METRICAL STRUCTURE IN PLANNING THE PRODUCTION OF SPOKEN WORDS

According to most models of speech production, the planning of spoken words involves the independent retrieval of segments and metrical fram es followed by segment-to-frame association. In some models, the metri cal frame includes a specification of the number and ordering of conso nants and vowels, but in the word-form encoding by activation and veri fication (WEAVER) model (A. Roelofs, 1997), the frame specifies only t he stress pattern across syllables. In 6 implicit priming experiments, on each trial, participants produced 1 word out of a small set as qui ckly as possible. In homogeneous sets, the response words shared word- initial segments, whereas in heterogeneous sets, they did not. Priming effects from shared segments depended on all response words having th e same number of syllables and stress pattern, but not on their having the same number of consonants and vowels. No priming occurred when th e response words had only the same metrical frame but shared no segmen ts. Computer simulations demonstrated that WEAVER accounts for the fin dings.