Semantic and pragmatic effects in speech production

Abstract

This study addresses how semantic information may prime, and thus facilitate, the articulation of a target word. In addition, it addresses how the pragmatic interaction between speaker and listeners may modify speech production. To examine these issues, subjects were presented with a visual prime and target and were asked to name the target aloud. Prime type and neighborhood characteristics of the target were manipulated. Primes were either semantically related or unrelated to the target. Targets occurred in neighborhoods that had either many or few phonetically similar neighbors and these neighbors were either high or low in frequency. Dependent variables were duration and the pitch of stressed vowels. Prefiminary results suggest that vowel duration of the target decreases when it has many neighbors that are high frequency, suggesting facilitation. Pitch is higher on targets with low- versus high-frequency neighbors when preceded by an unrelated prime, suggesting speaker compensation. The results will be discussed in the frameworks of interactive activation and pragmatic compensation.