Before we get into the thick of things I think we need just a little bit of definition so let’s first define morpho-phonological… “Morpho” is derived from the term morpheme which refers to the smallest linguistic unit that still maintains some meaning. For instance the term “a” can refer to “singular” or to the beginning of “apple”. A morpheme is made up of phonemes, which as a refresher are the smallest linguistic unit and are simply sounds that do not necessarily carry any meaning on their own.
Phonological is derived from the term phoneme which is the smallest unit of sound that still maintains the property of being able to distinguish a meaning. For instance /g/ is considered a phoneme. Take the word “garage” for example. Although /g/ has two separate sounds, “guh” in the beginning of the word and “gzh” at the end they still maintain the same phonetic classification.
In phonological word generation there are three major steps:
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Once a lemma is selected for grammatical encoding it spreads its activation to its morpho-phonological code in the lexicon. This means that there is a pre-existing “code” or “formula” if you will that dictates how the word will be constructed based on the placement of the lemmas. Depending on the structure of the word either all morphemes are activated at once (multimorphemic) or a single morpheme is activated (monomorphemic).
The actual phonological code is spelled out from the lexicon. This involves two processes… There is the literal spell-out of each segment (Ex. “graph” is /g/,/r/,/a/,/f/) and there is the spell-out of the words metrics. A words metrics consists of the number of syllables and the position of the stressed syllable.
The spelled-out segments are then grouped together into syllables that are attached to the predetermined metrics of the word. This is where prosodification occurs which we discussed in The Listener Blueprint. To refresh your memory, prosody is the syllabic and metrical structure of the word.
The end result is a phonologically charged or encoded word. In other words (pardon the pun) you have a speak-able word rather a simple linguistic concept in the brain.
The output of the phonological encoding is a “phonological score” which can be described as an incremental pattern of phonological syllables that are metrically grouped and marked for the tones they are participating as. In other words this is a grouping or pattern that your brain uses to define how articulation (formation of the speech) should take place.
Now in order for this phonological score to result in an actual utterance, it’s coding needs to “link-up” with what is known as a gestural syllable score. The gestural syllable scores specify which articulatory goals have to be achieved and are stored for the most part in the supplementary motor area which is a repository of frequently used motor routines.
These gestural syllable scores dictate what actual physical movements need to happen and what parameters need to be set such as amplitude and pitch, etc… Once this has taken place, these gestural syllable scores are addressed by phonological codes and this allows the pre-verbal utterance to be turned into actual overt speech output.
Ugghhh, I know, I know… there is a lot going on here and to make this even more complicated, these gestural syllable scores have a number of free parameters to be set before the phonological score can be realized. The syllabic information that is used to create the gestural syllable scores is stored in a mental syllabary which is basically a repository for all of the syllabic information that we gather and store in an ongoing bases beginning at around the age of 1 year old.
Factors such as duration of the syllable, amplitude of the speech, pitch movement (short or long), key (is the range of movement in a phrase) and register (A register is the pitch level of the baseline of intonation) are all a part of the resulting score dictating the articulation of the speech.
Once this gestural syllable score is set, then the phonological score can be set and the end result… finally… is the actual articulation of the intended speech out into the real world.
Now just to make sure that everything goes smoothly, once the words are spoken we have what is known as a perceptual loop that consists of an internal branch (Auditory Digital – Internal speech) and an external branch (overt speech). PET scans have shown that our temporal cortices are activated during our own speech and these areas are concerned with the processing of externally presented speech for an auditing-type of function.
In other words, our perceptual loop continually scans for any incongruence between our internal speech (intended/pre-verbal communication) and external speech (the actual articulation). This process is interactive and they dynamically affect each other as the communication occurs.
What I personally believe is that with all of the areas available for something to go wrong during speech production, we have amazingly few errors. In normal conversation, lemmas come at us in strings of 2-3 per second. In order to produce that we must map the abstract surface structure onto the high-speed articulatory movements at a rate of 10 – 15 consonants and vowels per second. That is ridiculously fast and on average errors occur in a ratio of the 1 /1000 words range… not very often. So all in all, as complex as this system is it in incredibly powerful and accurate.
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Well congratulations, you can now consider yourself an official expert on the human articulatory system. The point of this series is to help the professional communicator fully understand the complexity of the process of speech. This way, when you are communicating with someone it is much easier to understand how confusion and error can indeed occur. Care and patience need to be exercised during an effective communication exercise.
David J. Parnell | The Communication Expert
Refining Interpersonal Communication
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