Skip to main content

Predictability and language production

Speaking requires making a multitude of choices about how to say something. What words to use? What structure? (I ate the pizza. vs. The pizza was eaten by me.) What form of reference? (The vice president vs. Kamala vs. She). How should each word be pronounced? The following papers explore these questions in four areas: 1) Acoustic Reduction; 2) Pronoun produciton; 3) Word order variation, and 4) Theoretical overviews.

Acoustic reduction
What guides pronunciation? Some theories suggest that people design speech to be maximally interpretable, which would predict that speakers should use acoustically prominent pronunciations when they are talking about something that is not already familiar to the addressee. On the other hand, there is also evidence that production difficulty
  • Zerkle, S., Rosa, E. C., & Arnold, J. E. (2017). Thematic role predictability and planning affect word duration. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory phonology 8(1): 17, 1-28.
  • Arnold, J. E. & Watson, D. G. (2015). Synthesizing meaning and processing approaches to prosody: performance matters. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, 30, 88-102.
  • Kahn, J. & Arnold, J.E. (2015). Articulatory and lexical repetition effects on durational reduction: speaker experience vs. common ground. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, 30, 103-119.
  • Rosa, E., Finch, K., Bergeson, M. & Arnold, J.E. (2015). The Effects of Addressee Attention on Prosodic Prominence. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, 30, 48-56.
  • Arnold, J.E., Kahn, J.M., & Pancani, G. (2012). Audience design affects acoustic reduction via production facilitation. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 19, 505-512.
  • Watson, D. G., Arnold, J. E., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2008). Tic Tac TOE: Effects of predictability and importance on acoustic prominence in language production. Cognition, 106(3), 1548-1557. & CORRIGENDUM: Watson, D., Arnold., J. E., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2010). Corrigendum to Tic tac  TOE: Effects of predictability and importance on acoustic prominence in language production. Cognition, 114, 462-463.  doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.01.007
  • Arnold, J. E. (2017). Fluency effects in human language: the integration of automatic and intentional mechanisms of acoustic variation in speech.  In The Social Origins of Language, Seyfarth, R., Cheney, D., & Platt, M. (Eds).
Pronoun production
  • Weatherford, K., & Arnold, J. E. (2021). Semantic predictability of implicit causality can affect referential form choice. Cognition, 214, 104759. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104759
  • Guan, S. & Arnold, J. E. (2021). The predictability of implicit causes: testing frequency and topicality explanations. Discourse Processes. DOI:
    10.1080/0163853X.2021.1974690
  • Medina-Fetterman, A., Vazquez, N., & Arnold, J. E. (in press). The Effects of Semantic Role Predictability on the Production of Overt Pronouns in Spanish. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research.
  • Arnold, J. E., & Zerkle, S. A. (2019). Why do people produce pronouns? Pragmatic selection vs Rational models. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience,34, 1152-1175.
  • Zerkle, S. & Arnold, J. E. (2019). Does planning explain why predictability affects reference production? Dialogue and Discourse, 10(2), 34-55.
  • Arnold, J.E., & Nozari, N. (2017). The effects of utterance planning and stimulation of left prefrontal cortex on the production of referential expressions. Cognition, 160, 127-144.
  • Rosa, E. C., & Arnold, J. E. (2017). Predictability affects production: Thematic roles can affect reference form selection.  Journal of Memory and Language, 94, 43-60.
  • Arnold, J. E. (2017). Latency analysis for Rosa & Arnold (2017). Technical Report #1. UNC Language Processing Lab, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
  • Zerkle, S., & Arnold, J. E. (2016). Discourse attention during utterance planning affects referential form choice. Linguistics Vanguard, 2.
  • Arnold, J. E., Bennetto, L., & Diehl, J. J. (2009). Reference production in young speakers with and without autism: Effects of discourse status and processing constraints. Cognition, 110(2), 131-146. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.
  • Rosa, E. C. & Arnold, J. E. (2011). The role of attention in choice of referring expressions. Proceedings of  PRE-Cogsci: Bridging the gap between computational, empirical and theoretical approaches to reference, Boston, 2011.
  • Arnold, J. E., & Griffin, Z. M. (2007). The effect of additional characters on choice of referring expression: Everyone counts. Journal of Memory and Language, 56(4), 521-536.
  • Arnold, J. E. (2003). Multiple constraints on reference form: Null, pronominal, and full reference in Mapudungun. In J. W. Du Bois, L. E. Kumpf, & W. J. Ashby (Eds.), Preferred argument structure: Grammar as architecture for function.  John Benjamins, pp. 225-245.
Word Order variation
  • Arnold, J. E. (2011). Ordering choices in production: for the speaker or for the listener? In Bender, E. & Arnold, J. E. (Eds.), Language from a Cognitive Perspective: Grammar, Usage, and Processing. Studies in Honor of Thomas Wasow. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 199-222.
  • Arnold, J. E., Wasow, T., Asudeh, A., & Alrenga, P. (2004). Avoiding attachment ambiguities: The role of constituent ordering. Journal of Memory and Language, 51(1), 55-7
  • Wasow, T., & Arnold, J. E.  (2003).  Postverbal constituent ordering in English.  In G. Rohdenburg & B. Mondorf (Eds.),  Determinants of grammatical variation in English. The Hague: Mouton,  pp.120-154.
  • Arnold, J. E., Wasow, T., Losongco, T., & Ginstrom, R. (2000). Heaviness vs. newness: The effects of structural complexity and discourse status on constituent ordering. Language, 76, 28-55.
Theoretical overviews
  • Arnold, J. E., & Zerkle, S. A. (2019). Why do people produce pronouns? Pragmatic selection vs Rational models. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience,34, 1152-1175. DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1636103
  • Davies, C. & Arnold, J. E. (2018). Reference and informativeness: How context shapes referential choice. In C. Cummins and N. Katsos (Eds.), Handbook of Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
  • Arnold, J. E. (2016). Explicit and emergent mechanisms of information status. TopICS, 8, 722-736 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12220
  • Arnold, J. E. (2010). How speakers refer: The role of accessibility. Language and Linguistics Compass, 4(4), 187-203.
  • Arnold, J. E. (2008). Reference production: Production-internal and addressee-oriented processes. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23(4), 495-527.