PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

1. PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Language Production: Speech Errors

2. Problems with speech errors • Even very carefully verified corpora of speech errors tend to list the error and then “the target”. • However, there may be several possible targets. • Saying there is one definitive target may limit conclusions about what type of error has actually occurred. • Evidence that we are not very good at perceiving speech errors.

3. Did you hear what he said?! • The tapes were played to subjects whose task was to record all the errors they heard. Problems with speech errors • How well do we perceive speech errors? • Ferber (1991) • Method: • Transcripts of TV and radio were studied very carefully to pick out all the speech errors. • The errors spotted by the subjects were compared with those that actually occurred.

4. Problems with speech errors • How well do we perceive speech errors? • Ferber (1991) • Results: • subjects missed 50% of all the errors • and of the half they identified • 50% were incorrectly recorded (i.e. only 25% of speech errors were correctly recorded). • Conclusion: we are bad at perceiving errors.

5. Experimental speech errors • Can we examine speech errors in under more controlled conditions? • SLIP technique: speech error elicitation technique • Motley and Baars (1976)

6. Say the words silently as quickly as you can Say them aloud if you hear a tone

7. dog bone

8. dust ball

9. dead bug

10. doll bed

11. “darn bore” barn door

12. Experimental speech errors • This technique has been found to elicit 30% of predicted speech errors. • Lexical Bias effect: error frequency affected by whether the error results in real words or non-words • Some basic findings More likely “wrong loot” FOR “long root” “rawn loof” FOR “lawn roof “

13. Experimental speech errors • Influence of semantics (Motley, 1980) • Some basic findings • Hypothesis: • If preceded by phonologically and semantically biasing material (PS) • If preceded by only phonologically biasing material (P). Predicted to be more likely

14. Experimental speech errors • Influence of semantics (Motley, 1980) • Some basic findings • Method: 2 matched lists • 20 word pairs as targets for errors • e.g. bad mug  mad bug • Each preceded by 4 - 7 neutral “filler” word pairs red cars rainy days small cats mashed buns mangy bears angry insect angled inset • Then 4 interference word pairs • 2 phonological PLUS ornery fly older flu bad mug • 2 semantic (SP) or • semantically neutral controls (P)

15. Experimental speech errors • Results: More errors in the Semantic and Phonological (SP) condition than in the Phonological (P) condition. • Conclusion: • Semantic interference may contribute to a distortion of the sound of a speaker’s intended utterance • Some basic findings • Influence of semantics (Motley, 1980)

16. Freudian slips • The psycholinguistic approach • Assume that “the mechanics of slips can be studied linguistically without reference to their motivation.” (Boomer and Laver, 1968) • Freudian approach • Held that speech errors “arise from the concurrent action - or perhaps rather, the opposing action - of two different intentions” • Intended meaning + disturbing intention  speech error

17. Freudian slips “In the case of female genitals, in spite of many versuchungen [temptations] - I beg your pardon, versuche [experiments]…” From a politician “I like Heath. He’s tough - like Hitler - (shocked silence from reporters) - Did I say Hitler? I meant Churchill.” • Are these cases of disturbing intentions or merely cases of lexical substitution (phonologically or semantically related words)?

18. Freudian slips • Ellis, (1980) • Of the 94 errors listed in Psychopathology of Everyday Life 85 were made in normal speech. • 51 (60%) involved lexical substitution in which the substituting word was either similar in phonological form (27) to the intended word or related in meaning (22).

19. Freudian slips • Ellis, (1980) • Of the 94 errors listed in Psychopathology of Everyday Life 85 were made in normal speech. • Only 10/94 of the errors reported by Freud were spoonerisms, and 4 were from Meringer and Mayer, 1895 (an early, linguistically oriented study). • E.g. Eiwess-scheibchen (“small slices of egg white”) Eischeissweibchen (lit. “egg-shit-female”) • Alabasterbüchse (“alabaster box”) Alabüsterbachse (büste = breast)

20. Freudian slips • Ellis, (1980) • Hence, it appears that “Freud’s theory can be translated into the language of modern psycholinguistic production models without excessive difficulty.”

21. Experimental Freudian slips? • Hypothesis: Spoonerisms more likely when the resulting content is congruous with the situational context. • Method: 90 males, same procedure previously used by Motley, 1980 (SLIP). • 3 Conditions: “Electricity”, “Sex”, and Neutral.

23. car tires

24. cat toys

25. can tops

26. cup trays

27. “cool tits” tool kits

28. Experimental Freudian slips? • Same word pairs in all conditions, spoonerism targets were non-words (e.g. goxi furl foxy girl), targets preceded by 3 phonologically biasing word pairs not semantically related to target words.

29. Experimental Freudian slips? • Results: • Electricity set: 69 E, 31 S • Sex set: 36 E, 76 S • Neutral set: 44 E, 41 S • Hence errors were in the expected direction. • Conclusion: subjects’ speech encoding systems are sensitive to semantic influences from their situational cognitive set.

30. Experimental Freudian slips? • Hypothesis: subjects with high levels of sex anxiety will make more “sex” spoonerisms than those with low sex anxiety. • Method: • 36 males selected on the basis of high, medium, & low sex anxiety (Mosher Sex-Guilt Inventory). • SLIP task same as previous experiment but with 2 additional Sex targets and 9 Neutral targets.

31. Experimental Freudian slips? • Results: looked at difference scores (Sex - Neutral) • High sex anxiety > medium > low. • Overall: Sex spoonerisms > Neutral spoonerisms. • Conclusion: appears to support Freud’s view of sexual anxiety being revealed in Slips of the Tongue • BUT: the experimenters (Baars and Motley) went on to show that any type of anxiety, not just sexual produced similar results. • SO: anxiety was at play but it was more general, so the priming was more global.

32. Conclusions • Speech errors have provided data about the units of speech production. • Phonology - consonants, vowels, and consonant clusters (/fl/) can be disordered as units. Also, phonetic features. • Syllables which have morphemic status can be involved in errors. Separation of stem morphemes from affixes (inflectional and derivational). • Stress? Stress errors could be examples of blends..

33. Conclusions • Syntax-grammatical rules may be applied to the wrong unit, but produce the correct pronunciation (e.g. plural takes the correct form /s/, /z/, or /iz/. • Indicates that these parts of words are marked as grammatical morphemes. • Phrases (e.g. NP) and clauses can be exchanged or reversed. • Words - can exchange, move, or be mis-selected. • Speech errors have provided data about the units of speech production.

34. From thought to speech • How does a mental concept get turned into a spoken utterance? • Levelt, 1989, 4 stages of production: • Conceptualising: we conceptualise what we wish to communicate (“mentalese”). • Formulating: we formulate what we want to say into a linguistic plan. • Lexicalisation • Lemma Selection • Lexeme (or Phonological Form) Selection • Syntactic Planning • Articulating: we execute the plan through muscles in the vocal tract. • Self-monitoring: we monitor our speech to assess whether it is what we intended to say, and how we intended to say it.

35. Models of production • As in comprehension, there are serial (modular) and interactive models • Serial models - Garrett, Levelt et al. • Interactive models - Stemberger, Dell • Levelt’s monitoring stage (originally proposed by Baars) can explain much of the data that is said to favour interaction between earlier levels

36. An model of sentence production • Three broad stages: • Conceptualisation • deciding on the message (= meaning to express) • Formulation • turning the message into linguistic representations • Grammatical encoding (finding words and putting them together) • Phonological encoding (finding sounds and putting them together) • Articulation • speaking (or writing or signing)