Speech errors, phonotactic constraints, and implicit learning: A study of the role of experience in language production

Speech errors follow the phonotactics of the language being spoken. For exa mple, in English, if [n] is mispronounced as [n] the [n] will always appear in a syllable coda. The authors created an analogue to this phenomenon by having participants recite lists of consonant-vowel-consonant syllables in 4 sessions on different days. In the first 2 experiments, some consonants w ere always onsets, some were always codas, and some could be both. In a thi rd experiment, the set of possible onsets and codas depended on vowel ident ity. In all 3 studies, the production errors that occurred respected the "p honotactics" of the experiment. The results illustrate the implicit learnin g of the sequential constraints present in the stimuli and show that the la nguage production system adapts to recent experience.