Abstract
Herrmann (1985) has developed a three-stage model of speech production. The three levels comprise: (1) focusing a propositional output basis, (2) selection and linearisation, and (3) encoding. In order to speak, a speaker has to turn her/his attention to those situational aspects s/he intends to talk about. Out of the set of focused elements will be selected only those appropriate for the utterance intended to be encoded next. The different processing levels should be characterised by different activational states. The aim of this study was to investigate the first stage of the model. The focusing hypothesis was tested by means of the lexical decision task, and the experimental results confirmed the hypothesis.
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