Neural inhibition during speech planning contributes to contrastive hyperarticulation
This research addresses the problem of understanding speech production mechanisms for linguists and cognitive scientists, but it is incremental as it builds on prior work on CH.
The study tackled how words are hyperarticulated to differentiate from similar competitors, known as contrastive hyperarticulation (CH), by developing a dynamic neural field model that attributes CH to neural inhibition during speech planning. The results showed a CH effect in pseudowords, with reduced magnitude compared to real words, supporting the role of interactive activation in planning.
Previous work has demonstrated that words are hyperarticulated on dimensions of speech that differentiate them from a minimal pair competitor. This phenomenon has been termed contrastive hyperarticulation (CH). We present a dynamic neural field (DNF) model of voice onset time (VOT) planning that derives CH from an inhibitory influence of the minimal pair competitor during planning. We test some predictions of the model with a novel experiment investigating CH of voiceless stop consonant VOT in pseudowords. The results demonstrate a CH effect in pseudowords, consistent with a basis for the effect in the real-time planning and production of speech. The scope and magnitude of CH in pseudowords was reduced compared to CH in real words, consistent with a role for interactive activation between lexical and phonological levels of planning. We discuss the potential of our model to unify an apparently disparate set of phenomena, from CH to phonological neighborhood effects to phonetic trace effects in speech errors.