Word Production in Mandarin Chinese: Evidence from paradigmatic errors in spontaneous speech

• Main Authors: Chen,Huei ying, 陳慧盈
• Other Authors: Wan,I Ping
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/08526112560547646868

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 語言學研究所 === 96 === This study aims to investigate the process of word production in Mandarin, to see how it can be structured in previous models. Speech production models have two primary sects—the serial-ordering model versus the connectionist model—arguing for uni-directional and bi-directional activation respectively. Besides, between these two models, the generation of both semantically- and phonologically-related lexical errors (mixed errors) is different. On the one hand, the serial-ordering model (Garrett, 1988) interpreted mixed errors as malfunctions occur at both functional and positional level. It may not be favored if mixed errors occur more than chance in the corpus. On the other hand, the connectionist model (Dell, 1986) explained it as the feedback activation from the phonological level back to the lemma level. It would be supported if most paradigmatic substitutions show phonological similarities. Therefore, in order to facilitate the phonological similarities in lexical substitutions, 421 single-syllable paradigmatic (non-contextual) lexical errors collected in natural settings are examined. It is found that the percentage of mixed errors is significantly higher. Moreover, in the corpus the initialness, similarity, rhyme, syllable structure and tone effects are all prominent, which proves the joint effect of semantic and phonology in word selection. In other words, the connectionist network might better account for the processing of Mandarin. In addition, the analysis reveals certain issues of word-production in Mandarin. First, initials are primary activation units in word retrieval, rather than phonetic features or rhymes. It also supports the division of hierarchical syllable structure as an onset (C) and rhyme (VC/CVC). Secondly, the significance of tone effect suggests that tone may be stored in the underlying phonological organization of lexicons and thus is prior in word-activation. Thirdly, the syllable structure of the target is assigned at the beginning of phonological stage and thus lexical nodes with the same syllable structure tend to be selected. In conclusion, the analysis proves that the connectionist model could be applied to Mandarin Chinese if the status of tone and syllable structure is included.