Mechanisms of Interaction in Mono- and Multilingual Speech Production

Matt Goldrick

Department of Linguistics. Northwestern University

Date and Place

Fridat October 5th. 13.00h

Facultat de Psicología. Dep.t. Psicologia Bàsica

Abstract

Interactive effects--where processing at one level is modulated by information encoded at another level--have been the focus of a great deal of controversy in psycholinguistics.  For example, the 1990s and early 2000s saw a fierce debate regarding the claim that phonological encoding is modulated by conceptually-driven processes (e.g., Levelt et al., 1999; Peterson & Savoy, 1999).  These debates were primarily focused on the simple question of presence vs. absence of interactive effects.  As positive evidence in favor of interactive effects has accumulated, it has  become increasingly clear that research needs to more closely investigate the mechanisms that produce interactive effects (e.g., feedback and cascading activation? perceptual monitoring?)

In this talk, I'll focus on lexically conditioned phonetic variation—the effect of whole-word properties ( e.g., neighborhood density) on the fine-grained phonetic realization of that word (e.g., word duration, precise voice onset time of initial stops).  I'll discuss several recent studies that provide positive evidence for these type of interactive effect both within and across languages.  Having argued for the presence of interaction, I'll go on to examine the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to such effects.