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Abstract:
auditory representations
Post-sentence representations of auditory
sentences can be investigated using the voice change monitoring
task, in which participants monitor sentences for a syllable
spoken in a different voice. "Slips of the ear", i.e.,
incorrect recall of the voice change location, provide
information about how auditory sentences are represented in
memory. We report evidence, based on "slips of the ear",
that some syntactic information is preserved in the post-sentence
representation.
Voice change monitoring has been shown to be
sensitive to online and offline effects, such as the reduced
relative and filled gap effects (Townsend & Bever, 1991;
O'Bryan, Nicol, Townsend, & Bever, 2000). The task
provides three kinds of data: online reaction times, online
monitoring errors, and post-sentence word identification
responses (participants' reports of which word the voice change
occurred on.)
Analyses of post-sentence word identification
errors by mislocation distance, direction, and syntactic category
revealed four types of "slips of the ear". The first is
leftward movement. In response to (a) in which the voice
change occurred on "flew" (indicated by asterisks), participants
reported that it occurred on "hawk" 22.2% of the time.
(a) A hawk *flew* by the radio tower on the
hill.
Mislocating the voice change one word leftward
accounts for 32.4% of mislocations, more than any other
position.
The second type is rightward mislocation when one
word to the right is often phonetically reduced, e.g.,
auxiliaries. Participants responded "have" to (b) 34% of
the time, accounting for 79% of errors on this item.
(b) Could the *crew* have known about the
malfunctioning safety equipment?
Although auxiliaries are often reduced, they were
fully articulated in the stimuli. Across items, 19.8% of
mislocations involved choosing the following auxiliary.
This suggests that even when auxiliaries are carefully
articulated, their reducibility is retrievable from the
post-sentence representation.
The third type involved rightward mislocation from
a preposition to its object noun phrase. Participants
responded "health" in 69.8% of the errors on (c).
(c) The retired women bathed in the large pool
*at* the health club.
The high frequency of mislocations from
prepositions to their objects suggests that categorical and
possibly structural information is intact in the post-sentence
representation.
The fourth type of mislocation was incorrectly
choosing a verb. In 51.7% of errors on (d), participants
chose "infuriated".
(d) The police infuriated the *deaf* man when they
handcuffed him.
Incorrectly choosing a verb accounts for 21.5% of
mislocations. Verbs were chosen in 60.4% of errors in which
there was no voice change. This response bias suggests that
verbs have a privileged status in the post-sentence
representation.
References
O'Bryan, E. L., Nicol, J. L., Townsend, D. J.,
& Bever, T. G. (2000). Reduced relatives and WH-gaps in
spoken sentence comprehension. CUNY Sentence Processing
Conference poster session, Univ. of California, San Diego.
Townsend, D. J., & Bever, T. G. (1991).
The use of higher-level constraints in monitoring a change in
speaker demonstrates functionally distinct levels of
representation in discourse comprehension. Language and
Cognitive Processes, 6(1), 49-77.
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