PREVIEW

This chapter looks at how speakers begin the process of producing an utterance. You will learn:

• that constructing an utterance involves different levels of planning;

• that planning is reflected in patterns of pausing and hesitation;

• that speech errors are an important source of information about utterance planning;

• that the way speakers pronounce a sentence indicates more about the grammatical structure of the sentence than is shown by punctuation.

Introduction

We are so used to speaking that we probably do not think of it as a particularly special accomplishment. But behind what seems to be a fairly automatic process there is a good deal of planning and organisation. In everyday contexts we are only likely to become aware of this planning under certain circumstances, such as when we are unable to find the word or phrase that we would like to use to express some idea, or when we make some kind of an error or ‘slip of the tongue’. Along with data from experimental tasks targeting specific aspects of language production, and data from neuroimaging studies, these experiences provide insights into the processes involved in planning and producing utterances. Consider the following text.