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1. UNIT 10: Comprehension and Language
Language Production: There are three broad areas of speech production processes which
are conceptualization, formulation and encoding.
Speech Production Process - Levelt, 1989 (De Bot, 1992)
Conceptualization  Formulation  Articulation/Execution/Encoding
- involves determining
what to say
- speaker to conceive an
intention
- speaker to select relevant
information in preparation
for construction of
intended utterance
- product: pre-verbal
message
- involves translating the
conceptual
representation into a
linguistic form
- includes the process of
lexicalization, where
words that the speaker
wants to say are selected
- includes the process of
syntactic planning where
words are put together to
form a sentence
- involves a detailed
phonetic and articulatory
planning
- includes the process of
phonological encoding,
where words are turned
into sounds
- involves retrieval of chunks of
internal speech from buffer
- involves motor execution
Comprehension: Comprehension is the stage of processing that follows word recognition
and parsing. Other themes that come under this are prepositions structure, schema,
discourse processing, individual differences in comprehension skills, pragmatics, the
structure of conversation and the neuropsychology of text and discourse processing.

2. 5.1 Of spoken words
5.1.1 Motor Theory of Speech Perception (Alvin Liberman, 1985)
- The basic premise is a keen observation: we don’t just perceive speech sounds, we
also make them.
- We have a speech processing system that analyses speech sound based on how the
sounds are produced. What’s the fact that listeners are listener/speakers get you?
Well, if you decide that what people are actually perceiving are not actually
a collection of acoustic markers that point to one particular language sound
but instead the gestures needed to make up that sound, then suddenly
that’s much less of a problem. [MEANING: To put it in another way, we are
used to thinking of speech being made up of a bunch of sounds, and that
when we are listening to speech we are deciding what the right sounds are
and from there picking the right words]
- Motor theory standpoint: What you are actually doing when you are listening to speech
is deciding what the speaker’s doing with their mouth and using that information to figure
out what words they are saying.
- You do not store words as strings of sounds but rather as strings of gestures. We have
built-in knowledge of how sounds are produced. In short, we are able to associate the
physical speech with the abstract motor commands with which our brain is already
equipped.
 Coarticulation - This is the idea that there is variability in the aspect of gesture
production. This concept indicates that there are variations in the area of articulation
of vocal gestures produced by speakers. The same gesture may be able to be
produced in more than one place. The phonemes within the gestures are obtained

3. and perceived by the ability to compensate for all the variations of speech possible
due to coarticulation.
5.1.2 Cohort Theory (William Marslen-Wilson, 1984)
Marslen-Wilson suggested that we handle spoken word recognition by using the initial
phoneme to activate the set of all words in the lexicon that have the same phoneme.
Then, as more information is received, we narrow the set down. The set of activated words
is called a “cohort”. So the problem of word recognition becomes one of eliminating items
from the cohort until one item is left.
- Model posits that when a word is heard, all words beginning with first sound of target
word are activated.

4. 1. Once first cohort has been activated, other information, or sounds in word
narrow down choices.
2. Listener recognizes word when left with a single choice; considered
"recognition point."
3. Works by breaking a word down when a word is heard--all words that
begin with the first sound of the target word are activated
- More recent studies of the Cohort model (Marslen-Wilson, 1987, 1990) caters for
frequency effects (e. high frequency words get more activation from the low frequency
one). This assumption allows a means for accounting for lexical similarity effects, whereby
a whole neighbourhood of words is activated but higher frequency words gets more
activation.
- Recognition speed and accuracy depend on how easily we can sort out the competing
word. The items in the lexicon compete with each other for selection.
5.1.3 Trace Model (James McClelland and Jeffrey Elman, 1986)
- There are connections among units at three levels: features, phonemes and words. The
connections within a level are inhibitory [forbid] and the connections between levels are
facilitory [induce].
- The Trace model is thus consistent with the idea of competition among units in the
lexicon. In other words, at given time, the units within a level are competing for activation.
The more one word is activated, the more other possible words are inhibited.
In addition, the connections between levels are bidirectional. That is, once a
word starts to become somewhat activated, more activation goes down to
its features and phonemes, thus aiding the bottom-up processing of the
word.

5. - The TRACE model can also accommodate lexical similarity effects because multiple
features, phonemes and word neighbours are activated in parallel, with the less relevant
ones being inhibited as more evidence is received.
“The woman got a leash and went for a walk with the ___________”
Hint: ‘What word is activated than usual due to the context?’
5.2 Of Written Words
5.2.1 Autonomous Serial Search Model (Kenneth Forster, 1976)
- Proposed that we identity words by a serial search through the lexicon.
- Search through a catalog to find the location of a book in the library. More frequent
items will be accessed before less frequent.

6. 1. We identify words by a serial search through the lexicon.
2.1 The catalog system corresponds to access files, & the shelf full of books to
the master file.
2.2 Access files are modality-specific: orthographic, phonological, syntactic
and semantic.
3.1 Access files give pointers to a master file in the lexicon.
3.2 Access files are subdivided into separate bins (which are ordered by
frequency) on the basis of the first syllable/first few letters of a word.
- Repetition can temporality change the order of items within bins, which is why we
observe repetition priming
- Serial search model also provides account of the effects of word frequency on lexical
access. This idea is called the rank hypothesis (Murray and Forster, 2004)
5.2.2 Logogen Model (Morten)
- Every word we know has its own simple feature counter called a logogen corresponding
to it. Logogens contain a variety of properties about given word such as their
appearance, sound, and meaning. Logogens do not store words within themselves. They
store information that is specifically necessary for retrieval of whatever word is being
searched for.
- The cumulative information we store about a word we comprehend, and which we use
to guess its meaning. How we access the words stored in our mental lexicon is the logogen
model of comprehension.
- Ensured that only visual inputs could facilitate subsequent visual identification of words, &
auditorily presented primes would not facilitate visually presented targets. Logogens
activated depending on orthographic, phonological and contextual input information

7. - As it receives corroborating evidence that it corresponds to the stimulus presented, its
activation levels start to increase. If the letter "t" is identified in the input, the activation
levels of all logogens that correspond to words containing a "t" will increase.
- If the activation level manages to pass a threshold, the logogen fires and the word is
recognized. [A word is recognized when its activation exceeds some threshold.]
- Certain stimuli can affect the activation levels of more than one word at a time, usually
involving words similar to one another.
Frequency Effect : Logogens have resting activation levels according to
frequency
Context Effect: Initial activation is bottom-up – top-down information from
context comes later. Limited top-down interaction in lexical access

8. A given logogen will become activated by stimuli or contextual
information (words) consistent with the properties of that specific logogen
and when the logogen's activation level rises to or above its threshold level,
the pronunciation of the given word is sent to output system.
When this occurs, whichever words' activation levels reach, the threshold
level, it is that word sent to the output system with the listener remaining
unaware of any partially excited logogens.
5.2.3 Interactive Activation Model (James McClelland and David Rumelhart (1981-1982)
- Arranged in 3 levels:
• Input level of visual feature unit
• A level where units correspond to individual letters
• An output level where each unit corresponds to a word
- According to this interactive-activation model, the WSE is explained as such: When the
target letter is presented within a word, the feature detectors, letter detectors and word
detectors will all be activated, adding weight to the final recognition of the stimulus.

9. - When a reader is presented with a word, each letter in parallel will either stimulate or
inhibit different feature detectors (e.g. a curved shape for "C", horizontal and vertical bars
for "H", etc.). Those feature detectors will then stimulate or inhibit different letter detectors,
which will finally stimulate or inhibit different word detectors. Each activated connection
would carry a different weight, and thus the word "WORK" in the example would be
activated more than any other word (and therefore recognized by a reader).
- The original purpose of this model was to account for context effects on letter
identification. Reicher (1969), as mentioned by Larsen (2004), showed that letters are
easier to recognize in words than when seen as isolated letters. This is known as the word
superiority effect.
- If the system sees a "t", then "take", "task" and "time" will become activate
and immediately start inhibiting words like "cake" and "coke".
- An activation is also sent back down to lower levels, all letters in words
beginning with "t" will become a little bit activated and hence "easier" to see
- Suppose the next letter to be presented was "a". this will now activated
"take" and "task" but inhibit "time" which will then also be inhibited in turn by

10. within-level inhibition from "task" and "time". The "a" will also activate "cask"
and "cake" but these will already be some way behind the two words
starting with a "t"
- HENCE... this model is heavily interactive
5.3 Of Sentences
5.3.1 The Relative Complexity of Sentences: Deep Structure versus Surface Structure
- Every Sentence exists on two levels :
Surface Structure : the actual spoken sentence [phonological information]
Deep Structure : underlying meaning of the sentence [semantic component]
- Surface structure or kernel sentences can be defined as the syntactic form they take as
actual sentences; it provides the input to the phonological component of the grammar. In
the other words, it is forms of sentences resulted from modification/ transformation.
Consider these sentences:
(1) You close the door.
(2) The door is closed by you.
(3) Close the door!
The first sentence is active, second is passive, and the last is imperative. However, these
three are very closely related, even identical. They seem to be identical, since they have
the same underlying abstract representation that is called deep structure. It is defined as
an abstract level of structural organization in which all the elements determining structural
interpretation are represented. Deep structure is the input of transformation rules (such as

11. manipulation of tenses). Transformation rules are sets of rules which will change or move
constituents in the structures derive from the phrase structure rules.
The DS (deep structure)
Structural description: 1 2 3 4
Structural change: 3 4 + be 2+en 1
Surface structure: The door is closed by you.
SD: 1 2 3 4
SC: 0 2 3 4
SS: ____________________________
From the above example, it can be concluded that deep structure then is a pure
representation of thematic relations. Anything which is interpreted as the subject or object
of a given predicate will be in the subject or object position of that predicate at Deep
structure no matter where it is found at Surface structure.
5.3.2 Structural Ambiguity and Lexical Ambiguity
- One of the building blocks of language comprehension is the ability to access the
meaning of words as they are encountered, and to develop an interpretation that is
consistent with the context.

12. Ambiguity – a word or sentence is ambiguous if it can be interpreted in more than one
way.
‘light vs. light’
1) Structural or Grammatical Ambiguity: The ambiguity that some phrases and sentences
exhibit when their syntactic structure can be interpreted in more than one way
We need more intelligent leaders.
- We need leaders that more intelligent.
- We need more leaders that are intelligent.
Visiting strangers can be dangerous.
Moving sidewalks can be useful.
I saw the man with the telescope.
2) Lexical Ambiguity:
Homophony:
- A lexical relation where two or more different written forms have the same pronunciation
- Described as homophones
- cell and sell; read and red; hole and whole
Homography:
- A lexical relation where words of like spelling but with more than one meaning
- These are called homographs (literally ‘same writing’)
- live: a live concert vs. Where do you live?
- bow: take a bow vs. What’s with your bow tie?
Heteronymy:
- Words that are written identically but have different pronunciations and meanings. In
other words, they are homographs that are not homophones

13. - Therefore, a homograph that is also pronounced differently is a heteronym.
Example: Don’t desert me here in the desert!
Homonymy:
- One of a group of words that share the same pronunciation but have different
meanings.
- Tow words are homonyms when the original spelling Is the same and their phonemic or
graphemic representation is identical.
- bank: financial institution vs. the side of the river
- like: similar vs. enjoy
Polysemy:
- The capacity for a sign (a word or a phrase) or signs to have multiple meanings.
- present: gift
- man: males of the human species
Collocation:
- The habitual combination of words (frequency greater than chance)
5.3.3 Garden-path Sentences
- Garden path sentences are sentences that make a reader think they are incorrect, when
they are actually correct.
- The term garden path sentence comes from the expression “to be led down the garden
path,” which means to be fooled, to be taken into the wrong direction.
“The old man whistling tunes pianos” could become:
The old man tunes pianos while whistling.
The whistling old man tunes pianos.

14. While tuning pianos, the old man whistles.
1) The prime number few.
2) Fat people eat accumulates.
3) The old man the boat.
Newspaper Headlines
These unclear sentences are also seen frequently in newspaper headlines, where an
abbreviated style leads to more ambiguity:
 Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim
 Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge
 British Left Waffles on Falklands
 Chou Remains Cremated
 Hershey Bars Protest
 MBA Studies Mushroom
 Teacher Strikes Idle Kids
 Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
 Miners Refuse to Work after Death
 Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead
 Blind Bishop Appointed To See
 Include Your Children When Baking Cookies
 Stolen Painting Found by Tree
5.4 Inferencing: Constructivist versus Minimalist Views
Minimalist View
1. The only inferences that are encoded automatically during reading are those that are
based on easily available information, either from explicit statements in the text or from

15. general knowledge, and those that are required to make statements in the text locally
coherent.
…inference making is (at least partly) a strategically controlled process and
depends on what knowledge is readily available, which may vary from
person to person, helps make sense of conflicting results in the literature.
2. It is also argued that automatically encoded minimalist inferences provide the basic
representation of textual information from which more goal-directed, purposeful
inferences are constructed.
Constructivist View
1. This accounts for the knowledge-based inferences that are constructed when readers
comprehend narrative text. Readers potentially generate a rich variety of inferences
when they construct a referential situation model of what the text is about.
2. The distinctive assumptions of the constructionist theory embrace a principle of search
(or effort) after meaning. According to this principle, readers attempt to construct a
meaning representation that addresses the reader's goals, that is coherent at both local
and global levels, and that explains why actions, events, and states are mentioned in the
text.
A more precise specification of this search-after-meaning principle has three critical
assumptions:
1. The reader goal assumption. The reader constructs a meaning
representation that addresses the reader's goals. These goals and meaning
representations are normally pitched at deep levels of processing (e.g.,
semantics and the referential situation model) rather than at shallow or
surface levels (e.g., wording and syntax).

16. 2. The coherence assumption. The reader attempts to construct a meaning
representation that is coherent at both local and global levels. Local
coherence refers to structures and processes that organize elements,
constituents (smaller parts), and referents (what a word stands for or
symbolizes) of adjacent clauses or short sequences of clauses. Global
coherence is established when local chunks of information are organized
and interrelated into higher order chunks.
3. The explanation assumption. The reader attempts to explain why actions,
events, and states are mentioned in the text. These explanations involve
naive theories in an effort to achieve coherence in understanding.
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Allen A. Alvaro
MA English