There are many computational speech production models regarding serial language processing. In these models the stages are independent and information flow is unidirectional/top-down – lemma level processes feed lexeme level processes, but not the other way around. One of the most widely known and discussed speech production models was proposed by Bock & Levelt (1994). This model presented four distinct stages of processing. The process begins at the conceptual stage, a message-level representation, which captures the idea the speaker wishes to convey. Then two stages of syntactic (grammatical) processing follow: functional processing and positional processing. Grammatical encoding begins with functional-level processing, which is subdivided
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There is a great deal of evidence supporting this idea, especially focussing on syntactic/structural priming. Syntactic priming can be described as a tendency, after processing a sentence containing a certain syntactic structure, to use related syntactic structure, which is primed and becomes more activated, and, therefore, is produced more …show more content…
In this study, the speakers were asked to read aloud single words and then describe pictures. Words were primes that were semantically or phonologically related to one of the to-be-produced words. For example, presented target picture could be described either way: as ‘the church is being struck by the lightning’ or as ‘lightening is striking the church’. Target words were lightning and church, semantically related prime words were thunder and worship, and phonologically related prime words were frightening and search. The results showed that lexical priming influences the syntax of sentences. Semantic priming affected sentence formulation processes - target words related to the primes occurred earlier in the picture descriptions as a subject and unrelated target words occurred later as an object in the sentence. Phonological priming showed no significant effect on the order of constituents. Therefore, the results are consistent with the Bock and Levelt’s hypothesis and their model, claiming that syntactic structure is determined at a level where the meaning of words is available, but the phonological form is not yet
There is a great deal of evidence supporting this idea, especially focussing on syntactic/structural priming. Syntactic priming can be described as a tendency, after processing a sentence containing a certain syntactic structure, to use related syntactic structure, which is primed and becomes more activated, and, therefore, is produced more …show more content…
In this study, the speakers were asked to read aloud single words and then describe pictures. Words were primes that were semantically or phonologically related to one of the to-be-produced words. For example, presented target picture could be described either way: as ‘the church is being struck by the lightning’ or as ‘lightening is striking the church’. Target words were lightning and church, semantically related prime words were thunder and worship, and phonologically related prime words were frightening and search. The results showed that lexical priming influences the syntax of sentences. Semantic priming affected sentence formulation processes - target words related to the primes occurred earlier in the picture descriptions as a subject and unrelated target words occurred later as an object in the sentence. Phonological priming showed no significant effect on the order of constituents. Therefore, the results are consistent with the Bock and Levelt’s hypothesis and their model, claiming that syntactic structure is determined at a level where the meaning of words is available, but the phonological form is not yet