Lexical Availability Research Articles

Preservation of Propositional Speech in a Pure Anomic: The Importance of an Abstract Vocabulary

We describe a detailed quantitative analysis of the propositional speech of a patient, FAV, who became severely anomic following a left occipito-temporal infarction. FAV showed a selective noun retrieval deficit in naming to confrontation and from verbal description. Nonetheless, his propositional speech was fluent and content-rich. To quantify this observation, three picture description-based tasks were designed to elicit spontaneous speech. These were pictures of professional occupations, real world scenes and stylised object scenes. FAV’s performance was compared and contrasted with that of 5 age- and sex-matched control subjects on a number of variables including speech production rate, volume of output, pause frequency and duration, word frequency, word concreteness and diversity of vocabulary used. FAV’s propositional speech fell within the range of normal control performance on the majority of measurements of quality, quantity and fluency. Only in the narrative tasks which relied more heavily upon a concrete vocabulary, did FAV become less voluble and resort to summarising the scenes in an manner. This dissociation between virtually intact propositional speech and a severe naming deficit represents the purest case of anomia currently on record. We attribute this dissociation in part to the preservation of his ability to retrieve his abstract word vocabulary. Our account demonstrates that poor performance on standard naming tasks may be indicative of only a narrowly defined word retrieval deficit. However, we also propose the existence of a feedback circuit which guides sentence construction by providing information regarding lexical availability.

Effect of Ambiguity and Lexical Availability on Syntactic and Lexical Production

Speakers only sometimes include the that in sentence complement structures like The coach knew (that) you missed practice. Six experiments tested the predictions concerning optional word mention of two general approaches to language production. One approach claims that language production processes choose syntactic structures that ease the task of creating sentences, so that words are spoken opportunistically, as they are selected for production. The second approach claims that a syntactic structure is chosen that is easiest to comprehend, so that optional words like that are used to avoid temporarily ambiguous, difficult-to-comprehend sentences. In all experiments, speakers did not consistently include optional words to circumvent a temporary ambiguity, but they did omit optional words (the complementizer that) when subsequent material was either repeated (within a sentence) or prompted with a recall cue. The results suggest that speakers choose syntactic structures to permit early mention of available material and not to circumvent disruptive temporary ambiguities.

The effects of discourse support on the organization and production of children's utterances

ABSTRACTThis study asked whether lexical availability affects the length, complexity, order of mention, and fluency of children's utterances. Lexical availability was manipulated through discourse support (present or absent) and word frequency (high or low) for 40 target nouns. Length was indexed by mean number of words per communication unit. Complexity was indexed by mean number of verbs per communication unit. Earlier mention was measured by mean number of words preceding the target word in each communication unit. Thirty-six subjects, aged 4, 6, and 8, described 40 illustrations containing a high or low frequency target noun referent. In the discourse support condition, provided for one half of the target words, subjects named the target word prior to the description task. Results showed that the number of responses containing the target word varied with age, word frequency and discourse support condition; length of responses varied with age and its interaction with discourse support; earlier mention varied with age and discourse support condition; and fluency varied with discourse support condition. The results are discussed from the viewpoint of Bock's process model of sentence production.

On the goals, principles, and procedures for prescriptive grammar: Singular they

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the goals of prescriptive grammar and the causes and consequences of the rift between prescriptive and theoretical linguistics. It also proposes a principle for guiding prescriptive recommendations in the future as well as a theoretical framework and procedure for predicting the consequences of prescriptive recommendations. The procedure illustrates a hypothetical prescription: the substitution of singular they for prescriptive he. Projected benefits the prescription include neutral connotation, naturalness, simplicity, and lexical availability. Projected costs include covert and overt referential ambiguity; partial ambiguity; conceptual inaccuracy; loss of precision, imageability, impact, and memorability; bizarreness involving certain referents and case forms; distancing and dehumanizing connotations; unavailability of the ‘he or she’ denotation; potentially disruptive and long-lasting side effects on other areas of the language. Procedures are also illustrated for determining the relative frequency of such costs and benefits and for estimating the relative disruptiveness of the costs normal language use. Implications of the data for several issues general interest to linguistics and psychology are explored. (Ambiguity, language change, prescriptive grammar, theoretical linguistics, language planning, pronouns, neologisms.)

Syntactic effects of information availability in sentence production

Two experiments investigated sentence production processes underlying the tendency for given information to precede new information in a sentence. The factors hypothesized to contribute to this effect were referential availability and lexical availability. Experiment 1 found that information coreferential with an antecedent referring expression tended to occur earlier in produced sentences than new information. This effect was more pronounced when the information was lexically identical to its antecedent. Experiment 2 found lexical availability effects when referential functions were minimized. These results may be accounted for by assuming that both referential availability and lexical availability contribute to the speed of lexicalization processes in sentence production, and that the order in which constituents become available after lexicalization influences surface syntactic organization processes.

The effect of meaningfulness in tachistoscopic word perception

Studies of tachistoscopic word perception were reviewed under two theoretical headings: the structural approach, in which the variables of interest are linguistic relations among letters, and the lexical approach, where the interest is in the availability of words in lexical memory. The results of a recent tachistoscopic recognition study question the importance of lexical availability by finding no difference in performance between meaningful words and well-structured, pronounceable nonwords. In the present study, further comparisons between words and pronounceable nonwords were performed, and a meaningfulness effect was demonstrated. The generality of this finding was discussed, and alternative models accounting for the effect were considered. Two of these were capable of explaining structural effects as well as the meaningfulness effect: a translation model and a lexical discrimination net.