LEVEL OF REPRESENTATION
المؤلف:
John Field
المصدر:
Psycholinguistics
الجزء والصفحة:
P150
2025-09-09
387
LEVEL OF REPRESENTATION
A view of language processing originating in information processing theory, which assumes that comprehension involves a series of stages at which information from a spoken or written stimulus is progressively reshaped into larger and larger units. Thus (in principle), what is perceived as a cluster of features at phonetic level is converted into phonemes at phonological level, and then reclassified as, respectively, syllables, words, syntactic structures and finally propositional information. A similar assumption underlies models of speaking, which proceed in the opposite direction. A speaker first represents a concept abstractly, then syntactically and/or lexically, then phonologically, then phonetically and finally in the form of instructions to the articulators.
Questions have been raised about the validity of some of the postulated levels. For example, because there is so much variation in the speech signal, some commentators have suggested that the listener proceeds directly from phonetic features to syllables or half-syllables without a phonological level. In speaking, the syntactic level may precede the lexical, providing slots into which words can be fitted. Or it may follow it, since lexical choice often predetermines the syntactic structure that is to be used (choosing GIVE entails adopting one or two patterns: GIVE þ NP (noun phrase) + NP or GIVE + NP + to + NP). Or syntax and lexis may operate at the same level.
A major controversy concerns the extent to which any given level is encapsulated. Does a level apply its own criteria independently of the rest of the system, and then hand on the outcome of its processing to the next level? Or can information be transmitted between levels? The advantage of the first (autonomous) solution is that it leads to straightforward choices made on a single set of criteria and thus (its proponents say) faster processing. The advantage of the second (interactive) solution is that it enables all the evidence to be considered at once.
See also: Bottom-up processing, Context, Interactive activation, Modularity2, Top-down processing
الاكثر قراءة في Linguistics fields
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