Novel phonotactic constraints can be acquired by hearing or speaking syllables that follow a novel constraint. When learned from hearing syllables, these newly learned constraints generalize to syllables that were not experienced during training. However, generalization of phonotactic learning to novel syllables has never been persuasively…

Psycholinguistic research has shown that the influence of abstract syntactic knowledge on performance is shaped by particular sentences that have been experienced. To explore this idea, the authors applied a connectionist model of sentence production to the development and use of abstract syntax. The model makes use of (a) error-based learning to…

A theory of sentence production is presented that accounts for facts about speech errors, including (1) the kinds of errors that occur; (2) the constraints on their form; and (3) the conditions that precipitate them. Two simulation models are introduced to illustrate how the theory applies to phonological encoding processes. (Author/LMO)