Contextual Probability and Word Frequency as Determinants of Pauses and Errors in Spontaneous Speech

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between the contextual probability of lexical items in spontaneous speech, as measured by the Cloze procedure, and word frequency. It also attempted to determine the relative importance of the two variables in causing delay, in the form of hesitation, in the production of spontaneous speech. The analysis revealed that content words of low contextual probability tended to be more infrequent than other words, and that both contextual probability and word frequency were associated with hesitation in speech. Contextual probability had an effect on hesitation even when word frequency was held constant, but word frequency had no effect when contextual probability was controlled. Analysis of certain types of errors, also, revealed that word frequency may play an important role in the lexical selection process.

Not all disfluencies are are equal: The effects of disfluent repetitions on language comprehension

“…Our predictions were based on the premise that repetitions and er disfluencies have similar distributions in speech (Beattie and Bradbury, 1979;Howell and Sackin, 2001), and thus we expected that the ease with which the post-disfluent target word was integrated would be affected by its predictability (as in Corley et al, 2007). Because disfluency tends to precede less predictable items in speech (Beattie and Butterworth, 1979) we hypothesised that the semantic integration disadvantage for unpredictable items would diminish post-disfluency, resulting in a smaller N400 difference between unpredictable and predictable target words following repetitions. Because disfluency affects attention (Collard et al, 2008) we expected target words to be more likely to be recognised if they had been initially encountered post-disfluency (Collard et al, 2008;Corley et al, 2007).…”

It’s the way that you, er, say it: Hesitations in speech affect language comprehension

“…Moreover, the distribution of disfluency is not arbitrary. For example, fillers tend to occur before low frequency and unpredictable words (Beattie & Butterworth, 1979;Levelt, 1983;Schnadt & Corley, 2006), in circumstances where the speaker is faced with multiple semantic or syntactic possibilities (Schachter, Christenfeld, Ravina, & Bilous, 1991), as well as in cases where other types of uncertainty occur (Brennan & Williams, 1995). But what are the effects of hesitations on listeners and on language comprehension?…”

“…Because disfluency tends to precede less predictable items in speech (Beattie & Butterworth, 1979;Levelt, 1983;Schnadt & Corley, 2006), we focused on listeners' ability to integrate predictable and unpredictable target words into their preceding contexts. If listeners interpret hesitation as a signal that the following words may not follow from the preceding context, the presence of hesitations before target words should reduce the N400 difference between predictable and unpredictable words.…”

Filled pauses in Hungarian: Their phonetic form and function

“…They may occur during conceptual planning or grammatical or phonological encoding, and also during lexical selection (Levelt 1989;Gósy 2002). Filled pauses provide time to surmount difficulties in speech planning or signal ongoing selection processes (Beattie-Butterwoth 1979). Furthermore, speakers may need to produce filled pauses because of their uncertainty concerning either the topic of the conversation or the selection of words or grammatical structures.…”