Levelt's Speaking Analysis

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Levelt’s Speaking Model, unlike other models doesn’t aim at describing the process of language learning but the so called ‘steady-state’ (De Bot: 3), meaning normal, spontaneous speech that is produced by adults. It is composed of three main parts: the conceptualiser, the formulator and the speech comprehension system. Besides that it includes the parts lexicon, articulator, audition and one extra part that contains different processing components such as a discourse model, situation knowledge, an encyclopaedia and others. It is not really clear what else that last extra part contains or doesn’t contain. Higher level processing is more conscious while lower level processing is more automatized (cf. 3-4). The model is not only restricted to …show more content…

In the conceptualiser relevant information is selected and put in order, and the intentions a speaker wants to realise are in such a way adapted that they can be transformed into language. This is realised via macroplanning and microplanning (cf. 4). The resulting outgoing preverbal messages contain necessary information to convert meaning into language but are not themselves linguistic. In the illustration (appendix) the conceptualiser includes two boxes (“message generation” and “monitoring”) that show that before a preverbal message actually leaves the conceptualiser and is passed onto the formulator, it can be monitored several times. Therefore the generation of a message can be repeated several times before it becomes a preverbal message and is passes on to the …show more content…

The produced speech might not have any meaning but that way they are training their articulators and therefore encouraging physiological changes in the speech apparatus leading to more precise muscle coordination and as a result more precise articulation. All this practicing usually leads to the production of first nouns at the age of about 12 months. Both phenomena could imply that language acquisition, unlike speech production, doesn’t start with a message that needs to be encoded and articulated, but rather the other way round. It seems to start with audition (attuning to L1 sound), working its way to articulation (babbling without meaning) and the speech-comprehension system (repeating what other people say) and after that arriving at the conceptualiser (actual forming of meaningful speech). This only leaves the question how much babies and toddlers actually understand before being able to speak

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