16.1495, Review: Psycholing/Cognitive Sci: Pechmann&Habel (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-1495. Wed May 11 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.1495, Review: Psycholing/Cognitive Sci: Pechmann&Habel (2004)

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1)
Date: 10-May-2005
From: Michael Zock < zock at free.fr >
Subject: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Language Production 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 00:55:24
From: Michael Zock < zock at free.fr >
Subject: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Language Production 
 

EDITORS: Pechmann, Thomas; Habel, Christopher
TITLE: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Language Production
SERIES: Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 157
PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-1383.html


Michael Zock, Director of Research, LIMSI-CNRS (Orsay, France)

This book deals with natural language production, that is, the 
translation of a communicative intention (goal) into language. While 
language production may cover a wide range of phenomena (words, 
sentences, text), involve different tasks (sentence or paraphrase 
generation, translation) and take place in different modes, nearly all of 
the the work presented in this volume is confined to the production of 
spoken forms (words or sentences).

Speaking is a complex process. It involves many tasks (choice of a 
topic, sentence frame and words, morphological and acoustical, 
operations), various knowledge sources (encyclopedia, dictionary, 
grammar), and it is carried out under severe space (memory) and time 
constraints (speed). Yet people succeed amazingly well. How is this 
possible? Since answering such a complex question is a gigantic 
enterprise, the editors of this book have decided to convince a funding 
agency (DFG) to support their quest, have nearly two dozen teams 
spread all over Germany (17 universities) work on the same topic.

The book here presented summarizes the outcome of this effort, a six-
year long priority program funded by the German Research 
Foundation, aiming to bring together researchers with different 
backgrounds (linguistics, psychology, computer science, neuro-
science), but with a common goal: understand the cognitive processes 
underlying language production. The focus of their work is on 
empirical explanation (evidence) rather than on formal 
representations. The unifying framework, or, the big picture within 
which this work was carried out, is W. Levelt's book Speaking (Levelt, 
1989), a true masterpiece.

To account for the information processing, Levelt conceives an 
architecture composed of three serially ordered, relatively 
autonomous main components (conceptualizer, formulator, 
articulator). These modules are in charge of message generation, 
grammatical encoding, phonological encoding, and articulation. In 
addition there is a feedback loop: the speaker is listening to himself.

The papers of the book (17, plus a preface by the editors and an 
introduction by M. Garrett, a pioneer in language generation 
research) can be placed within the chart (or architecture) proposed by 
Levelt.

The first two papers fall into the message planning component. The 
paper by Guhe et al. (Incremental generation of interconnected 
preverbal messages) deals with the conceptual preparation for 
describing a scene. Since the scene is composed of various objects 
(airplanes), and since the scene changes all the time, the subjects 
have to decide which elements to include in their message, how to 
combine the to-expressed events and how to express the message. 
Hence, issues of coherence and coreference (pronouns) have to be 
addressed. In addition, in order to be able to address the dynamic 
aspect of the situation, planning is done incrementally.

The next paper by Gardent et al. (Generating definite descriptions, 
non-incrementality, inference, and data) also deals with incrementality, 
or rather, its opposite. The authors show quite convincingly some of 
the shortcomings of too strict incremental processing, that is, too early 
verbalization of some planned content, (here, the definite 
descriptions) may yield hilariously complex sentences, whereas 
delayed verbalization would have resulted in quite natural output. One 
of the interesting features of this work is that it takes corpus data into 
account.

The paper by Harbusch and Woch (Integrated natural language 
generation with schema-tree adjoining grammars) deals with the 
problem of easing integration of basically very different kind of 
information, conceptual and linguistic. In order to do so, they resort to 
a unification mechanism, tree adjoining grammars.

Klabunde and Glatz (On the production of focus) address the hairy 
issue of focus. While intuitively clear and without any doubt important 
(noun vs pronoun, active vs. passive voice), there is a lot of 
disagreement when it comes to this notion. To be understandable, 
discourse is embedded into a situation, hence part of the message is 
old, while the other is new, or in focus. Unfortunately focussed and 
new information are not always identical.

Tappe et al. (Thematic information, argument structure, and discourse 
adaptation in language production) address the issue of thematic role 
assignment. According to them a thematic processor is needed to 
interface the conceptual and linguistic component. In other words, 
they suggest adding a thematic processor to the existing 
architectures. 

Kempen and Harbusch (A corpus study into word order variation in 
German subordinate clauses: Animacy affects linearization 
independently of grammatical function assignment) resort to a corpus 
analysis in order to account for word order preferences in case 
languages like German. Their findings are likely to have 
consequences on the generation architectures or processing 
strategies. The authors suggest computing simultaneously 
grammatical functions and linear order, which, in the Garrett and 
Levelt model was always done serially, the former preceding the latter.

The next paper by Carroll, et al. (The language and thought debate: A 
psycholinguistic approach) addresses an age old problem, which, 
surprisingly has hardly ever been addressed within the framework of 
language production, where it is highly relevant. Nearly all systems 
are based on the assumption that the message on which the 
formulator works is specific enough in order to do his job, yet, 
language may have to say its word. Indeed, cross-linguistic 
comparisons allow the authors to show the kind of influence a given 
language may have on the preverbal message.

Leuninger, et al. (The impact of modality on language production: 
Evidence from slips of the tongue and hand) study whether sign 
languages obey similar rules as spoken languages. Their results 
reveal amazing similarities in terms of error typology. 

The next few papers clearly fall into Levelt's second component, the 
formulator. Pechmann and Zerbst (Syntactic constraints on lexical 
access in language production) summarize their work on lexical 
access, using a well known technique the picture-word paradigm. 
Their results suggest changes in the generation architecture, allowing 
for cascaded rather than strict serial processing.

Blanken, et al. address similar problems (The dissolution of word 
production in aphasia: Implications for normal functions). They and 
reach quite similar conclusions, even though their data are based on a 
very different population, brain-damage people.

Schade (The benefits of local-connectionist production) also reaches 
a similar conclusion, though his conclusions are based on a computer 
simulation. He shows how a interactive model can handle several 
problems that the Levelt model does not address at all. Two 
interesting features of this approach lie in the fact that the system can 
be tuned to accommodate, little by little with the empirical data. In 
addition, the different models compete. Hence, instead of preferring a 
model on a priori grounds, choice can be based on the result of the 
competition.

The next two papers report work based on brain activity measures. 
Jansma, et al. (Electrophysiological studies of speech production) use 
electrophysiobiological methods to study language production, while 
Dogil, et al.(Brain dynamics induced by language production) use 
brain imagining tools. They provide evidence for localization effects 
concerning syntax and semantics.

The next two papers deal with morphology. Boelte, et al. (Morphology 
in experimental speech production research) ask whether word forms 
are computed or accessed, since readily stored. 

Unlike the authors of the preceding paper, who addressed three kinds 
of morphological problems (derivation, inflection and compounding) 
Janssen, et al. (Morphological encoding and morphological structures 
in German) focus only on the processing of inflections. Noticing 
important differences in terms of processing German and Dutch, they 
try to find explanations in the structure of the two languages to 
account for these facts. 

Weingarten, et al. (Morphemes, syllables, and graphemes in written 
word production) address a problem, a bit outside of the Levelt 
paradigm, as it deals with written word production. Yet, it seems, that 
there are some similarities between the processing of the spoken and 
written word.

Finally, Hamm and Bredenkamp (Working memory and slips of the 
tongue) show some of the effects that working memory has on the 
(mis)functioning of the production system. Memory constraints can be 
said to be responsible for certain kinds of breakdowns, or speech 
impairments, like sound exchange errors.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

To launch and keep alive a project like this (raise the funding for 20 
teams for 6 years) deserves respect. Also, a book on language 
production from scholars with such a diversity of backgrounds is highly 
appreciated, since, there are not many books of this kind. Even 
though I'm not a newcomer to the field, there were many things I've 
learned by reading the book, and I've found nearly all the papers of 
excellent quality.

This being said, the book also has a few shortcomings. While I think 
that the editors have done a fantastic job in bringing this project to life, 
and while they've also done a great job as authors, I don't think that 
they've succeeded equally well as editors. Here are some of the 
reasons why I think so.

Lack of guidance for the reader: 
(a) the table of contents is not structured, yet this would have been 
quite easy to do. In the absence of such section titles, grouping the 
papers of the same kind under the same heading, a newcomer will 
perceive the papers just as an unordered collection of papers. The 
field is so complex and wide, that without guidance the reader is likely 
to get lost, or not to get the big picture.

(b) The index is done by hand. I've checked quite a few entries, each 
of which was mentioned only once or twice, yet the terms occurred 
more than half a dozen of times. Since papers were submitted 
electronically, building an index automatically would have been quite 
easy.

(c) Given the fact that all authors cast their work in Levelt's paradigm, 
and since not every reader can be expected to know his book, it 
would have been useful to resort to one of the following solutions: use 
one of Levelt's papers describing his framework, have Levelt 
contribute such a chapter, or have had it written by the editors. This 
lost space could at least partially be recovered by the fact that it would 
allow authors to refer to the introduction rather than having, one after 
another, describe basically the same aspects of Levelt's work. This 
would serve as advanced organizer, guiding the reader. Another way 
of gaining back some space would be to reduce the length of some of 
papers that are really very long (50-60 pages).

(d) The editors mention several workshops that have taken place 
during the 6 years of the project, yet none of these discussions (what 
were the problems, achievements) become in any way visible in this 
volume.

References:
To ease the access of references, it would have been better to group 
them all at the end of the book. This would have saved space, which 
could have been used profitably for a glossary. While the diversity of 
approaches is certainly stimulating, it can also be overwhelming. Not 
everyone has the background to understand all the work, techniques 
or terminology.

Integration of the work with other work in psychology and 
computational linguistics: 
While no other book matches Levelt's landmark work, there are a lot 
of books than contain useful, complementary information, some in 
psychology and a lot in computational linguistics (at least a dozen). 
For some pointers see Bateman & Zock (2003: 301) and Zock & 
Adorni (1996). 

It is really surprising that the Reiter and Dale book, which in 
the "natural language generation community" plays a similar role as 
Levelt's book does in psychology is only mentioned once in this book. 
Also, mentioning T. Dijkstra & K. de Smedt's (1996) book (with a 
foreword by P. Levelt), would have been in point, as it tries to 
accommodate work from different backgrounds in a common 
framework.

Even more surprising is the fact that nothing is said about the other 
community working on language production (they call their field "text 
generation"). This community, which is very dynamic, productive (it 
has produced at least a dozen books over the last ten years), has a 
website (http://www.siggen.org/index.html), an international 
conference every year, and integrates people from many horizons (as 
a matter of fact, psychologists like Kempen, Harley, Pechman and 
Roelofs have presented their work in this framework).

One last point. For the newcomer it may be startling that "natural 
language production", is confined only to sentence production. Yet, 
again, there is a whole literature on this subject, both from a 
computational and psycholinguistic perspective (see Andriessen et al., 
1996, de Beaugrande, 1984; Fayol, 1997; Flower & Hayes 1980).

Despite all these criticism, I maintain the respect that the editors of this 
volume deserve, for the quality of the final product and the enormous 
work put into the project to make it work.
 
REFERENCES

Andriessen J., deSmedt K. & Zock, M. (1996) Discourse Planning: 
Empirical Research and Computer Models. In T. Dijkstra & K. de 
Smedt (Eds). Computational Psycholinguistics: AI and Connectionist 
Models of Human Language processing, London: Taylor & Francis, 
pp. 247-278

Bateman, J. &  Zock, M. (2003). Natural language generation. In R. 
Mitkov (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of computational linguistics. 
London: Oxford University Press, pp. 284-304

de Beaugrande, R. (1984). Text production: toward a science of 
composition, Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex

de Smedt, K., Horacek, H., & Zock, M. (1996). Architectures for 
natural language generation: problems and perspectives. In G. Adorni 
& M. Zock (Eds.), Trends in natural language generation: an artificial 
intelligence perspective (pp. 17-46). New York: Springer Verlag, 
Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 1036

Fayol, M. (1997) Des idées au texte: psychologie cognitive de la 
production verbale, orale et écrite. Paris: Presses Universitaires de 
France

Flower, L. & Hayes, J. (1980). The dynamics of composing: making 
plans and juggling constraints, dans: Gregg & Steinberg (1980). 
Cognitive processes in writing, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum, 

Reiter, E., & Dale, R. (2000). Building natural language generation 
systems. London: Cambridge University Press.

Zock, M., & Adorni, G. (1996). Introduction. In G. Adorni & M. Zock 
(Eds.), Trends in natural language generation: an artificial intelligence 
perspective (pp. 1-16). Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes in 
Artificial Intelligence 1036 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Michael Zock holds a Ph.D. degree in experimental psychology. He is 
currently research director at LIMSI-CNRS (Orsay, France). Having 
launched the European Workshop on Natural Language Generation 
(1987, Royaumont) he has edited several books on generation. His 
major research interests lie in the building of tools to support people, 
producing, or learning to produce language. His recent work is 
devoted to the building of extensions to electronic dictionaries aiming 
to facilitate the access, memorization and automation of words and 
syntactic structures, and to overcome the tip-of-the-tongue-problem.





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