Speech errors in normal speech provide important information about the
processing mechanisms of speaking, one of the most complex cognitive, linguistic,
and motor skills that human beings use for communication. Studies of speech errors
form a major part of psycholinguistic research on speech production, but until
recently such research has been largely based on the evidence from only a few
European languages. In contrast to most speech error analyses in English, this
dissertation focuses on the discussion of speech errors in Chinese, illustrating that
speech errors featuring Chinese language-specific characteristics imply some
processing steps that are not observed in previous speech production models.
Similarities between speech errors in Chinese and English in terms of their
patterns and classification suggest universality in speech production disorders in
normal speech, but language-specific characteristics of the two languages suggest
that English and Chinese speakers experience different processing steps in speech
production, and err at different rates in different domains. For example, tonal errors
in Chinese indicate that Chinese speakers undergo a special phonological process
sub-step for tonal specification, this sub-step involves tone sandhi rule application, a
processing task that does not concern non-tonal language speakers. A second
example arises when, in the course of articulating a retrieved lexical item, the logophonographic
features of the Chinese writing system provide phonological
information about the lexical item through a processing step of "mental
visualization". Partial visualization or incorrect phonological processing of the mentally visualized items can lead to errors of the logo-phonographic type which are not found in alphabetic languages such as English. Third, bilingual errors show that
mixing of syntactic and phonological features of two different languages can occur
when speech is being planned by bilingual speakers. Lastly, socio-cultural values in
Chinese, such as those that involve address patterns and kinship term systems, can
lead to errors that are rarely experienced by English speakers. Such different types of
speech errors found in Chinese provide evidence that speech in Chinese is mediated
by certain steps that have not been described in the many speech production models
based on evidence derived from English errors.
In general agreement with the functional-positional speech production model
of Garrett (1975. 1988) and the overall language production schema of Levelt (1989.
1992), this dissertation argues for a unified speech production model that describes
each of the ordered steps in the speech production process, including
conceptualization, formulation, and articulation. Such a model does not overemphasize
either the linguistic or psychological factors that cause speech errors. In
order to precisely account for speech errors of all types in all natural languages, this
model involves a set of ordered cognitive activities with psychological, linguistic,
socio-cultural and contextual factors under full consideration. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/8226 |
| Date | 05 June 2017 |
| Creators | Yang, Wei |
| Contributors | Kess, Joseph F. |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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