Articulatory Program

Speech consists of a sequence of articulatory gestures, a coordinated

succession of muscular construction in and around the mouth. Then Lashley in
1951 argued that speech execution requires a plan, this plan direct the order and
timing of these articulatory gestures, a plan to command what muscles to move on
when. The articulatory program deal with the formation of words, syllables, and
sounds. In addition Lashley state that the articulatory program is formed and
executed by part in an extraordinary source of evidence that is called slips tongue.
There are a some commonest types of tongue slips, those are:

Anticipation e.g. take my bike

bake my bike
Perseverations e.g. pulled a tantrum
pulled a pantrum

The example of the anticipation describes take as target word and bike
as origin of the error. In the anticipation the tongue slip happen before the
origin while in the perseverations the tongue slip happen after origin of the error.
(Arrow means mispronounce)
Reversal e.g. Katz and Fodor
fats and fodor
The example of reversal indicates that two segments are interchanged, and so
the origin of one error is the target for the other and vice versa.
Blends e.g. grizzly + ghastly
gratsly
This example shows two target which blends together by taking the first
half of one and second half of other.
Haplologies e.g. Post Toastiest
Posties
The example shows the speaker leaves out a short stretch of speech.
Misderivation e.g. an intervening node
an intervenient node
The example indicates that the speaker use the wrong prefix or suffix.
Word Substitutions e.g. before the place opens
before the place closes
From the commonest types of tongue slip, there is the suggestion that
articulatory program is planned and formed at several levels. The first suggestion
is to examine the evidence for these different levels. Second is about the words are
inserted in order of articulation, in order of importance. Third is about the
articulatory program which is completed with the rhythm and timing and adjusted
to the speed of the speech.

There is a hierarchy of units, which from the smallest to target, also slips
of the tongue suggest:

Distinctive features, like Voicing

Phonetic segments like /b/
Syllable, like bro
Words, like /brkn/
Larger constituents like the broken promise
Segments & Features
The articulatory program deals in at least phonetic segment, since they are
frequently interchanged in tongue slip. This is proved by an argument which state
if the words were in indissoluble units, then the phonetic segments could not be
interchanged as parts of those units. We can see this argument in the reversal
example:
Left hemisphere
heft hemisphere
Pass out
pat ous
Syllable
Reversals of segments almost always take place between the
homologous parts of two syllables. The first consonant of one syllable gets
interchanged with the first, not final, consonant of another, and so on.
e.g. a-ni-mal
a- mi- nal.
The syllable itself consists of an initial consonant group and a final vowel
group. As evidence many initial consonant group, or cluster reverse as a whole as
in coat thrutting and clamage dame. And blends most often switch from one target
word to the next between the initial consonant group of the first word and the
vowel group of the second.
e.g. shout + yell

sh/ell

grizzly + ghastly

gr/atsly

Larger Units
The articulatory program handles constituents no more than six or seven
words in length. It gets impact that the constituents of this size are the man units
of planning and execution.
e.g. a tank of gas

a gas of tank

Wine is being served at dinner

dinner is being served at wine.

Formation of the Articulatory Program

There is formation of the articulatory program which Garret in 1975

proposed. The formation consist 5 steps in process.

Meaning Selection. The first step is to decide on the meaning the present
constituent is to have.
Selection of syntactic outline. The next step is to build a syntactic outline
of the constituent. It specifies a succession of word slots and indicates
which slots are to get primary, secondary, and zero stress.
Content word selection. The third step is to select noun, verbs, adjectives,
and adverbs to fit into the appropriate slots.
Affix and function word formation with the content word decided on the
next step is to spell out the phonological shape of the function words (like
article, conjunctions, and prepositions), prefixes, and suffix.
Specification of phonetic segments. The final step is to build up fully
specific phonetic segments syllable by syllable
These steps bring to the analysis of a word reversal. In analysis of
the word reversal attested by Fromkin, he gave the example:

a weekend for MANIACS

a maniac for WEEKEND. The capital letter
indicates primary stress and italics secondary stress. Then the five steps are
applied:

At step 1, the speaker decides to build a constituent referring to atime

period.
At step 2. The speaker builds a syntactic outline of this constituent e.g.
indefinite article + noun + /2 STRESS/
+ preposition + noun + /PLURAL /+/1 STRESS/

This outline describes a succession of elements, among them /1

STRESS/for primary stress, /2 STRESS/ for secondary stress, and /PLURAL/ for
plural.

At step 3, the speaker using his semantic plan, selects weekend and
maniac to fit into the two noun slots. But he makes a mistake and insert
them into the wrong slots.
Indefinite article + maniac + /2 STRESS/
+ preposition + weekend + /PLURAL /+/1 stress/
This wrong becomes the place where the actual tongue slip occurs.

At step 4, the speaker spells out the phonological shape of the function
words, suffixes, and stresses. The result is :
a + maniac+ for + WEEKEND + /z/
At step 5, he specifies the individual phonetic segments in terms of their
distinctive features.

 The order of steps

In the most other interchanges, the stress pattern is left unchanged too.
Also it takes the article and the plural suffix. Then the example where the
prefix and suffixes have stayed put above:
McGovern favors busting pushers

McGovern favors pushing busters

The idea that what state in the example is when the articles, prefixes, and
suffixes are spelled out at step 4, they are accommodating to the words already
inserted at step 3. Moreover Fromkin state a similar accommodation with a and an
to what has been inserted at step 3. Take the tongue slips :
a history of an ideology
a current argument

an history of a hidelogy
an arrent curgument

These example shows that step 4 must come after step 3.

Garret stated some tongue slips involve content words; some involve
function words, but virtually none involve both e.g. when two words are
interchanged, they are most often in the same words class; both nouns like
virtually always both content words. Then tongue slips like this never occur :
The pot of gold

the of pot gold

In addition suffixes can be interchanged, as in:

Singer sewing machine

Singing sewer machine

And they can be shifted as

He goes back to

he go backs to

Furthermore in either case, the changes occur without affecting the content
words. If the tongue slips involving content words and function element are
distinct, and then is further evidence that steps 3 and 4 are distinct.
Errors in word selection
Blends make the step 3 often sift through many possible words before
settling on the one with just the right meaning Sometimes they discover
simultaneously two equally suitable words e.g. spank + paddle
spaddle .
Then semantic plan specifies only the denotation of the word to be selected, it
does not specify the exact words.
Words substitution reveal the same phenomenon, it can be showed from
sometimes speakers enter the right semantic domain but select a word that is
incorrect for the meaning intended e.g. my dissertation is too short long. For
these substitutions to occur, the speaker must have simultaneous access to
several word closely related to his intended meaning.

 Phonetic Similarity
Word substitutions sometimes fall completely under the spell of phonetic
similarity. There are examples from Fromkin :
Like wild fire
like wild flower
Sesame seed crackers
sesame street crackers
In each example the substitution make the relation to the meaning of the
intended word or phrase, yet has an obvious relation to its sound. The word
substituted was both phonetically similar and highly available. The principle of
availability explains why tongue slips occur most commonly stressed words.
Tongue slip arise because word other than target word are too readily available
at the time it is being programmed. Nevertheless, most tongue slips come from
words being programmed.
Word Formation
In the building up an aticulatory program, speaker obviously draws on their
phonological knowledge of words in memory. At some level in memory it is
surely represented as a single unit, with coherent meaning, as a string of
phonological segments ready to be inserted into the articulatory program. There
are two views which might be called the concrete and abstract theories of word
formation.
The Abstractness of Words
The tongue slips already examined suggest it is fairly abstract. The
abstract theories require one form in the memory instead of four or more
and it makes use of word formation rules that apply across the board.
The Source Of Wrong Word Formation
Abstract features reveal in misderivation. This relates to the source of the
wrong word formation for example:
Swam- swimmed , dig- digged
This source start to be the source of the Wrong word formation since the
speaker over generalizes the structure of the word is same.
Word representation
The problems of the word formation aside, not all the words are equally
accessible for insertion into the articulatory program. This relates to the tip of
the tongue experience. The tip of the tongue experience can be identified as a
navigational instrument like when used in measuring angular distances,
especially the altitude of sun, moon and stars at sea. Then a tip of the tongue
experience will have four question relation, they are : \
o How many syllables does it have?
o What letter does it start with?
o What Words does it sound like?
o What words are similar in meaning?
The people with tip of the tongue experiences generally had a relatively
accurate outline of the target language.

 Word storage and access

The top of the tongue phenomenon suggest two things: First The phonetic
patterns of words differ in the speed with which they can be accessed in
memory. Second, the syllable structure stress pattern, and phonetic segments of
these patterns may be stored somewhat independently. These suggestion
moreover have three interesting consequences, they are (1) In spontaneous
speech, the difficulty in a finding a word may have two sources (2) When
speakers do a program a word like sextant, they do so in several steps (3)
When speakers program a single word, because of incomplete phonetic
information they are prone to make mistake.
Rhythm & Timing
The articulatory program has to specify not only the phonetic segment and
their order, but also their timing and rhythm. The rhythm is the stressed
syllable, and then timing and rhythm play central role in speech production.
Start to the point, rhythm & regularity, the rhythm seem to be a crucial
ingredient. Rhythm however is not critical to all tongue twister e.g. rubber
baby buggy bumpers. It might be called as phonetic compatibility. Regularity
and phonetic compatibly join up together to make the new tongue twister e.g.
Miss Smiths fish sauce shop seldom sells shellfish.
Shortcuts
Speed is related to the situation when people try to talk fast, they have to cut
corners, and the way they cut corners involves rhythm. At these shortcut are the
stressed syllables and the rhythm they carry.
e.g. I want to get you on his catamaran -can be shortcuts- I wanta get ya on his
catamaran or I wanna gecha oniz catamaran.
Articulation
The articulatory program specifies the target position of the articulatory
organs, and their articulatory muscle compute the discrepancy between their
present position and the target position and initiates a ballistic movement to
eliminate that discrepancy. In casual speech certain phonetics segments are
often mispronounce because of complexity.