Gender Processing in Speech Production: Evidence from German Speech Errors

The present study investigates the relationship between gender processing and the properties of speech errors. Studying German noun substitution errors it was found that intended and intruded nouns were more often of the same grammatical gender than one would expect by chance (identical gender effect). In the present study, German slips of the tongue were investigated on the assumption that the occurrence of the identical gender effect depends on the processing level, where the error arises. The syntactic context preceding errors of nonidentical gender was also explored. In the German language, interactions of nonidentical gender nouns often result in agreement violations. It can be shown that gender congruency between nouns and preceding articles also depends on the processing level at which the noun error occurs. The results are consistent with two-stage models of lexical retrieval and speech production, according to which the syntactic information of a noun is only represented during the first stage of lexical access.     

Phonological Constraints on the Assembly of Skeletal Structure in Reading

Linguistic research suggests that certain skeletal frames (e.g., CVC) are preferred to others (e.g., VCC). We examine whether such preferences constrain reading in the Stroop task. We demonstrate that CCVC nonwords facilitate naming the color black (/blæk{{\rm /bl{\ae}k}}/, a CCVC frame) relative to CVC controls. Conversely, CCVC items inhibit red (a CVC frame) relative to CVC controls. These results suggest that readers are sensitive to the congruency between the skeletal structure of color names and printed nonwords. However, various frames are not all equally preferred: the color black is named faster with a VCC frame, an infrequent and ill-formed frame, relative to a CVC frame, a frequent and grammatically preferred frame. These findings suggest that the representation of printed words specifies distinct slots for consonants and vowels, and readers are equipped with preferences (either grammatical or statistical) concerning skeletal frames. These conclusions underscore the contribution of linguistic knowledge to skilled reading.     

The Frame Constraint on Experimentally Elicited Speech Errors in Japanese

The so-called syllable position effect in speech errors has been interpreted as reflecting constraints posed by the frame structure of a given language, which is separately operating from linguistic content during speech production. The effect refers to the phenomenon that when a speech error occurs, replaced and replacing sounds tend to be in the same position within a syllable or word. Most of the evidence for the effect comes from analyses of naturally occurring speech errors in Indo-European languages, and there are few studies examining the effect in experimentally elicited speech errors and in other languages. This study examined whether experimentally elicited sound errors in Japanese exhibits the syllable position effect. In Japanese, the sub-syllabic unit known as “mora” is considered to be a basic sound unit in production. Results showed that the syllable position effect occurred in mora errors, suggesting that the frame constrains the ordering of sounds during speech production.     

言语产生过程中语义、语音激活的ERP研究

使用ERP技术考察了言语产生过程中语音和语义的激活情况。图片上有3种条件的干扰词,分别与目标图片名称形成3种关系:语义相关,语音相同,语义、语音、字形都不相关。结果显示,当被试执行延迟命名任务(实验1)时,与目标图片名称语义相关和控制条件的波形比语音相关的波形更趋于负向。说明在图片命名过程中语音有明显的促进作用。当要求被试对上述图片进行延迟语义判断任务(实验2)时,与目标图片名称语义相关、语音相关及控制条件的波形之间无明显差异。说明在语义提取过程中没有语音的促进作用。综合实验1和实验2,本研究的结果更倾向于支持独立两阶段模型。     

The Effects of Age on Second Language Grammar and Speech Production

The current study examined the age of learning effect on second language (L2) acquisition. The research goals of the study were twofold: to test whether there is an independent age effect controlling for other potentially confounding variables, and to clarify the age effect across L2 grammar and speech production domains. The study included 118 Mandarin-speaking immigrants and 24 native English speakers. Grammar knowledge was assessed by a grammaticality judgment task, and speech production was measured by native English speaking raters’ ratings of participants’ foreign accents. Results from the study revealed that the age of learning effect was robust for both L2 domains even after controlling for the influences of other variables, such as length of residence and years of education in the United States. However, the age of learning variable had a stronger impact on speech production than on grammar. The current results support the framework of multiple critical/sensitive periods (Long in Int Rev Appl Linguist 43(4):287–317, 2005; Newport et al. in Language, brain and cognitive development: Essays in honor of Jacques Mehler. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001; Werker and Tees in Dev Psychobiol 46(3):233–251, 2005).     

错误之误:德性理论与特征归属

哲学的视线近来又一次被吸引到社会心理学的经验研究中,后者表明,人们格外倾向于草率地把性格特征归属于自己.     

Perceptual Bias in Speech Error Data Collection: Insights from Spanish Speech Errors

This paper studies the reliability and validity of naturalistic speech errors as a tool for language production research. Possible biases when collecting naturalistic speech errors are identified and specific predictions derived. These patterns are then contrasted with published reports from Germanic languages (English, German and Dutch) and one Romance language (Spanish). Unlike findings in the Germanic languages, Spanish speech errors show many patterns which run contrary to those expected from bias: (1) more phonological errors occur between words than within word; (2) word-initial consonants are less likely to participate in errors than word-medial consonants, (3) errors are equally likely in stressed and in unstressed syllables, (4) perseverations are more frequent than anticipations, and (5) there is no trace of a lexical bias. We present a new corpus of Spanish speech errors collected by many theoretically naïve observers (whereas the only corpus available so far was collected by two highly trained theoretically informed observers), give a general overview of it, and use it to replicate previous reports. In spite of the different susceptibility of these methods to bias, results were remarkably similar in both corpora and again contrary to predictions from bias. As a result, collecting speech errors “in the wild” seems to be free of bias to a reasonable extent even when using a multiple-collector method. The observed contrasting patterns between Spanish and Germanic languages arise as true cross-linguistic differences.     

A Puzzle About Free Speech, Legitimacy, and Countermajoritarian Constraints

This paper argues that there is a tension between two central features of Dworkin’s partnership conception of democracy. The conception holds, on the one hand, that it is a necessary condition of the legitimacy of the decisions of a political majority that every member of the political community has a very robust right to publicly criticize those decisions. A plausible interpretation of this argument is that free political speech constitutes a normatively privileged vehicle for political minorities to become majorities, and therefore in the absence of freedom of speech minorities could not be rightfully compelled to comply with majority decisions. On the other hand, the partnership conception holds that properly exercised constraints on majority rule do not incur any moral costs. The no-moral-costs thesis is argued for on the basis that nothing of significance is lost when individuals’ influence on political decisions is diminished. However, the legitimacy argument for free speech assumes the significance of individual political influence, which the no-moral-costs thesis denies. Hence the tension.     

Phonological Working Memory and Spoken Language Development in Young Children

This study investigated the relationship between phonological working memory and spoken language development in a large unselected sample of 4- and 5-year old children. Assessments were made of the language produced by the children on the Bus Story (Renfrew, 1969), a standard test of continuous speech. In this test, children listen to a story, which they then recount with the aid of visual clues. The amount of information recalled and the average length of the five longest utterances are taken as indices of children's expressive language abilities. Phonological working memory skills were indexed by memory span and the ability to repeat non-words. The ability to repeat non-words made a significant contribution to the variance in the children's speech independently of age, vocabulary knowledge, and nonverbal cognitive skills. The possible mechanisms by which skills assessed by phonological memory tasks may be linked to the development of speech production abilities are considered.     

A New Theory of Content II: Model Theory and Some Alternatives

This paper develops a semantical model – theoretic account of (logical) content complementing the syntactically specified account of content developed in A New Theory of Content I, JPL 23: 596–620, 1994. Proofs of Completeness are given for both propositional and quantificational languages (without identity). Means for handling a quantificational language with identity are also explored. Finally, this new notion of content is compared, in respect of both logical properties and philosophical applications, to alternative partitions of the standard consequence class relation proposed by Stelzner, Schurz and Wiengartner.     

Chomskyan Theory of Language: A Phenomenological Re-evaluation

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - The field of enquiry into the phenomenon of language has long been dominated by the Computational-Representational (C-R) theories of language....     

The Cognitive Organisation of Human Errors: A Gestalt Theory Perspective

Les erreurs humaines sont étudiées dans le cadre théorique de la gestalt theory comparée aux théories de l'erreur cognitive. II est démontré que les processus ou actes de cognition erronée ne sont pas toujours les conséquences de la routine, mais plutôt la suite naturelle d'une organisation de la forme, indépendante du fait qu'une certaine ligne d'action ait été apprise ou non. Des exemples issus des champs de la perception visuelle, de la pensée et de l'action dirigées vers un but sont présentés, dans lesquels le principes de la gestalt, finalité, bon déroulement et proximité conditionnent l'apparition d'échecs. Est aussi mis en discussion le fait que les erreurs pouvaient être ou pas considérées comme évaluation positive, comme elles pourraient être l'indication de la résolution d'un problème de production et dans certaines situations, fournir de l'information sur la manière la plus facile d'approcher un but.
Human errors are discussed within the theoretical framework of gestalt theory as compared with cognitive error theories. It is argued that erroneous cognitive processes or actions are not always the consequence of routinisation, but instead are a natural consequence of gestalt organisation independent of whether or not a certain line of action has been learned. Examples from the fields of visual perception, thinking, and goal-directed action are presented, in which the gestalt principles of closure, good continuation, and proximity are conditions governing the emergence of failures. Also discussed is the issue of whether or not errors should be given positive evaluation, as they may be a cue for productive problem solving and may, in certain situations, provide information as to the smoothest path to approaching a goal.     

Representation and Processing of Grammatical Gender in Language Production: A Review

The article reviews recent empirical evidence on the representation and processing of grammatical gender in language production. The evidence comes from experimental studies on error-free production, studies on the tip-of-the tongue phenomenon, and studies on naturally occurring or experimentally elicited speech errors. Relating these studies to current models of language production does not yield one completely consistent picture. However, the emerging picture puts some important constraints on models of language production.     

A Dynamical Approach to Gestural Patterning in Speech Production

In this article, we attempt to reconcile the linguistic hypothesis that speech involves an underlying sequencing of abstract, discrete, context-independent units, with the empirical observation of continuous, context-dependent interleaving of articulatory movements. To this end, we first review a previously proposed task-dynamic model for the coordination and control of the speech articulators. We then describe an extension of this model in which invariant speech units (gestural primitives) are identified with context-independent sets of parameters in a dynamical system having two functionally distinct but interacting levels. The intergestural level is defined according to a set of activation coordinates; the interarticulator level is defined according to both model articulator and tractvariable coordinates. In the framework of this extended model, coproduction effects in speech are described in terms of the blending dynamics defined among a set of temporally overlapping active units; the relative timing of speech gestures is formulated in terms of the serial dynamics that shape the temporal patterning of onsets and offsets in unit activations. Implications of this approach for certain phonological issues are discussed, and a range of relevant experimental data on speech and limb motor control is reviewed.