1.

THE PROCESS OF SPEECH COMPREHENSION

Introduction

Sentence comprehension is “like riding bicycle, far easier performed than described”
(Aitchison,1997:203). One area of psycholinguistic concerns is speech comprehension.
Comprehending speech sounds is an active not a passive process.

in general sense, comprehension refers to “the mental process by which listeners take in
the sounds uttered by a speaker and use them to construct an interpretation of what the
speaker intended to convey” Clark and Clark 1991:43. Speech comprehension is a fact an
active process and not a passive one. Listeners usually try to figure out that they are
supposed to do with speech addressed to them and do it accordingly. Clark and Clark
1977:443-44.

2. the process of comprehension

Clark and Clark’s (1977) definition of comprehension above indicates that

comprehension divides naturally into two process, namely: the construction process and
the utilization process

a. The construction process

The construction process refers to the process in which the listeners construct an
interpretation of what they hear. In Aitchison (1998) has given some explanations on the
kind of expectation listeners bring in comprehending speech and what kind of clues they
look for. He has purposed four assumptions about how listeners approach speech.

First assumption is that “every sentence consists of one or more sentoids or sentence like
chunks, and each sentoid normally includes a NP followed by V, optionally followed by
another NP”.

The second assumption says that “in a NP-V-NP sequence, the first N is usually the actor
and the second the object.

Third assumption says that when a complex sentence is composed of a main clause and
one or more subordinate clauses; the main clause usually come first. The last assumption
states that sentences usually make sense. Thus, people generally say things that are
sensible.

Clark and Clark (1977:57) suggest to approaches to the construction process, namely:
syntactic and semantic.Syntactic approach is The major proposal in syntactic approach is
that “listeners have at their command a battery of mental strategies by which they
segment sentences into constituents, classify the constituents, and construct semantic
representation from them” Clark and Clark 1977:58.
2. MEMORY AND COMPREHENSION

A. Introduction

Most scientists agree that it is very useful to describe human memory as a set of stores
which are places to put information plus a set of processes that act on the stores. This
section will specifically shed light on human memory. The presentation will be divided
into four parts. The first part discusses the information processing in the memory. The
second and third parts concern the short-term and the long-term memory. Part four
discusses remembering and memorization.

1. Human Memory

There are generally three types of memory involved, namely: sensory memory, short
term memory and long term memory. A sensory memory exists for each sensory
channel: iconic memory for visual stimuli (the graph), echoic memory for aural
stimuli (the sound) and haptic memory for touch. Short term memory acts as a
scratch-pad for temporary recall of the information under process. Short-term
Memory

2. Long-term Memory

Long term memory, as said earlier, is a place where information is stored more
permanently. Semantic memory is a structured record of facts, concepts, vocabulary,
and skills that we have acquired. Many different factors seem to affect the difficulty
of accessing a memory in the LTM. These factors include: the similarity between
current conditions and those that existed when the memory was stored, how recently
the memory was last used. There are two key factors to get information remembered
by the long-term memory, namely: association and interaction.

3. Remembering

It is believed that there are four factors which may affect the content and accuracy of
what people remember, namely: type of language, input, retention interval, and the
output. The process of remembering involves three stages, namely: input, storage, and
output (Clark and Clark, 1977: 134). At the stage of output, there are two methods for
output, namely: recognition and recall. In both recognition and recall people utilize
three kinds of outside information, namely: the language, the world knowledge and
the discourse. The focus of processing states that ‘’the aspect of a sentence people
focus in the study will be remembered better than the other aspects of the sentence’’
(Clark and Clark, 1977: 151)
3. AMBIGUITY AND COMPREHENSION

Introduction

When different words are pronounced the same but having different meaning, they are
called homophone or homonyms. Ambiguities are usually resolved without awareness,
but language resolution always takes time. Listeners usually use different strategies to
comprehend ambiguous sentence. They may use single reading, multiple reading, or both.

1. The Notion of Ambiguity

In linguistics, ambiguity demands independent syntactic analysis. In psycholinguistics the

concern is on how ambiguity affects sentence processing. Sentences can be ambiguous on
at least three levels:

a. Lexical Ambiguity

Lexical ambiguity is illustrated in the sentence, She cannot bear children. The
ambiguity exists because the word bear may have two different meanings in this
sentence: to give a birth and to endure.

b. Surface Structure Ambiguity

Surface structure ambiguity is illustrated in the sentence, Old men and woman
are advised to apply for their benefits. The double meaning of the above sentence is
not due to any ambiguous words but rather to the fact that it has two different surface
structureDeep Structure Ambiguity

Deep structure ambiguity is illustrated in the sentence, Cheating students will

not be tolerated. The basic difference between the two interpretation is explicitly
revealed in the two deep structures.

In conclusion, there are some differences between them. Surface structure

ambiguity sometimes can be disambiguated by pronouncing them differently,
depending on the intended meaning.

2. Comprehension of Ambiguous Sentences

Experimental studies conducted have yielded several theories to account for the
mental process in which listeners comprehend ambiguous sentences. There are three
notable theories to discuss here in this section:

a. The Garden Path Theory

The garden path or one meaning theory of ambiguity states that, “as listeners proceed
through a sentence they compute only one reading for each ambiguous construction.
The Mixed Theory
 It claims that when listeners encounter an ambiguous construction, they compute
multiple readings. Using the context, listeners then attempt to select the most
plausible reading.

4. THE PROCESS OF SPEECH PRODUCTION

Introduction

Speaking seems to be a very instrumental act. Speakers talk in order to have some
effects on their listeners. Production to speak is very complex or complicated.
Producing speech seems require very little thought or effort. The words produced
flow effortlessly. Speakers think what they want to say and their tongues
automatically put their thoughts into words. Thus, producing speech seems to follow
two types of processes, namely: planning and execution.

How is Speech Sound Produced:Human speech is produced by vocal organs. The

main energy source is the lungs with the diaphragm. When speaking, the air flow is
forced through the glottis between the vocal cords on the larynx to the three main
cavities of vocal tract, the pharynx, and the oral and nasal cavities.

Planning and Execution:Producing speech can simply be described as follows.

Speakers first plan what they want to say based on how they want to give effect to
their listeners. Then, they put the plan into execution, uttering the segments, words,
phrases, and sentences which make up the plan. (Clark and Clark, 1997: 224)

In planning and execution speech, speakers go through the processes as follows: The
above model of speech production is in consonant with Levelt (1998). With regards to
sentence production, a spoken sentence is produced from the formation of an idea in
the speaker’s mind to the moment before it is articulated. Levelt (1998) mention the
three main areas of speech production, namely: conceptualization, formulation, and
articulation or execution.

5. SLIP OF TONGUE

Slip of tongue is as ‘unintended, non-habitual deviation (s) from a speech plan’ (Dell
in Poulise, 1999: 1). It is the result of problems in controlling the speech production
speech. Slip of tongue is one type of speech error which appears to be more complex
compared with the above-mentioned common speech errors.

1. Selection Errors

Selection errors are errors in which a wrong item is chosen, where something has
gone wrong with the selection process. The selection errors may include three types of
error, namely:
a. Semantic Errors

The most common semantic errors are in the form of word selection or substitutions,
in which slots are filled by wrong words. Words are semantically related when they
are antonyms (high-low), synonyms (woman-lady), hyponyms (category-member i.e.
fruit-apple), members of the same category (knife-fork), and associates (bread evokes
butter).

b. Malapropism

It is a type of tongue slip which is named after Mrs. Malaprop, a character in one of
Sheridan’s plays, the rivals, who continually confused words which sound alike such
as reprehend for apprehend, derangement for arrangement, epitaphs for epithets,
alligator for allegory, tambourines for the target trampolines.

c. Blends

Blends are variation of semantic errors which occur when two words are blended
together to form a new one.

2. Assemblage Errors

Aitchison (1998: 205) has defined assemblage errors as “errors in which the correct
word choice has been made, but the items chosen have been faultily assembled”.
There are three major types of assemblage errors:

a. Transposition or Spoonerism

Transpositions are errors in which “two segments are interchanged, and so the origin
of one error is the target for the other and vice versa” (Clark and Clark, 1997: 274).

b. Anticipations

Anticipation errors occur when “a speaker anticipates what he is going to say by

bringing in an item too early” (Aitchison, 1989: 251).

c. Repetitions

According to Aitchison (1998: 252) “repetitions are relatively unusual because normal
people have very effective ‘wipe the slate clean’ mechanism.