Transcript Basic steps in sentence production

Basic steps in sentence production
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Start with an idea (meaning)
Pick syntax (sentence structure)
Pick words
Produce a speech utterance (lip
movements and sounds)
• LINEAR MODEL (Fromkin, 1971)
Sample speech utterance
• “As far as I know, no one yet has done the
in a way obvious now and interesting
problem of…doing a in a sense a
structural frequency study of the
alternative…syntactical…in a given
language, say, like English, the
alternative…possible structures, and how
what their hierarchical…probablity of
occurrence structure is.”
Real speech
• Real speech has pauses
• Real speech has corrections and
backtracking
• Real speech has stuttering or stammering
• Implication: real speech is not fully
planned out before we speak; we plan as
we go;  linear model is wrong
“Spooner”-isms
• You have hissed all my mystery lectures.
• Intent: You have missed all my history
lectures
• I assure you the insanitary spectre has
seen all the bathrooms.
• Easier for a camel to go through knee of
an idol.
• Named after Rev. Spooner
More spoonerisms
• The Lord is a shoving leopard to his flock.
• Take the flea of my cat and heave it at the
louse of my mother-in-law.
• Speech errors
– Exchanges of sounds between words
Actual speech production
• Based on phrases
– We plan and produce one phrase at a time—
not whole sentences
• Analysis of pauses in speech
– Pauses more likely to occur between phrases
than within phrases (Boomer, 1965)
– Planning of phrases occurs between uttering
phrases
• Planning includes picking idea, syntax, the specific
words
Speech errors
• Speech errors (exchanges of sounds
between words)
– Sound exchanges tend to occur within
phrases, rather than between phrases
– Suggests that any mistakes are localized to
one phrase
• If we planned whole sentences, mistakes could
span the whole sentence, but they don’t
More on speech errors
• Take my bike  bake my bike (an anticipation
error)
• Night life  nife lite (a sound exchange)
• Beast of burden  burst of beaden (sound
exchange)
• The dancer took my bike  The bancer took my
bike (very very unlikely)
– Sound exchange would have to occur across phrases
(phrase boundaries)
writing
• Planning, sentence generation, revision
planning
• Goals of writing
– Express knowledge about the topic
– Decide on the format of the text
– Decide on the technique of writing
– To use certain words or phrases that sound
appropriate
• Hayes (1989): amount of planning and
quality of planning are correlated with final
quality of text
More on planning
• Outlines are important
– People who make outlines first produce better
papers (Kellogg, 1988, 1990)
• How does computer influence the planning
process?
– People using computers to write less likely to
plan (Haas, 1989)
Sentence generation
• Actual writing
– Start with the ideas that were generating
during the planning process
• How much “work” is done to go from the
planned ideas (outline) to final text?
– Typical final text is 8 times longer than the
most elaborate outline
revision
• Required elements of revision:
– Reconsider the goals of the text
– Assess how well the text accomplishes your
goals
– Propose ways to alter text to achieve goals
More on revision
• Compare writing professionals to first-year
college students (Hayes et al., 1987)
– All Ss given a poorly written letter to revise
and improve
– Results:
• Experts focus on whole text when revising;
students focus on 1 sentence at a time
• Experts focused on organization, transitions;
students don’t
More on revision
• Experts more likely to specifically
diagnose a problem with a sentence
– College student: “this sentence doesn’t sound
right”
– Expert: “subject and verb don’t agree in this
sentence”