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Speech Production and the Predictability of Words in Context
Abstract
The purpose of the experiments was to examine the function of hesitation pauses in speech. Pauses were conceived of as anticipating increase of information in subsequent speech and as involving acts of choice. This hypothesis was tested by relating the incidence of pauses within sentences to the transition probabilities of the words constituting them. Estimates of these probabilities were obtained experimentally by an adaptation of Shannon's guessing technique and were based on reverse as well as forward guessing. The hypothesis was borne out by the facts; hesitancy in speech was shown to be closely related to uncertainty of prediction (entropy) and fluency of utterance to redundancy. These results are shown to be in line with the facts of language statistics. Their theoretical implications for the concept of information and for understanding the processes of speech organization is discussed.
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Cited by
Control, activation, and resource: A framework and a model for the control of speech in bilinguals
GREEN, D. (1986) · Brain and Language · doi:10.1016/0093-934x(86)90016-7 · Cited by 695
Disfluency Rates in Conversation: Effects of Age, Relationship, Topic, Role, and Gender
Bortfeld, H., Leon, S. D., Bloom, J. E., Schober, M. F., & Brennan, S. E. (2001) · Language and Speech · doi:10.1177/00238309010440020101 · Cited by 632
Gesture, Speech, and Lexical Access: The Role of Lexical Movements in Speech Production
Rauscher, F. H., Krauss, R. M., & Chen, Y. (1996) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00364.x · Cited by 478
Holistic Evaluation of Language Models
Bommasani, R., Liang, P., & Lee, T. (2023) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/nyas.15007 · Cited by 480
Recall of prose as a function of the structural importance of the linguistic units
Johnson, R. E. (1970) · Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior · doi:10.1016/s0022-5371(70)80003-2 · Cited by 381
Metadata
- Authors
- Goldman-Eisler, F.
- Venue
- Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1958-05
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 96-106
- ISSN
- 0033-555X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2115210242
- Cited by
- 273
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 12.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Goldman-Eisler, F. (1958). Speech Production and the Predictability of Words in Context. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470215808416261
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