User:Cw1120/Language production

Language Production Draft
The edits that I have done in this draft is working on the lead section and a later section about research methods. The article that I am working on can be found here. In addition to these edits, I would like to add more information to the model and additional aspects sections so that the article better covers the full topic.

Lead
Language production is the production of spoken or written language. In psycholinguistics, it describes all of the stages between having a concept and translating that concept into linguistic form. These stages have been described in two types of processing models: the lexical access models and the serial models. In computational linguistics/natural language processing and artificial intelligence, the term natural language generation (NLG) is more common, and those models may or may not be psychologically motivated. Through these models, psycholinguists also look into how speech is produced in different ways, such as when the speaker is bilingual and when the speaker has a speech-related disorder like aphasia. Psycholinguists learn more about these models and different kinds of speech by using language production research methods that include collecting speech errors and elicited production tasks.

Research Methods
There are three main types of research into language production: speech error collection, picture-naming, and elicited production. Speech error collection focuses on the analysis of speech errors made in naturally produced speech. On the other hand, elicited production focuses on elicited speech and is conducted in a lab. Also conducted in a lab, picture-naming focuses on the reaction-time data from picture-naming latencies. Although originally disparate, these three methodologies are generally looking at the same underlying processes of speech production.

Speech errors
Speech errors have been found to be common in naturally produced speech. Analysis of speech errors has found that not all errors in speech are random, but rather systematic and fall into several categories. These speech errors can demonstrate parts of the language processing system, and what happens when that system doesn't work as it should. Language production occurs quickly with speakers saying a little more than 2 words per second; so though errors occur only once out of 1,000 words, they occur relatively often throughout a speaker's day at once every 7 minutes. Some examples of these speech errors that would be collected by psycholinguists are:


 * Anticipation: The word adds a sound from a word planned for later in the utterance.
 * target: paddle tennis
 * produced: taddle tennis


 * Preservation: The word retains characteristics of a word said previously in an utterance.
 * target: red wagon
 * produced: red ragon


 * Blending: More than one word is being considered in the lexicon and the two intended items "blend" into a single item.
 * target: shout/yell
 * produced: shell


 * Addition: Additional of linguistics material added to the word.
 * target: impossible
 * produced: implossible


 * Substitution: A whole word of related meaning is replacing another.
 * target: at low speed it's too heavy
 * produced: at low speed it's too light


 * Malapropism: A lay term, in reference to a character Mrs. Malaprop from Sheridan's The Rivals, referring to the incorrect substitution of words.
 * Makes no delusions to the past.
 * The pineapple of perfection.
 * I have interceded another letter from the fellow.


 * Spoonerism: The switching of the letters from two words in the utterance.
 * target: slips of the tongue
 * produced: tips of the slung

Picture-naming
Picture-naming tasks ask participants to look at pictures and name them in a certain way. By looking at the time course for the responses in these tasks, psycholinguists can learn more about the planning involved in specific phrases. These types of tasks can be particularly helpful for investigating cross-linguistic language production and planning processes.

Elicited Production
Elicited production tasks ask participants to respond to questions or prompts in a particular way. One of the more common types of elicited production tasks is the sentence completion task. These tasks give the participants the beginning of a target sentence, which the participants are then asked to complete. Analyzing these completions allow psycholinguistics to investigate errors that might be difficult to elicit otherwise.