Psycholinguistic models of oral verbal language production

Abstract

Psycholinguistic models of verbal language production face at the difficulty of formalizing the mental representations that govern pragmatic intentions for producing an oral text, as well as that of the essential concepts, both with the function of guiding textual planning. Such difficulty poses challenges to experimental designs that may falsify working hypotheses (POPPER, 2004, p. 41-43). Most of psycholinguistic models of oral verbal language production refer to the opening of a topic and not to the ongoing dialogue, following the speech of an interlocutor. I refer to precursors from neurology, such as Broca (2004) and Wernicke (CAMPOS FILHO, 2002-2003), and examine the psycholinguistic models, starting with Fromkin’s (1973) pioneer one. I dwell more deeply on that of Levelt and colleagues (1999) and mention the more recent contributions (ROELOFS; FERREIRA, 2017).The examples are all adapted to Brazilian Portuguese. I conclude with the hypothesis that, as the processing levels become lower, with closed paradigms, constituted by a smaller number of elements, the processes are automated and encapsulated. This approach is in line with Fodor's (1983) proposal, who divided mental processes into horizontal (the so-called creative) and vertical (compulsory and modular) processes.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.2018n46a1083