A PARALLEL LICENSING MODEL OF NORMAL SLIPS AND PHONEMIC PARAPHASIAS

A model of phonological processing in speech production based on proso dic licensing can capture general patterns of errors found in both nor mal and aphasic speech. All segments must be licensed by some prosodic category (syllable, nucleus, or rime) in order to be produced. Constr aints on licensing, including both phonotactic and binding constraints , ensure that only correct licensing associations are retained. A comp uter simulation of our model produces utterances in qualitative agreem ent with human speech error data. Phonemic paraphasias are claimed to arise from the same mechanisms as normal speech errors; the difference being only a matter of disturbance of the lexical retrieval and licen sing processes. The fact that these errors, which can involve gross di sruption of the segmental sequence, still produce phonotactically well -formed strings is a direct consequence of the syllabic licensing that forms the core of our theory of speech production. (C) 1997 Academic Press.