Alternative routes of lexical retrieval in spontaneous speech

Abstract

The interaction between pauses and the retrieval of the desired lexemes in the process of word production involves controversies that are worth investigating. The temporal analysis of word retrieval was carried out in a ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ elicitation experiment while pauses signaling the speaker’s word finding trouble were measured also in spontaneous speech. Acoustic–phonetic data confirmed the existence of specific temporal organization of various lexical retrieval problems that occur similarly within one word and also in word seeking, in restarts and in restarts with morphological change in an agglutinative language.