Linking speech errors and phonological grammars: insights from Harmonic Grammar networks

Abstract

Phonological grammars characterize distinctions between relatively well-formed (unmarked) and relatively ill-formed (marked) phonological structures. We review evidence that markedness influences speech error probabilities. Specifically, although errors result in both unmarked as well as marked structures, there is a markedness asymmetry: errors are more likely to produce unmarked outcomes. We show that stochastic disruption to the computational mechanisms realizing a Harmonic Grammar (HG) can account for the broad empirical patterns of speech errors. We demonstrate that our proposal can account for the general markedness asymmetry. We also develop methods for linking particular HG proposals to speech error distributions, and illustrate these methods using a simple HG and a set of initial consonant errors in English.

On the nature of sonority in spoken word production: Evidence from neuropsychology

“…However, we also note that in some previously reported neuropsychological studies, errors resulted in rather consistent improvement of sonority profiles (Béland et al, 1990;Den Ouden & Bastiaanse, 2005;Romani & Galluzzi, 2005;Romani et al, 2011). It is presently unclear why the effects of sonority in aphasic errors varies in strengths and in what circumstances other mechanisms would interact with sonority in determining the forms that error would take (see Goldrick & Daland, 2009 for more general discussion of grammatically-based variation in aphasic errors). This is certainly a topic that deserves additional attention, and requires systematic investigations to understand the extent to which differences in participants' deficits and languages as well as in the tests used can be responsible for the variability in the findings.…”

Varieties of Noisy Harmonic Grammar

“…This section reviews results already presented in Prince (2002), Jesney (2007), Goldrick andDaland (2009), andBoersma andPater (2016). A very simple case of harmonic bounding is given in tableau (6).…”

“…after the multiplication of weights by violation counts ( §3.3). Goldrick and Daland (2009) suggest that we can profitably explore more fine-grained assignments of noise than in Classical NHG. Their proposal is actually made in a connectionist implementation of Harmonic Grammar that has other implications as well (for instance, different weights for +  − Faithfulness mappings than −  +), so I will here follow what is in context a more modest change in Classical NHG.…”

Minimizing and optimizing structure in phonology: Evidence from aphasia

“…This notion dovetails with the key assumptions and goals of cognitive neuropsychology, which focuses on the performance of individuals with acquired (or developmental) impairments on a variety of cognitive tasks (not limited to language); as argued by Caramazza (1986) among others, one main objective of cognitive neuropsychology is to explicitly articulate the nature of mental representations and processes that underlie cognitive abilities such as spoken language production (see Rapp and Goldrick, 2006 for a review of the contribution of cognitive neuropsychology research to our understanding of spoken production). Data from impaired populations has been useful in furthering our understanding of linguistic knowledge and processing (e.g., Béland et al, 1990;Blumstein, 1973;Blumstein et al, 1980;Buckingham, 1986;Dogil and Mayer, 1998;Goldrick and Rapp, 2007;Romani and Calabrese, 1998;Romani et al, 2002). The present in-depth analysis of VBR follows in this tradition, and is performed to provide further insight into the phonological processing system as well as phonological grammar.…”

“…In a recent paper contrasting two aphasic individuals with different levels of impairment, Goldrick and Rapp (2007) argued that the tasks of picture naming and repetition may be used to address the issue of where errors of aphasic speakers arise in the spoken production system. In particular, they focused on the cognitive processes that must be active in performing these tasks.…”