Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study investigated the hypothesis by Lieberman (1963) that speakers adjust the intelligibility information in words in a sentence in inverse relation to the semantic and grammatical information content of the sentence. The experiments examined the relationship between context and intelligibility for single words produced in word lists, in ordinary sentences and in anomalous sentences. in the first experiment performance was found to be at the same level on words from sentences, anomalous sentences, and word lists. in the second and third experiments the effect of text format on a difference in intelligibility between sentence-produced and list-produced words was examined. It was shown that the intelligibility of words from list context was superior where the sentence and list context materials to be produced by the speaker were separated for the production task. However, where the sentence and list context material were interleaved in the production task, this effect was removed. These results demonstrate that the intelligibility information of a word in a sentence can be adjusted by the speaker on the basis of information about the structure of the text, as well as in response to the syntactic and grammatical information in the sentence.

Keywords

production context intelligibility redundancy

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

DE MEY, M. (1977). The cognitive viewpoint, its development and scope. Communication and Cognition, 10, 7–23.

HUNNICUTT, S. (1985). Intelligibility versus redundancy-conditions of dependency. Language and Speech, 28, 47–56.

KALIKOW, D.N. , STEVENS, K.N. and ELLIOT, L.L. (1977). Development of a test of speech intelligibility in noise, using sentence materials with controlled word predictability. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 61, 1337–1351.

LEVENTHAL, G. (1973). Effect of sentence context on word perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 101, 318–323.

LIEBERMAN, P. (1963). Some effects of semantic and grammatical context on the production and perception of speech. Language and Speech, 6, 172–188.

MCGARR, N.S. (1978). The Differences between Experienced and Inexperienced Listeners in Understanding the Speech of the Deaf. Doctoral dissertation, City University of New York, New York, NY.

MCGARR, N.S. (1981). The effect of context on the intelligibility of hearing and deaf children's speech. Language and Speech, 24, 255–264.

MCGARR, N.S. (1983). The intelligibility of deaf speech to experienced and inexperienced listeners. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 26, 451–458.

MILLER, G.A. , HEISE, G.A. and LICHTEN, W. (1951). The intelligibility of speech as a function of the test materials. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 41, 329–335.

10.

O'NEILL, J. (1957). Recognition of intelligibility test materials in context and isolation. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 22, 87–90.

11.

POLLACK, I. and PICKETT, J.M. (1963). The intelligibility of excerpts from conversation. Language and Speech, 6, 151–163.

12.

SHANNON, C.E. (1949). The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Some Effects of Context On Spoken Language Production

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References