TY - JOUR
T1 - On the nature of sonority in spoken word production
T2 - Evidence from neuropsychology
AU - Miozzo, Michele
AU - Buchwald, Adam
N1 - Funding Information:
The present investigation was supported by NIH Grant DC006242. Cristina Sanchez, Jennifer O’Shea, Julia Wadolowska and Julianne Remus contributed to testing and data analyses. We thank D.L.E. and H.F.L. for their participation in the study.
PY - 2013/9
Y1 - 2013/9
N2 - The concept of sonority - that speech sounds can be placed along a universal sonority scale that affects syllable structure - has proved valuable in accounting for a wide spectrum of linguistic phenomena and psycholinguistic findings. Yet, despite the success of this concept in specifying principles governing sound structure, several questions remain about sonority. One issue that needs clarification concerns its locus in the processes involved in spoken language production, and specifically whether sonority affects the computation of abstract word form representations (phonology), the encoding of context-specific features (phonetics), or both of these processes. This issue was examined in the present study investigating two brain-damaged individuals with impairment arising primarily from deficits affecting phonological and phonetic processes, respectively. Clear effects of sonority on production accuracy were observed in both individuals testing word onsets and codas in word production. These findings indicate that the underlying principles governing sound structure that are captured by the notion of sonority play a role at both phonological and phonetic levels of processing. Furthermore, aspects of the errors recorded from our participants revealed features of syllabic structure proposed under current phonological theories (e.g., articulatory phonology).
AB - The concept of sonority - that speech sounds can be placed along a universal sonority scale that affects syllable structure - has proved valuable in accounting for a wide spectrum of linguistic phenomena and psycholinguistic findings. Yet, despite the success of this concept in specifying principles governing sound structure, several questions remain about sonority. One issue that needs clarification concerns its locus in the processes involved in spoken language production, and specifically whether sonority affects the computation of abstract word form representations (phonology), the encoding of context-specific features (phonetics), or both of these processes. This issue was examined in the present study investigating two brain-damaged individuals with impairment arising primarily from deficits affecting phonological and phonetic processes, respectively. Clear effects of sonority on production accuracy were observed in both individuals testing word onsets and codas in word production. These findings indicate that the underlying principles governing sound structure that are captured by the notion of sonority play a role at both phonological and phonetic levels of processing. Furthermore, aspects of the errors recorded from our participants revealed features of syllabic structure proposed under current phonological theories (e.g., articulatory phonology).
KW - Language production
KW - Phonetics
KW - Phonology
KW - Sonority
KW - Word production
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.04.006
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.04.006
M3 - Article
C2 - 23742841
AN - SCOPUS:84878799598
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 128
SP - 287
EP - 301
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
IS - 3
ER -