Repetition reduction: Lexical repetition in the absence of referent repetition.

Abstract

Repeated words are produced with reduced acoustic prominence compared to words that are new to a discourse. Although these effects are often attributed to priming in the production system, the locus of the effect within the production system remains unresolved because in natural speech, repetition often involves repetition of referents and lexical items simultaneously. Therefore, repetition reduction could be due to repeated mention of a referent, or repetition of a word or referring expression. In our study, we test whether repetition reduction is due to repetition of lexical items or repeated mention of referents using an event description task. The results show that repeated lexical items lead to reduced duration and intensity even in the absence of referent repetition whereas repeated referents lead to reduced intensity alone. The general pattern suggests that repetition reduction is due most strongly to repetition of the lexical item, rather than repeated mention of the referent.

Why are repeated words produced with reduced durations? Evidence from inner speech and homophone production

“…First of all, participants in our experiments are not actually addressing an audience in the task, and repetition reduction was still observed. Furthermore, the presence of an audience has been shown in several similar studies to not be necessary for repetition reduction (Lam & Watson, 2010; Lam & Watson, 2014; Kahn & Arnold, 2015). Of course, it is possible that speakers assume that there is a virtual listener for any speech they produce, and then adjust their linguistic choices accordingly.…”

“…We, however, were interested in the factors that lead to repetition reduction on a target noun that was repeated or not (e.g. Kahn & Arnold, 2015; Lam & Watson, 2010; Lam & Watson, 2014). Experiments 1 and 2 found that the repetition of a word that was previously produced as mouthed or unmouthed inner speech resulted in a reduction in target word onset time, but not target word duration.…”

“…In a referential communication task, Lam and Watson (2010) found that words that were expected were produced with less intensity than words that were unexpected, but words that were repeated were produced with shorter durations, suggesting that the phonological priming that arises from repetition is more strongly linked to duration than the cognitive factors that underlie speaker expectations. In another study, Lam and Watson (2014) investigated whether the givenness of a referent or the givenness of a name were critical for repetition reduction. In a picture description task, they found that reduction only occurred when a referring expression was repeated, independent of whether the referent was new or given.…”

“… Acoustic reduction for repeated words could be the result of articulation and motor practice (Lam & Watson, 2014), facilitated production (Kahn & Arnold, 2015; Gahl et al, 2012), or audience design and shared common ground (Galati & Brennan, 2010). We sought to narrow down what kind of facilitation leads to repetition reduction.…”

On the notion of salience in spoken discourse - prominence cues shaping discourse structure and comprehension

“…For English, Lam and Watson (2010) found intensity increases as markers of discourse relations (i.e., unexpected mentions of referents had higher intensity), while word duration was more dependent on production constraints (i.e., repeated occurrences of referring expressions were shorter, see also, Bard et al, 2000;Lam & Watson, 2014). Durations of verbally repeated occurrences of given referents were shorter in contrast to productions repeating a referent that was displayed visually previously (Kahn & Arnold, 2012).…”