揭示未来语境如何影响说话人实时选词和发音简化。
Back to the Future: The Role of Past and Future Context Predictability in Incremental Language Production
- 用信息论方法量化未来语境对词语的预测能力。
- 未来可预测性降低错误概率,过去可预测性则相反。
- 适合研究语言生成与认知规划的学者参考。
上下文可预测性影响语言产出中的词汇选择与编码。尽管基于前文的可预测性作用已被广泛研究,但自然语料中的产出研究也揭示了仅由未来语境决定的显著反向可预测效应,可能与未来规划相关。在两项自然言语研究中,我们改进了操作化方式,引入一种概念上合理的信息论度量,用于计算在既定前文约束下,词语与未来语境之间的信息共享程度。研究1显示,该度量产生与反向可预测性相似的效果,并解释了语音简化的独特方差。研究2在生成框架中分析替换错误,模型综合考虑了词汇、上下文与交际因素对词项选择的影响。结果发现,受过去条件约束的可预测性增加错误概率,而受未来条件约束的可预测性则降低错误概率。此外,所提度量成为预测错误词项最强的上下文指标,超越传统反向可预测性。错误类型分析进一步揭示说话人在词法规划中对形式、语义与语境信息存在分级权衡。这些发现阐明了过去与未来语境如何共同塑造词汇选择与编码,将上下文可预测性与句子产出中的增量规划机制联系起来。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Contextual predictability shapes how we choose and encode words in production. The effects of a word's predictability given preceding or past context are generally well-understood in both production and comprehension, but studies of naturalistic production have also revealed a poorly-understood yet robust backward predictability effect of a word given only its future context, which may be linked to future planning. Across two studies of naturalistic speech, we revisit backward predictability using improved operationalizations, introducing a conceptually motivated information-theoretic measure that quantifies the information shared between a word and future context under the constraints imposed by the past context. Study 1 shows that this measure produces effects qualitatively similar to backward predictability while explaining unique variance in phonetic reduction. Study 2 examines substitution errors within a generative framework that models lexical, contextual, and communicative influences on word choice to predict the identity of the word that surfaces as an error. Within this framework, we find that past-conditioned predictability increases error likelihood, whereas future-conditioned predictability reduces it. Further, our proposed measure emerges as the strongest contextual predictor of error identity, subsuming backward predictability. Analysis of error types further reveals graded trade offs in how speakers prioritize form-, meaning-, and context-based information during lexical planning. Together, these findings illuminate how past and future context shape word choice and encoding, linking contextual predictability to mechanisms of incremental planning in sentence production.
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