does Garrett’s model account for the speech
error evidence?
a) Different processing of content and function words
 Content words are processed at the functional stage whereas function words are not
selected until the positional stage
 Words can exchange over large distances because they are retrieved before their
position is established. Sounds are not specified until after the positional level which
constrains the distance of their exchanges.
 The tendency for words to exchange with others of the same class can be attributed
to errors made when slotting the forms into the syntactic frame.
b) Late phonological specification of function words
 The phonological form of function words is specified after that of content words.
c) Blends and Cognitive Intrusions
 Because the model is serial and modular it can’t explain the existence of phrase
blends such as 9 and cognitive intrusions such as 13 and 14.
V. Lexicalisation
Lexicalisation is the process of turning the semantic representation of words into the
phonological specification. In Garrett’s model this isn’t really specified. We know that we
retrieval the phonological forms of content words between the functional and positional levels
but not exactly how this happens.
A. What speech evidence must a model of lexicalisation
account for?
1. Speech Errors
There are distinct types of substitution errors
 Semantic Substitutions:
10. Give me a spoon  Give me a fork
 Phonologically Related Substitutions (Malapropisms)
11.I think they are equivalent  I think they are equivocal
 Mixed Errors
12. Get me the catalogue  Get me the calender
Mixed errors occur more often than would be predicted by chance
2. Hesitations and TOTs
Speakers can have access to semantic information without having access to the
phonological specification. I.e. they can make appropriate hand gestures during
microplanning pauses and may find themselves in a tip-of-the-tongue state. How does
this happen? Also, some small parts of phonological information may be available.
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Sentence Production
Rachael-Anne Knight
B. One-stage or two?
Do we go directly from the semantic representation to the phonological representation or is
there an intervening level? The lemma representation has been posited as an intervening
stage. A lemma is a representation containing syntactic and semantic but not phonological
information.
Conceptual
Representation
Conceptual
Representation
Lemma
Phonological
Representation
Phonological
Representation
Figure 2 One stage of lexicalisation or two?
1. How well does a two stage model explain the evidence?
a) Speech errors
 Semantic substitutions come from selecting the wrong lemma, phonologically
related substitutions occur when selecting the phonological representation
 This model does not explain why mixed errors occur so frequently
 This model doesn’t explain why word blends can occur
b) TOTs and Gestures during Hesitation
 These can be explained if the lemma has been accessed but the phonological
representation has not.
 The model can’t explain how some but not all phonological information can be
available to the speaker. This is due to the autonomous nature of the model.
VI. Modifications to models of syntactic planning
and lexicalisation
Modular, autonomous models such as the ones above can explain many aspects of planning
and lexicalisation. Some parts of evidence, however, support a more interactive approach
where different levels of information interact and where information from outside the model
can be used. Much recent work has concentrated on developing such interactive models.
Such work may focus on modifying existing autonomous models or on designing completely
new models.
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(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Sentence Production
Rachael-Anne Knight
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Glossary
Affix-A morpheme that cannot exist on its own
Phoneme- A sound of the language
Onset – The initial consonant or cluster of a syllable
Morpheme - The smallest unit of meaning
Nuclear Accent – The final prominence giving pitch movement in an utterance
Primary Stress – The main stress in an utterance
Prosody – Properties of duration, pitch, and loudness
Content Word – The type of open-class words that convey most of the meaning of the
utterance .
Function Word – The type of closed-class word that does the grammatical work of the
language
References
You should read the starred item and at least one of the additional chapters
*Harley, T. (1995) The Psychology of Language Cambridge CUP, 243-265.
The chapter in the new edition of Harley (2001 349-376) is extensively revised
especially in the treatment of lexicalisation. It’s fine to read whichever edition you
can get from the library.
Fromkin, A. and Ratner, N. (1993) ‘Speech Production’ IN Gleason, J. and Ratner, N.
(eds)Psycholinguistics, London: Harcourt Brace, Chapter 7.
Bock, J. and Levelt, W. (1994) ‘Language production:Grammatical encoding’. IN
M.Gernsbacher (ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics, San Diego:Academic Press,
945-984
Harris, M. and Coltheart, M.(1989) Language Processing in Children and Adults,
London: Routledge, Chapter 8
Levelt, W. (1989.) Speaking: From intention to articulation Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press
The first Garrett paper is also interesting but is not compulsory.
Garrett, M. (1975) The analysis of sentence production. IN G. Bower, (ed)
Psychology of learning and motivation: Vol. 9. New York: Academic Press