Phonological planning during sentence production: Beyond the verb

Abstract

The current study addresses the extent of phonological planning during spontaneous sentence production. Previous work shows that at articulation, phonological encoding occurs for entire phrases, but encoding beyond the initial phrase may be due to the syntactic relevance of the verb in planning the utterance. I conducted three experiments to investigate whether phonological planning crosses multiple grammatical phrase boundaries (as defined by the number of lexical heads of phrase) within a single phonological phrase. Using the picture-word interference paradigm, I found in two separate experiments a significant phonological facilitation effect to both the verb and noun of sentences like "He opens the gate." I also altered the frequency of the direct object and found longer utterance initiation times for sentences ending with a low-frequency vs. high-frequency object offering further support that the direct object was phonologically encoded at the time of utterance initiation. That phonological information for post-verbal elements was activated suggests that the grammatical importance of the verb does not restrict the extent of phonological planning. These results suggest that the phonological phrase is unit of planning, where all elements within a phonological phrase are encoded before articulation. Thus, consistent with other action sequencing behavior, there is significant phonological planning ahead in sentence production.Keywords: language production, sentences, phonological planning, verbs, picture-word interference paradigm, lexical frequency PHONOLOGICAL PLANNING DURING SENTENCE PRODUCTION: BEYOND THE VERBWhen we speak, we perform a series of actions. We generate an idea. We select the words to convey that idea and order them according to the grammatical rules of the language. Finally, we retrieve the sounds in an order corresponding to those words and perform the motor movements to begin speaking. Because speech is produced sequentially over time, the idea we want to convey has to be translated into components that can be produced in linear order. Earlier stages of speech production involve larger representations (e.g., the idea) but at later stages the representation becomes smaller (i.e., it corresponds to the word being produced at that moment in time).In advance of articulation, to what extent must the utterance be phonologically planned? Previous evidence suggests that planning is either fully incremental (one phonological word at a time; Meyer, 1996;Wheeldon and Lahiri, 1997;Levelt et al., 1999), or alternatively, encompasses larger units, such as a phrase (Smith and Wheeldon, 2004;Schnur et al., 2006). However, results are also consistent with the extent of planning being driven by the syntactic importance of the verb (Ferreira, 2000;Ferreira and Swets, 2002). In the following, I present evidence in spontaneous sentence production demonstrating that phonological planning is not incremental, is not restricted by the verb, but encompasses a full phonological phrase. Following evidence for other beh...