A sketch of the language production process
The task of producing language involves a number of processes and sources of knowledge. A sketch of some of these is given in Figure 2.1, which shows on the left the processes and their outcomes, and on the right some of the knowledge and skills required.
As speakers, we start with some notion or abstract idea of what we want to say, without at first generating the words or sentences to express this.
This is a process of conceptualisation, during which we use what we know about the world, about the current situation etc., in order to sort out our ideas. We then need to put together the elements of language that will express this idea, drawing on our knowledge of our language, including grammar and the lexicon vocabulary. This involves a process of formulation. Finally, in order to speak this utterance we go through a process of articulation, involving our speech apparatus.
Evidence that the various processes involved in language production are distinct comes from a review of brain imaging studies Indefrey, 2007 . In one study, brain activity was compared in tasks that required syntactic organisation describing a scenario in full sentences and in those that did not listing unrelated words, in order to separate syntactic from lexical processes. In another, the brain areas activated during narrative production were determined, and compared with those used in prompted sentence production. Together, these studies indicate that aspects of language production are distinguishable in terms of brain activity for example, see Figure 2.2 , which supports their separation as stages in the production process.
The material in the remainder of this chapter focuses on the conceptualisation and formulation processes, leaving aside issues to do with choosing and inserting words into sentences, which will be developed in Chapters 3 and 4 respectively. In this book we will have little to say about the articulation processes, for which the reader should refer to texts on phonetics, especially those that include descriptions of articulatory phonetics e.g. Ashby Maidment, 2005 ; Laver, 1994.
