The prosodic domain of phonological encoding: Evidence from speech errors
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Updated: Feb 12, 2026

Ultrasound Images of the Tongue: A Tutorial for Assessment and Remediation of Speech Sound Errors
Published on: January 3, 2017
Mary-Beth Beirne1, Karen Croot1
1School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Australia.
Abstract:
Phonological encoding of segments is thought to occur within a prosodically-defined frame, but it is not clear which of the constituent/s within the prosodic hierarchy (syllables, phonological words, intonational phrases and utterances) serve/s as the domain of phonological encoding. This experiment investigated whether segmental speech errors elicited in tongue-twisters were influenced by position within prosodic constituents above the level of the phonological word. Forty-four participants produced six repetitions each of 40 two-intonational phrase tongue-twisters with error-prone word-initial "target" segments in phrase-initial and phrase-final words. If the domain of phonological encoding is the intonational phrase, we hypothesised that segments within a current intonational phrase would interact in more errors than would segments across intonational phrase boundaries. Participants made more anticipatory than perseveratory errors on target segments in phrase-initial words as predicted. They also made more perseveratory than anticipatory errors on targets in phrase-final words, but only in utterance-final phrases. These results suggest that the intonational phrase is one domain of phonological encoding, and that segments for upcoming phrases are activated while current phrases are being articulated.
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