Publications

Abstract

In two experiments, we studied the role of frequency information in the production of deverbal adjectives and inflected verbs in Dutch. Naming latencies were triggered in a position-response association task and analysed using stepwise mixed-effects modelling, with subject and word as crossed random effects. The production latency of deverbal adjectives was affected by the cumulative frequencies of their verbal stems, arguing for decomposition and against full listing. However, for the inflected verbs, there was an inhibitory effect of Inflectional Entropy, and a nonlinear effect of Lemma Frequency. Additional effects of Position-specific Neighbourhood Density and Cohort Entropy in both types of words underline the importance of paradigmatic relations in the mental lexicon. Taken together, the data suggest that the word-form level does neither contain full forms nor strictly separated morphemes, but rather morphemes with links to phonologically andin case of inflected verbsmorphologically related word forms.

Abstract

We investigated the role of syllables during speech planning in English by measuring syllable-frequency effects. So far, syllable-frequency effects in English have not been reported. English has poorly defined syllable boundaries, and thus the syllable might not function as a prominent unit in English speech production. Speakers produced either monosyllabic (Experiment 1) or disyllabic (Experiment 2–4) pseudowords as quickly as possible in response to symbolic cues. Monosyllabic targets consisted of either high- or low-frequency syllables, whereas disyllabic items contained either a 1st or 2nd syllable that was frequency-manipulated. Significant syllable-frequency effects were found in all experiments. Whereas previous findings for disyllables in Dutch and Spanish—languages with relatively clear syllable boundaries—showed effects of a frequency manipulation on 1st but not 2nd syllables, in our study English speakers were sensitive to the frequency of both syllables. We interpret this sensitivity as an indication that the production of English has more extensive planning scopes at the interface of phonetic encoding and articulation.

Abstract

This chapter reviews the findings of 58 word production experiments using different tasks and neuroimaging techniques. The reported cerebral activation sites are coded in a common anatomic reference system. Based on a functional model of language production, the different word production tasks are analyzed in terms of their processing components. This approach allows a distinction between the core process of word production and preceding task-specific processes (lead-in processes) such as visual or auditory stimulus recognition. The core process of word production is subserved by a left-lateralized perisylvian/thalamic language production network. Within this network there seems to be functional specialization for the processing stages of word production. In addition, this chapter includes a discussion of the available evidence on syntactic production, self-monitoring, and the time course of word production.

Abstract

In this article, we present an account of developmental data regarding the acquisition of syllable types. The data come from a longitudinal corpus of phonetically transcribed speech of 12 children acquiring Dutch as their first language. A developmental order of acquisition of syllable types was deduced by aligning the syllabified data on a Guttman scale. This order could be analyzed as following from an initial ranking and subsequent rerankings in the grammar of the structural constraints ONSET, NO-CODA, *COMPLEX-O, and *COMPLEX-C; some local conjunctions of these constraints; and a faithfulness constraint FAITH. The syllable type frequencies in the speech surrounding the language learner are also considered. An interesting correlation is found between the frequencies and the order of development of the different syllable types.

Abstract

It is quite normal for us to produce one or two million word tokens every year. Speaking is a dear occupation and producing words is at the core of it. Still, producing even a single word is a highly complex affair. Recently, Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer (1999) reviewed their theory of lexical access in speech production, which dissects the word-producing mechanism as a staged application of various dedicated operations. The present paper begins by presenting a bird eye's view of this mechanism. We then square the complexity by asking how speakers control multiple access in generating simple utterances such as a table and a chair. In particular, we address two issues. The first one concerns dependency: Do temporally contiguous access procedures interact in any way, or do they run in modular fashion? The second issue concerns temporal alignment: How much temporal overlap of processing does the system tolerate in accessing multiple content words, such as table and chair? Results from picture-word interference and eye tracking experiments provide evidence for restricted cases of dependency as well as for constraints on the temporal alignment of access procedures.

Abstract

A comparison of Merge, a model of comprehension, and WEAVER, a model of production, raises five issues: (1) merging models of comprehension and production necessarily creates feedback; (2) neither model is a comprehensive account of word processing; (3) the models are incomplete in different ways; (4) the models differ in their handling of competition; (5) as opposed to WEAVER, Merge is a model of metalinguistic behavior.

Abstract

In deze bijdrage wordt een modulair model van zinsproductie besproken. De planningsprocessen, die aan de productie van een zin voorafgaan, kunnen in twee hoofdcomponenten onderverdeeld worden: deconceptualisering (het bedenken van de inhoud van de uiting) en de formulering (het vastleggen van de linguïstische vorm). Het formuleringsproces bestaat weer uit twee componenten, te weten de grammatische en fonologische codering. Ook deze componenten bestaan elk weer uit een aantal subcomponenten. Dit artikel beschrijft wat de specifieke taak van iedere component is, hoe deze uitgevoerd wordt en hoe de componenten samenwerken. Tevens worden enkele belangrijke methoden van taalproductie-onderzoek besproken.

Abstract

P. A. Starreveld and W. La Heij (1995) tested the seriality view of lexical access in speech production, according to which lexical selection and the encoding of a word's form proceed in serial order without feedback. In 2 experiments, they looked at the combined effect of semantic and orthographic relatedness of written distracter words in tasks that required conceptually driven naming. They found an interaction between semantic relatedness and orthographic relatedness and argued that the observed interaction refutes the seriality view of lexical access. In this comment, the authors argue that Starreveld and La Heij's rejection of serial access was based on an oversimplified conception of the seriality view and that interaction, rather than additivity, is predicted by existing conceptions of serial access.

Abstract

The CELEX lexical database includes a list of Dutch syllables and their frequencies, based on syllabification of isolated word forms. In connected speech, however, sentence-level phonological rules can modify the syllables and their token frequencies. In order to estimate the changes syllables may undergo in connected speech, an empirical investigation was carried out. A large Dutch text corpus (TROUW) was transcribed, processed by word level rules, and syllabified. The resulting lexeme syllables were evaluated by comparing them to the CELEX lexical database for Dutch. Then additional phonological sentence-level rules were applied to the TROUW corpus, and the frequencies of the resulting connected speech syllables were compared with those of the lexeme syllables from TROUW. The overall correlation between lexeme and speech syllables was very high. However, speech syllables generally had more complex CV structures than lexeme syllables. Implications of the results for research involving syllables are discussed. With respect to the notion of a mental syllabary (a store for precompiled articulatory programs for syllables, see Levelt & Wheeldon, 1994) this study revealed an interesting statistical result. The calculation of the cumulative syllable frequencies showed that 85% of the syllable tokens in Dutch can be covered by the 500 most frequent syllable types, which makes the idea of a syllabary very attractive.