Language Production and Comprehension- The Activities of Ears, Brain and Speech Organs

We might understand that language form is in the written and spoken language, but have we ever thought how language produced. through the psycholinguistic we can understand how language is produced. In our minds, we have the means for producing (making) and comprehending (understanding) speech. meanwhile butter-worth is the output of the comprehension – speech or writing – is more concrete or more easily analyzed. 

The following is brief illustration how language is produced.

Methods of Studying Production

1. To investigate cases in which it goes wrong and to infer what happens in normal production is the oldest and most popular method.
2. To carry out experiments with normal subjects.
3. To write computer program.

Failures of the Production System

1. The production system can fail in several ways, some more drastic than others.
2. The most common types of dis-fluency are hesitations, pauses, ums and ahs, corrections, false starts, repetitions, interjections/exclamation, stuttering, & slips of the tongue.
3. Aphasia

Speech Errors

1. Speech errors in normal speakers and writers have been investigated and become the most important evidence.
2. Slip of the tongue as one of speech errors are discussed by Freud (1901/1960) and Meringer and Mayer (1895/1978)

Speech Errors Classification

1. Garnham, et.al suggests seven way classification: anticipation, perseverations, omissions, additions, exchanges, substitutions and blends.
2. Garnham, et.al distinguish between errors at four levels: segments (phoneme), syllables/morphemes, words, and larger units.

And the following is the the examples of speech errors

Spoonerism
Spoonerism is humorous speech errors produced by the Reverend (William A. Spooner)

For Examples:

• You have missed all my history lectures ===> “You have hissed ….”
• Noble sons of toil ===> “Noble tons of toil”
• The dear old Queen ===> “The queer old "

Fromklin’s Observation
Fromklin observed speech errors involving ‘mixing and matching’ morphemes within words. 

Example:

1. Rules of word formation ==> “words of rule formation”.
2. I’d forgotten about that ==> ”I’d forgot aboutten that”
3. Easily enough ==> easy enoughly

Hesitation and Pauses
Language production system may not be working optimally when speech contains hesitations or pauses.
Goldman-Eisler (1968) ==> the connection between pauses and planning. However, speakers need not pause every time they plan. Some pauses as like for breathing, stylistic,and others ; not disfluency

The Relationship between Speech Production, Speech Comprehension and Thought

Speech comprehension necessarily precedes speech production that produced through the thought as the basis of Speech Comprehension. In learning languages, children must be able to comprehend the meaning of the language before they themselves can produce it.  Since meaning is the basis of all languages to produce speech meaningfully. Children first need to be exposed to utterances with a clear connection to physical objects, events and situations before they can begin to say such utterances. Without a sound-meaning, the mere utterance of the sound form is of little communicative significance. Meaningful context and appropriate usage of speech sounds are the basis for imputing language knowledge to the children/utterance.

Speech comprehension precedes and is the basis of speech production: 

1. A learner must first hear speech sounds before the person knows what sounds to make.
2. A learner must hear the speech sounds in coordination with the environment or the mind before the person can assign a meaning to the speech sounds.

Thought as the Basis of Speech Comprehension

Thought necessarily precedes language is the contents of thought are provided by the child’s experience of the environment and the child’s experience of its own feelings, emotions, desires and conceptual constructions.The basic language principle is that a combination of speech sounds represents something other than itself, i.e. has a meaning which is rooted in non-language experience.One must hear sentences in conjunction with related events in the world in order to learn that a language has an Agent-Action-Object sequence to learn the meaning of syntactic structures. Language is a system which allows for the labeling of thoughts in terms of physical sound so that the thoughts may be communicated to others. Thought provides the basis for speech comprehension, which in turn provides the basis for speech production.