An Empirical Study of the Effects of Disfluent Repetitions on the Recognition of Subsequent Words

摘要

The paper reports our study on the effects of repetitions on the on-lineprocessing of subsequent words in spontaneous speech through word monitoring tasks.A total number of 68 sophomores from English Department of Anhui Universityparticipated in the word monitoring experiments.The results of our experimentsreveal that，in comparison with fluent input，repetitions facilitate the identification ofthe subsequent word.Target words preceded by repetitions are recognized about 95milliseconds faster than when they are not；and furthermore，they are still recognizedconsiderably faster even when the second token of the repeated part is replaced bypause of equal length.The reasons for these results are possibly that the retrieval ofthe first token of the repeated part speeds up the retrieval of the second token，that thesecond token in turn might confirm that the first token is heard correctly,and that theelapse of the time during the second token of the repeated part might help clear thedoubts or uncertainty accumulated during prior processing，thereby releasing moretemporal as well as attentional resources for the parser to concentrate on processmgthe following word immediately to come.It has been maintained that these findingsmight contribute to the knowledge of the workings of the parser,which could furthershed light on the overall construct of the language understanding system.Key words：disfluency；repetitions；speech comprehension；the parser

目录

英文文摘

论文说明：List of figures、List of tables

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research background

1.2 Related studies on disfluent repetitions

1.2.1 Studying repetitions from the perspective of speech production

1.2.2 Studying repetitions from the perspective of speech comprehension

1.3 Research questions and hypothesis

1.3.1 Research questions

1.3.2 Hypothesis

1.4 Significance of the study

Chapter 2 Theoretical considerations

2.1 Kimball's Seven Principles

2.2 Sausage machine

2.3 Tree Adjoining Grammar

2.4 Summary

Chapter 3 Research Design

3.1 Subjects

3.2 Research instrument

3.3 Material selection and preparation

3.3.1 Material selection

3.3.2 Material preparation

3.4 Pilot test

3.5 Research procedure

Chapter 4 Results and discussion

4.1 Experiment 1　Comparing response time in fluent utterances to that in reptetition utterances

4.1.1 Results

4.1.2 Discussion

4.2 Experiment 2 Comparing response time after fluent utterances to that when the second token of a repeat is substituted with pause of equal length

4.2.1 Results

4.2.2 Discussion

4.3 Experiment 3 Comparing response time after fluent input to that when the second token of the repeated word was excised in entirety

4.3.1 Results

4.3.2 Discussion

4.4 Experiment 4 Comparing response time in spontaneous repetitions to that in artificial repetitions

4.4.1 Results

4.4.2 Discussion

4.5 General discussion

Chapter 5 Conclusion

5.1 Conclusion

5.2 Implications

5.3 Limitations

5.4 Future directions

References

Appendices