Aspects of the Syntax of Behavior: Syllable Structure and Speech Rate

Abstract

This paper shows that maximal rate of speech varies as a function of syllable struc ture. For example, eev syllables such as [sku] and eve syllables such as [kus] are produced faster than vee syllables such as [usk] when subjects repeat these syllables as fast as possible. Spectrographic analyses indicated that this difference in syllable duration was not confined to anyone portion of the syllables: the vowel, the consonants and even the interval between syllable repetitions was longer for vee syllables than for eve and eev syllables. These and other findings could not be explained in terms of word frequency, transition frequency of adjacent phonemes, or coarticulation between segments. Moreover, number of phonemes was a poor predictor of maximal rate for a wide variety of syllable strucrures, since vee strucrures such as [uIk] were produced slower than phonemically longer eeev structures such as [sklu], and V structures such as [a] were pr~duced no faster than phonemically longer ev structures such 11S ega]. These findings could not be explained by traditional models of speech production or articulatory difficulty but supported a complexity metric derived from a recently proposed theory of the serial production of syllables. This theory was also shown to be consistent with the special status of ev syllables suggested by Jakobson as well as certain aspects of speech errors, tongue-twisters and word games such as Doub.le Dutch.

Structure and content in language production: A theory of frame constraints in phonological speech errors

“…The division of the syllable into onset and rhyme is an important aspect of phonological structure, obtaining its motivation from the distribution of sounds and the placement of stress in languages of the world. It has, as well, received much support from psycholinguistic data (e.g., Fowler, 1987;MacKay, 1974;Treiman, 1983;Yaniv, Meyer, Gordon, Huft, & Sevald, 1990). The predominance of VC over CV slips, therefore, is evidence that phonological structure is exerting an influence in production.…”

Sequential activation processes in producing words and syllables: Evidence from picture naming

“…This tree traversal pattern was proposed originally as a way to solve the problem of serial order in higher order planning and memory retrieval processes (Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960;Simon, 1972;Greeno & Simon, 1974;Restle, 1970;Volpert, 1982;Yngve, 1960), and subsequently has been postulated for the perception of structured patterns (Povel, 1981) and the planning and production of sequences of limb movements and key presses (see Collard & Povel, 1982;Gordon & Meyer, 1987;Jordan & Rosenbaum, 1989;Pew & Rosenbaum, 1988;Rosenbaum, 1990Rosenbaum, , 1991Rosenbaum, Gordon, Stillings, & Feinstein, 1987;Rosenbaum, Inhoff, & Gordon, 1984;Rosenbaum, Kenny, & Derr, 1983;Rosenbaum, Weber, Hazelett, & Hindorff, 1986). Even for phonological retrieval, the top-down, left-to-right tree traversal idea is not new (Gordon & Meyer, 1987;MacKay, 1970MacKay, , 1972MacKay, , 1974Rosenbaum, 1985;Rosenbaum et al, 1986Rosenbaum et al, , 1987 inhibitory connection between ONSET FINAL and ONSET. This terminal inhibition will release the lateral inhibition on RHYME, and enable RHYME to become activated as the most primed sequence node, causing activation of uk(rhyme).…”

Vocalizations of one-year-olds

“…The apparent primacy of this syllable shape has been noted in studies of linguistic universals (Greenberg 1966), speech production and perception (Kozhevnikov & Chistovich 1965, Studdert-Kennedy 1976, speech development (Jakobson 1968, Branigan 1976, developmental speech disorders (Panagos 1974, Ingram 1976, and second-language learning (Tarone 1976). The universality of the CV syllable, as adduced from cross-linguistic studies and from ontogenetic studies, had led to the proposition that this syllable is a simplest form (MacKay 1974, Kent 1976 or a kind of atom in the formulation of speech. Given the early ontogenetic appearance of the CV syllable across languages, there might be merit in the argument that this syllable shape can be likened to discrete motor patterns that ethologists have called by names such as 'fixed action pattern' (Thorpe 1961), 'typical form' (Tinbergen 1964), 'fixed motor pattern' (Lorenz 1965), 'hereditary motor pattern' (Lorenz 1965), and 'modal action pattern' (Barlow 1968).…”