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Toward a Language-General Account of Word Production: The Proximate Units Principle
Padraig G O'Seaghdha1, Jenn-Yeu Chen2
1Department of Psychology, Lehigh University, USA.
Summary
Existing language production theories are monolingual, but the world is multilingual. We propose the proximate units principle for understanding multilingual word-form encoding and identifying universal aspects of speech production.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Phonology
- Multilingualism
Background:
- Current theories of language production primarily focus on monolingual speakers.
- Multilingualism presents challenges to existing models, particularly in word-form encoding due to differing phonological unit reliance across languages.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose the proximate units principle as a framework for understanding multilingual word production.
- To identify language-specific and language-general aspects of speech planning and execution.
Main Methods:
- Defining "proximate units" as the crucial sub-lexical phonological units (e.g., syllables, morae, segments) selected during initial word encoding.
- Analyzing how these units influence speech planning and execution across different languages.
Main Results:
- The proximate units principle offers a new perspective on how languages differentially utilize phonological units.
- This principle reconciles existing data on word-form encoding across languages and provides a basis for new predictions.
Conclusions:
- The proximate units principle is essential for a comprehensive understanding of multilingual word production.
- It enhances the interpretation of experimental data and speech error analyses in psycholinguistics.
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