Lexical access in speech production

Formerly published in: Cognition : international journal of cognitive science, vol. 42, nos. 1-3, 199

Contact points between lexical retrieval and sentence production

Speakers retrieve words to use them in sentences. Errors in incorporating words into sentential frames are revealing with respects to the lexical units as well as the lexical retrieval mechanism; hence they constrain theories of lexical access. We present a reanalysis of a corpus of spontaneously occurring lexical exchange errors that highlights the contact points between lexical and sentential processed

Bilingual word recognition in a sentence context

This article provides an overview of bilingualism research on visual word recognition in isolation and in sentence context. Many studies investigating the processing of words out-of-context have shown that lexical representations from both languages are activated when reading in one language (language-nonselective lexical access). A newly developed research line asks whether language-nonselective access generalizes to word recognition in sentence contexts, providing a language cue and/or semantic constraint information for upcoming words. Recent studies suggest that the language of the preceding words is insufficient to restrict lexical access to words of the target language, even when reading in the native language. Eyetracking studies revealing the time course of word activation further showed that semantic constraint does not restrict language-nonselective access at early reading stages, but there is evidence that it has a relatively late effect. The theoretical implications for theories of bilingual word recognition are discussed in light of the Bilingual Interactive Activation + model (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002)

Semantic access in number word translation - The role of crosslingual lexical similarity

The revised hierarchical model of bilingualism (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994) assumes that second language (1,2) words primarily access semantics through their first language (L1) translation equivalents. Consequently, backward translation from L2 to L1 should not imply semantic access but occurs through lexical wordform associations. However, recent research with Dutch-French bilinguals showed that both backward and forward translation of number words yields a semantic number magnitude effect (Duyck & Brysbaert, 2004), providing evidence for strong form-to-meaning mappings of L2 number words. In two number-word translation experiments with Dutch-English-German trilinguals, the present study investigated whether semantic access in L1-L2 and L1-L3 number-word translation depends on lexical similarity of the languages involved. We found that backward translation from these more similar language pairs to L1 still yields a semantic magnitude effect, whereas forward translation does not, in contrast with the Dutch-French results of Duyck and Brysbaert (2004). We argue against a dual route model of word translation and suggest that the degree of semantic activation in translation depends on lexical form overlap between translation equivalents

Stages of lexical access

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Talker identification is not improved by lexical access in the absence of familiar phonology

Listeners identify talkers more accurately when they are familiar with both the sounds and words of the language being spoken. It is unknown whether lexical information alone can facilitate talker identification in the absence of familiar phonology. To dissociate the roles of familiar words and phonology, we developed English-Mandarin “hybrid” sentences, spoken in Mandarin, which can be convincingly coerced to sound like English when presented with corresponding subtitles (e.g., “wei4 gou3 chi1 kao3 li2 zhi1” becomes “we go to college”). Across two experiments, listeners learned to identify talkers in three conditions: listeners' native language (English), an unfamiliar, foreign language (Mandarin), and a foreign language paired with subtitles that primed native language lexical access (subtitled Mandarin). In Experiment 1 listeners underwent a single session of talker identity training; in Experiment 2 listeners completed three days of training. Talkers in a foreign language were identified no better when native language lexical representations were primed (subtitled Mandarin) than from foreign-language speech alone, regardless of whether they had received one or three days of talker identity training. These results suggest that the facilitatory effect of lexical access on talker identification depends on the availability of familiar phonological forms

A framework for lexical representation

In this paper we present a unification-based lexical platform designed for highly inflected languages (like Roman ones). A formalism is proposed for encoding a lemma-based lexical source, well suited for linguistic generalizations. From this source, we automatically generate an allomorph indexed dictionary, adequate for efficient processing. A set of software tools have been implemented around this formalism: access libraries, morphological processors, etc.Comment: 9 page

Effects of lexical processing deficits on agrammatic sentence comprehension: An eyetracking study

Individuals with Broca’s aphasia show lexical processing deficits, such as deficits in lexical access or lexical integration. Although studies have implicated lexical processing as areas of impairment in Broca’s aphasia, few studies have looked at the effects of these deficits on sentence comprehension. We conducted a series of eyetracking experiments to test whether Broca’s aphasic individuals are impaired in lexical access or lexical integration and whether such deficits affect sentence comprehension. Results showed that while lexical access and lexical integration are both impaired in Broca’s aphasia, only the deficit in lexical integration affects sentence comprehension

Modeling lexical decision : the form of frequency and diversity effects

What is the root cause of word frequency effects on lexical decision times? W. S. Murray and K. I. Forster (2004) argued that such effects are linear in rank frequency, consistent with a serial search model of lexical access. In this article, the authors (a) describe a method of testing models of such effects that takes into account the possibility of parametric overfitting; (b) illustrate the effect of corpus choice on estimates of rank frequency; (c) give derivations of nine functional forms as predictions of models of lexical decision; (d) detail the assessment of these models and the rank model against existing data regarding the functional form of frequency effects; and (e) report further assessments using contextual diversity, a factor confounded with word frequency. The relationship between the occurrence distribution of words and lexical decision latencies to those words does not appear compatible with the rank hypothesis, undermining the case for serial search models of lexical access. Three transformations of contextual diversity based on extensions of instance models do, however, remain as plausible explanations of the effect