IV. L2 acquisition. Sentence processing in L1 and L2.
4.1. Mistakes and slips of the tongue and their analysis .
The scheme of speech production and comprehension by Lefelt is a metaphoric
picture: we may say that a certain mechanism is involved in language processing if we
know that there are illnesses that switch off this or that function. For instance, there
are such special patients that are called linguistic savants: their linguistic capacities
are much higher than their cognitive skills: they may produce long and grammatically
correct sentences but lack some important knowledge about the world. The very
existence of such patients shows that 1) linguistic skills are separated from cognitive
skills in the brain of a grown up person (form a separate module); 2) the knowledge of
syntax and vocabulary in L1 is not necessarily controlled by extralinguistic
knowledge.
Another kind of evidence for words and sentence processing are mistakes and slips of
the tongue: Reverend William Spooner, the Warden (head) of New College in Oxford
in the beginning of our century:
You have missed all my history lectures ->> you have hissed all my mistery lectures.
You have waisted the whole term ->> you have tasted the whole worm
The dear old Queen - >> the queer old Dean
Many of these slips of the tongue are due to the special love of the students to Mr.
Spooner but they are concerved in all the same form because they really look like the
normal slips of the tongue. Changing syllables and certain consonnants in the words
`(metathesis) shows that 1) we conceptualize the whole phrase before we say it
(speech is planned in advance); 2) sometimes our phonological skills may work in a
non-correct way (you may also notice that al these phrases are rather emotional) - the
lexicon is organized both semantically and phonologically (gin with topic; ponaexali
broilery i vsjo skupili); 3) affixes and functors behave differently in the slips of the
tongue (if she want0 to comes here) - morphology is rather an autonomous module. 4)
speech errors reflect rule knowledge.
Speech errors of non-native speakers: Jakava kakava Jaka cava?
So Lefelt's scheme of speech production is an approximation in which we are not very
sure about its details. For instance, building a syntactic unit means not necessarily the
use of principles and parameters, or of a minimalist theory, since even a very stupid
native-speaker can produce grammatically correct sentences and also learn another
language (Jakobson as a conter-example), whereas he will not be able to understand
the rules according to which he speaks.
Cutler, A. (Ed.) 1982. Slips of the tongue and language production. Amsterdam.
Mouton.
Fromkin V.A. (Ed.) 1980. Errors in linguistic performance: slips of the tongue, ear,
pen, and hand. NY, Acad. Press.
4.2. Sentence processing as a new field.
Since the old translation methods were so unsuccessful, scientists started to describe
some real processes of speech production using some syntagmatic descriptions
(paradigmatic vs. syntagmatic).
Speech-rates in L1: 140-180 w/min up to 210 (newsreader).
In fluent speech words run together and are not as clearly articulated as it may seem.
I better do my laundry = I bet her 5 dollars.
Pollack, I. & Picket, J.M. 1964. Intelligibility of excerps from fluent speech: Auditory
versus structural context. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 3, 79-84.
People can comprehend speech at even twice normal speaking rate .
Wingfield, A. 1975. Acoustic redundancy and the perception of time-compressed
speech. Journal of speech and hearing research.
Vocabulary of an educated person 75 000 to 100 000 (Oldfield, R.C. 1963. Individual
vocabulary and semantic currency: a preliminary study. British Journal of Social and
Clinical Psychology , 2, pp. 122-130).
50 most commonly used words in English make up about 60% of oral production and
about 45% of the written one.
4.3. Predictability.
Ich habe noch ein bischen...
I have a few little facts here to test lots of time for studying and praying for guidance
in living according to common ideas as illustrated by planning.
Sixths order approximation to English,
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
%words
correct
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Recall of 20 words "sentences" representing various order of approximation to
English (Miller G.A. & Selfridge J.A. Verbal cotext and the recall of verbfull
material. 1950. American Journal of Psychology, 63)
1 order: Tea realizing must so the together home and for were wanted to concert I
posted he her if he walked.
4.4. Sentence parcing: ambiguous contexts:
They are eating apples, not cooking.
Ambiguous sentences are explained in the postcontext, so that the contents of the first
clause is only understandable after the second clause is pronounced
I was going to take a train to New York but it was too heavy.
John has broken his arm in two places; he should not go to these places anymore.
(analysis of the 1 clause + storing; analysis of the 2 clause + storing: reanalysis of the
first clause).
Stine E. A.L. 1990. On-line processing of written text by younger and elder adults.
Psychology and aging, 5. : A word-by -word reading time shows that after the first
word (The Chinese who used to produce kites, used them in order to carry ropes
across the rivers.) the speed increases till the sentence boundary : kites, ropes rivers .
4.5. Prosody.
4.6. Gating . How much time do we need to understand a word.
Grosjean, F.(1980) Spoken words recognition process and the gating paradigm.
Perception and Psychophysics. 28, 267-283.
175 to200 msec (550-830 mls the whole duration)
Homonymy 100 mlsec 43 words, 200 mlsec 11 words, 300 -5 words (Wayland,
Wingfield& Goodglass 1989.