The first talk in our 2019-2020 McGill Linguistics Colloquium Series will be given by John Alderete (Simon Fraser University) on Friday, November 15th at 3:30 pm in BIRKS 111.
The title of the talk is “Speech errors and phonological patterns: Integrating insights from psycholinguistic and linguistic theory”. All are welcome to attend.
Abstract: In large collections of speech errors, phonological patterns emerge. Speech errors are shaped by phonotactic constraints, cross-linguistic markedness, frequency, and phonological representations of prosodic and segmental structure. While insights from both linguistic theory and psycholinguistic models have been brought to bear on these patterns, research on phonological patterns in speech errors rarely attempts to compare and contrast analyses from these different perspectives, much less integrate them as a coherent whole. This talk investigates the phonological patterns in the SFU Speech Error Database (SFUSED) with the goal of combining both processing and linguistic assumptions in an integrated model of speech production. In particular, it examines the impact of language particular phonotactics on speech errors, competing explanations from markedness and frequency, and the role of linguistic representations for syllables and tone. The empirical findings support a model that includes both production processing impacted by frequency and explicit representations of tone and syllables from phonological theory.
For more information on upcoming events in the McGill Linguistics department, please see our website (http://www.mcgill.ca/linguistics/events).