| Although producing speech feels unplanned and spontaneous, our language system considers future words while producing a current word. For example, how we say "sixteen", with the stress on the second syllable (i.e., "sixtEEn"), changes when it is produced together with another word: the stress shifts to the first syllable when it is uttered in a phrase like "sIxteen dOllars". The goal of this dissertation is to examine how far in advance we plan the sounds of words when they are produced in sentences. Phonological planning during sentence production was investigated using the picture-word interference paradigm and the phonological facilitation effect. The results show that during sentence production several words in advance of articulation were phonologically planned. The results were interpreted to suggest that the minimal unit of phonological planning is a phonological phrase. The results presented here help characterize the mechanisms involved in the planning of speech. |
