PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

1. PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Language Production: Experimentally elicited speech errors

2. Brief summary • Language production research • Speaker has different problems than the comprehender • Paradox: when errors are made form rather than meaning is often preserved • Today: What errors tell us about correct speech • Observational and experimental approaches

3. Reverend Dr. William Archibald Spooner, 1844-1930. Lecturer, tutor, and dean at Oxford university famous for speech errors Some famous examples: Speech Errors -”Spoonerisms” Nosey little cook FOR ...Cosy little nook Cattle ships and bruisers FOR ...Battle ships and cruisers ..we’ll have the hags flung out FOR ... ..we’ll have the flags hung out FOR ... .. you’ve wasted two terms you’ve tasted two worms” kisstomary to cuss the bride. FOR ...customary to kiss the bride

4. Speech errors • What errors tell us about correct speech: • What can we learn from speech errors? • How are speech errors collected? • Observational and experimental approaches • Classifications and examples of speech errors?

5. Speech errors • How are speech errors collected? • Observational approaches • Collected from natural speech, listen for them and write them down. Most accurate way is to record speech samples and carefully study them later. • Some of these collections: Freud (1958), Meringer & Mayer (1895), Fromkin (1971), Fay & Cutler (1977), Garnham et al (1981) • Experimental approaches • SLIP technique: Motley and Baars (1976)

6. Freudian slips • 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 • The psycholinguistic approach • Assume that “the mechanics of slips can be studied linguistically without reference to their motivation.” (Boomer and Laver, 1968)

7. 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)?

8. Freudian slips • Ellis, (1980) • Of the 94 errors listed in Freud’s 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).

9. Freudian slips • Ellis, (1980) • Of the 94 errors listed in Freud’s 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)

10. Freudian slips • Ellis, (1980) • Conclusion: it appears that “Freud’s theory can be translated into the language of modern psycholinguistic production models without excessive difficulty.” • Of the 94 errors listed in Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life 85 were made in normal speech.

11. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • Logic: how the system breaks down, tells us something about how it works • Speech can go wrong in many ways • Different sized units can slip • The ways that they go wrong are not random • Look for regularities in the patterns of errors • It is not always easy to categorize errors Recommended reading: Um… Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What they Mean, by Michael Erard (2007)

12. Speech errors • Classifications and examples of speech errors? Shift:one segment disappears from its appropriate location and appears somewhere else. The thing that shifts moves from one element to another of the same type ..in case she decideFOR ...in case she decides to hits it. to hit it “a maniac for weekends.” FOR “a weekend for maniacs.”

13. Speech errors • Classifications and examples of speech errors? Exchange: in effect double shifts, since 2 linguistic units change places You have hissed all my mystery lectures FOR .. You have missed all my history lectures your model renosed. FOR ..your nose remodelled.

14. Speech errors • Classifications and examples of speech errors? Anticipation: in anticipation of a forthcoming segment, we replace an earlier segment with the later segment It's a meal mystery FOR .. It's a real mystery ..bake my bike. FOR .. take my bike.

15. Speech errors • Classifications and examples of speech errors? give the goy FOR .. give the boy Perseverance: an earlier segment replaces a later one (while also being articulated in its correct location) ..he pulled a pantrum. FOR ..he pulled a tantrum.

16. Speech errors • Classifications and examples of speech errors? I didn’t explain it clarefully enough Addition: something is added to the target utterance FOR I didn’t explain it carefully enough.

17. Speech errors • Classifications and examples of speech errors? Blends: occur when more than one word is being considered, and the two blend into a single item didn’t bother me FOR didn’t bother me in the sleast. in the least/slightest.

18. Speech errors • Classifications and examples of speech errors? Deletion: something is omitted ..mutter intelligibly. FOR ..mutter unintelligibly.

19. Speech errors • Classifications and examples of speech errors? Substitutions (malapropisms): when one segment is replaced by an intruder, but this differs from the other types of errors since the intruder may not occur at all in the intended sentence “Jack” is the presidentFOR “Jack” is the subject of the sentence. of the sentence. I’m stutteringFOR I’m studying psycholinguistics. psycholinguistics.

20. Speech errors • Frequency of units in errors • Different sized units can slip • Suggestions of “building blocks” of production Estimates of frequencies of linguistic units in exchange errors (Bock, 1991) Sentence Phrase Word Morpheme > Syllable Syllable VC or CV Cluster Phoneme Feature 10% 20% 30% 40%

21. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • From this we can infer that • Speech is planned in advance. • Accommodation to the phonological environment takes place (plural pronounced /z/ instead of /s/). • Order of processing is • Selection of morpheme  error  application of phonological rule • If we look at the shift error “a maniac for weekends.” FOR “a weekend for maniacs.”

22. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • Stress exchange: econ 'om ists FOR e ’con omists • From this we can infer that • Stress may be independent and may simply move from one syllable to another (unlikely explanation). • The exchange may be the result of competing plans resulting in a blend of • e ’con omists and econ 'omics.

23. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • Is this a double substitution (/b/ for /p/ and /t/ for /d/)? • /p/ and /t/ are vocieless plosives and /b/ and /d/ voiced plosives • Better analysed as a shift of the phonetic feature voicing. • “bat a tog” FOR “pat a dog” • From this we can infer that • Indicates that phonetic features are psychologically real - phonetic features must be units in speech production.

24. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • Consonant-vowel rule: consonants never exchange for vowels or vice versa • Suggests that vowels and consonants are separate units in the planning of the phonological form of an utterance. • Errors produce legal non-words. • Suggests that we use phonological rules in production. • Lexical bias effect: spontaneous (and experimentally induced) speech errors are more likely to result in real words than non-words. • Grammaticality effect: when words are substituted or exchanged they typically substitute for a word of the same grammatical class • Observed regularities

25. Speech error regularities • What can we learn from speech errors? • That speech is planned in advance - anticipation and exchange errors indicate speaker has a representation of more than one word. • Substitutions indicate that the lexicon is organised phonologically and semantically. Substitutions appear to occur after syntactic organisation as substitutions are always from the same grammatical class (noun for noun, verb for verb etc.). • External influences - situation and personality also influence speech production. • Implications for theories of language production

26. Problems with speech errors • Not an on-line technique. • We only remember (or notice) certain types of errors. • People often don’t (notice or) write down errors which are corrected part way through the word, e.g. “wo..wring one”.

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. 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.

30. Experimental approaches • Not prey to same problems as observational studies: • Reduces observer bias • Isolates phenomenon of interest • Increases potential for systematic observation • Different problems! • How to control input and output? • Input: ecological validity problem (‘controlling thoughts’) • Output: controlling responses: • Response specification - artificiality • ‘Exuberant responding’ – loss of data

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

32. Task: • Say the words silently as quickly as you can • Say them aloud if you hear a ring

33. dog bone

34. dust ball

35. dead bug

36. doll bed

37. “darn bore” barn door

38. 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 “

39. 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

40. 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)

41. 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)

42. Experimental Freudian slips? • Motley & Baars (1979) • 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” - expecting to get shocked • “Sex” - researcher provocatively attired female • Neutral

43. 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 • Some resulting errors were sexually related (S), some were electrically related (E) • Bine foddy -> “fine body” • Had bock -> “bad shock”

45. car tires

46. cat toys

47. can tops

48. cup trays

49. “cool tits” tool kits

50. Experimental Freudian slips? • Results (number of errors, by type): • 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.