• Instructor: Shota Momma
• Location: ICL N451
• Time: MW 2:30pm – 3:45pm

Course overview

This course is about language production. Many psycholinguists have studied how linguistic knowledge is put to use in language comprehension. In contrast, not so many psycholinguistics have studied language production, and we still know relatively little about how linguistic knowledge is put to use in language production. But precisely because language production is understudied, there are lots of questions about language production mechanisms that remain to be answered. Thus, it is highly likely that you, with your distinct expertise in different subfields in cognitive science and linguistics, have something to contribute to the development of language production theories. In this context, this course provides the overview of the current theories and methods in language production research to prepare you to dive into the research on language production. Conceptual/semantic, syntactic, and phonological processes in language production will be discussed, so students in different subfields can provide unique insights into the problems we discuss in this class.

There are three major goals of the current course. The first goal is to understand the current theories and methodologies in language production research. We will be reading both theoretical and empirical papers on language production, and discuss them in class. The topics we will cover include: how speakers’ conceptual representations and processes influences linguistic processes; how speakers construct syntactic representations; how argument structures affect sentence formulation processes; how hierarchal representations get externalized as speech; challenges in studying language production, especially at the sentence-level; and the relationship between linguistic processes and other cognitive mechanisms such as working memory, attention and comprehension mechanisms. For more detail, see the schedule below.

The second goal is to get hands-on experience in conducting a language production experiment and in reporting experimental results from production experiments. We will collectively (in team) design, set up, and run a language production experiment in our department. Approximately 3 weeks are reserved for this activity. You will then individually analyze and report the results of the experiment, and write a short (1 page + figures and tables) abstract.

The final goal is to develop your own research question in the field of language production. As you read more papers, I am sure that you will have some questions that have not been answered (definitively). You will write, individually or in team, a medium-length paper (either literature review or a proposal of an experiment, 10~15 pages double-spaced) that address the questions about language production mechanisms. The last week is reserved for in-class presentation of your final project.

Requirements

• Attendance (10%): Attend biweekly class meeting, having read the required reading (see the schedule below).
• Presentations (20%): Give two presentations on the required readings, and one presentation on your final project.
• Abstract writing (10%): Write (individually) a short abstract (1 page + figures and tables) for the experiment we collectively design and run in class.
• Final project (60%): Write an APA-style literature review, a theoretical paper, or an experimental proposal as your final paper (10-15 pages, double-spaced).

Schedule (tentative)

Date	Topic	Readings	Optional readings	Discussion leader(s)
9/4 (W)	Basic framework	Levelt (1999) Ferreira, Morgan and Slevc (2018)		Shota
9/9 (M)	Speech errors I	Garrett (1975)		TBA
9/11 (W)	Speech errors II	Fromkin (1971) Vigliocco et al. (1997)	Bock (1996) Baars (1992)	TBA
9/16 (M)	Conceptualization I	Griffin and Bock (2000) Gleitman et al. (2007)	Papafragou and Grigoroglou (2019)	TBA
9/18 (W)	Conceptualization II	Bock and Irwin (1980) McDonald et al. (1993)		TBA
9/23 (M)	Syntactic priming I	Bock and Loebell (1992) Ziegler et al. (2019)	Pickering and Ferriera (2006)	Erika
9/25 (W)	Syntactic priming II	Kim (2006) Xiang and Marchant (2018)	Branigan and Pickering (2007)	TBA
9/30 (M)	Agreement I	Bock and Miller (1991) Bock and Cutting (1992)	Eberhardt and Bock (2005)	TBA
10/2 (W)	Agreement II	Franck et al. (2006) Gillespie and Pearlmutter (2013)		TBA
10/7 (M)	Structure building I	Pickering et al. (2002) Scheepers (2003)	Bock and Ferreira (2013)	TBA
10/9 (W)	Structure building II	Ferreira (1996) Hwang and Kaiser (2016)		TBA
10/15 (T)	Argument structures	Schriefers et al. (1998) Momma, Slevc and Phillips (2018)	Momma and Ferreira (in prep)	TBA
10/16 (W)	Long distance dependencies	Ferreira and Swets (2005) Fadlon et al. (2019)		Anissa
10/21 (M)	No class: Matt Goldrick visiting UMass			TBA
10/23 (W)	No class: Matt Goldrick visiting UMass NELS			TBA
10/28 (M)	Production and learning	Pickering and Branigan (1998) Bock and Griffin (2000)		TBA
10/30 (W)	Linearization I	Stallings et al. (1996) Yamashita and Chang (2003)		Anissa
11/4 (M)	Phonological encoding I	Sevald and Dell (1992) Wheeldon and Levelt (1995)	Wagner and Watson (2011)	TBA
11/6 (W)	Phonological encoding II	Ferreira (1993) Watson and Gibson (2004)		TBA
11/13 (W)	Discussion of the experimental design Lab (design and run a production experiment)
11/18 (M)	Shota away Lab (design and run a production experiment)	Psychopy tutorial (https://www.psychopy.org/PsychoPyManual.pdf), especially the chapter on 'Builder' Watch Brian's video (https://vimeo.com/292589421)
11/20 (W)	Running participants Lab (design and run a production experiment)	Install R studio and play around with it
12/2 (M)	Running more participants/trouble shooting Lab (design and run a production experiment)
12/4 (W)	Trouble shooting and wrap-up Lab (design and run a production experiment)
12/9 (M)	Student presentation I
12/11 (W)	Student presentation I

List of Readings

• Baars, B. J. (1992). A dozen competing-plans techniques for inducing predictable slips in speech and action. In Experimental slips and human error (pp. 129-150). Springer, Boston, MA.
• Bock, K. (1996). Language production: Methods and methodologies. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3(4), 395-421.
• Bock, K., & Cutting, J. C. (1992). Regulating mental energy: Performance units in language production. Journal of memory and language, 31(1), 99-127.
• Bock, K., & Ferreira, V. S. (2014). Syntactically speaking. The Oxford handbook of language production, 21-46.
• Bock, K., & Griffin, Z. M. (2000). The persistence of structural priming: Transient activation or implicit learning?. Journal of experimental psychology: General, 129(2), 177.
• Bock, J. K., & Irwin, D. E. (1980). Syntactic effects of information availability in sentence production. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 19(4), 467-484.
• Bock, K., & Loebell, H. (1990). Framing sentences. Cognition, 35(1), 1-39.
• Bock, K., & Miller, C. A. (1991). Broken agreement. Cognitive psychology, 23(1), 45-93.
• Branigan, H. P., & Pickering, M. J. (2017). An experimental approach to linguistic representation. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40.
• Eberhard, K. M., Cutting, J. C., & Bock, K. (2005). Making syntax of sense: number agreement in sentence production. Psychological Review, 112(3), 531.
• Fadlon, J., Morgan, A. M., Meltzer-Asscher, A., & Ferreira, V. S. (2019). It depends: Optionality in the production of filler-gap dependencies. Journal of Memory and Language, 106, 40-76.
• Ferreira, F. (1993). Creation of prosody during sentence production. Psychological review, 100(2), 233.
• Ferreira, F., & Swets, B. (2005). The production and comprehension of resumptive pronouns in relative clause “island” contexts. Twenty-first century psycholinguistics: Four cornerstones, 263-278.
• Ferreira, V.S., Morgan, A., & Slevc, L.R. (2018). Grammatical encoding. In S. Rueschemeyer & G. Gaskell (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics, 2nd Ed. (pp. 432-457). Oxford University Press.
• Ferreira, V. S. (1996). Is it better to give than to donate? Syntactic flexibility in language production. Journal of memory and language, 35(5), 724-755.
• Franck, J., Lassi, G., Frauenfelder, U. H., & Rizzi, L. (2006). Agreement and movement: A syntactic analysis of attraction. Cognition, 101(1), 173-216.
• Fromkin, V. A. (1971). The non-anomalous nature of anomalous utterances. Language, 27-52.
• Garrett, M. F. (1975). The analysis of sentence production. In Psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 9, pp. 133-177). Academic Press.
• Gillespie, M., & Pearlmutter, N. J. (2013). Against structural constraints in subject–verb agreement production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39(2), 515.
• Gleitman, L. R., January, D., Nappa, R., & Trueswell, J. C. (2007). On the give and take between event apprehension and utterance formulation. Journal of memory and language, 57(4), 544-569.
• Griffin, Z. M., & Bock, K. (2000). What the eyes say about speaking. Psychological science, 11(4), 274-279.
• Hwang, H., & Kaiser, E. (2014). Having a syntactic choice is not always better: the effects of syntactic flexibility on Korean production. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29(9), 1115-1131.
• Kim, C. S. (2006). Structural priming and non-surface representations (Master’s dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles).
• Levelt, W. J., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and brain sciences, 22(1), 1-38.
• MacDonald, M. C. (2013). How language production shapes language form and comprehension. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 226.
• McDonald, J. L., Bock, K., & Kelly, M. H. (1993). Word and world order: Semantic, phonological, and metrical determinants of serial position. Cognitive Psychology, 25(2), 188-230.
• Momma, S., Slevc, L. R., & Phillips, C. (2018). Unaccusativity in sentence production. Linguistic Inquiry, 49(1), 181-194.
• Papafragou, A., & Grigoroglou, M. (2019). The role of conceptualization during language production: evidence from event encoding. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 1-12.
• Pickering, M. J., & Branigan, H. P. (1998). The representation of verbs: Evidence from syntactic priming in language production. Journal of Memory and language, 39(4), 633-651.
• Pickering, M. J., Branigan, H. P., & McLean, J. F. (2002). Constituent structure is formulated in one stage. Journal of Memory and Language, 46(3), 586-605.
• Pickering, M. J., & Ferreira, V. S. (2008). Structural priming: A critical review. Psychological bulletin, 134(3), 427.
• Scheepers, C. (2003). Syntactic priming of relative clause attachments: Persistence of structural configuration in sentence production. Cognition, 89(3), 179-205.
• Schriefers, H., Teruel, E., & Meinshausen, R. M. (1998). Producing simple sentences: Results from picture–word interference experiments. Journal of Memory and Language, 39(4), 609-632.
• Sevald, C. A., & Dell, G. S. (1994). The sequential cuing effect in speech production. Cognition, 53(2), 91-127.
• Stallings, L. M., MacDonald, M. C., & O’Seaghdha, P. G. (1998). Phrasal ordering constraints in sentence production: Phrase length and verb disposition in heavy-NP shift. Journal of Memory and Language, 39(3), 392-417.
• Vigliocco, G., Antonini, T., & Garrett, M. F. (1997). Grammatical gender is on the tip of Italian tongues. Psychological science, 8(4), 314-317.
• Wagner, M., & Watson, D. G. (2010). Experimental and theoretical advances in prosody: A review. Language and cognitive processes, 25(7-9), 905-945.
• Watson, D., & Gibson, E. (2004). The relationship between intonational phrasing and syntactic structure in language production. Language and cognitive processes, 19(6), 713-755.
• Wheeldon, L. R., & Levelt, W. J. (1995). Monitoring the time course of phonological encoding. Journal of memory and language, 34(3), 311-334.
• Xiang, M. Grove, J. & Merchant, J. (in press) Structural priming in production through `silence’: an investigation of verb phrase ellipsis and null complement anaphora, Glossa.
• Yamashita, H., & Chang, F. (2001). “Long before short” preference in the production of a head-final language. Cognition, 81(2), B45-B55.
• Ziegler, J., Bencini, G., Goldberg, A., & Snedeker, J. (2019). How abstract is syntax? Evidence from structural priming. Cognition, 193, 104045.