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it to the nodes representing the words ‘preach’ /pɹitʃ/, ‘peat’ /pit/, ‘patch’ /pæ tʃ/, ‘each’ /itʃ/, etc. These examples explain the phonological similarity of the words with /p/ as the onset, their minimal pairs (e.g., ‘preach’ /pɹitʃ/ and ‘each’ /itʃ/), or words with similar phonological conditions (e.g., ‘speak’ /spik/ and ‘speed’ /spid/). The first two ones connect to each other directly; however, the latter ones have at least one node between them in the phonological network of the mental lexicon.
Beckage and Colunga (2016) mentioned the same phonological similarity as Vitevitch based on ‘edit distance’, i.e., transformations (e.g., substitution, insertion, and deletion) of one word into another word by a series of phoneme changes. For example, the word ‘kit’ can transfer to ‘hit’ with the substitution of the onset from /k/ to /h/; to the word
‘skit’ via inserting another consonant /s/ in the word-initial to constitute the consonant cluster /sk/; to the word ‘it’ by deleting the onset /k/ and remaining the rhyme.
2.3 Word Association Task
Word association is assumed able to encode mental representations and reflect fundamental characteristics of the relations between words in the mental lexicon. Since it allows the concepts to be free from the use of pragmatics for extended purpose, or break out of the frame of syntax as a sentence, word association is believed to be simply the reflection from mental constraints of what prominently comes to mind.
In this section, numerous word association tasks will be reviewed as a serious of examples to investigate the appropriateness of the research methodology in this study.
Types and purposes of tasks are described by the way that cued words are perceived for association, i.e., how those words can be associated (e.g., the word ‘leaf’ may be associated
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by the cued word ‘tree’), and the relations between responses as well as between stimuli and responses during associations. Free and controlled association tasks (e.g., Nelson et al., 2004; Sailor et al., 2009) will be introduced first, followed by the tasks with single and continuous word responses (e.g., De Deyne et al., 2013; Aldridge et al., 2018), and the responses of stimuli with syntagmatic or paradigmatic relations (e.g., Entwisle, 1966;
Nissen & Henriksen, 2006; Dell, Oppenheim & Kittredge, 2008).
2.3.1 Free versus Controlled Association
According to the access that cued words are perceived, two types of word association tasks can be classified. Free association allows an examinee to give the response associated directly from the cued word; while the controlled association provides the fixed responses to the targets for a participant to choose the preferences which relate to the cues more. Examples of each type of tasks are presented in the following. One of the most famous free association tasks were implemented by Nelson, McEvoy and Schreiber (2004) in which the examinees were allowed to produce only a single word in response to another word given as input. The researchers also proposed that this type of association can provide a relative response, rather than an absolute one, which agrees with the underlying networks with general constraints.
On the other hand, De Young, Lavender, Washington, Looby and Anderson (2010) conducted a controlled association task in which the participants were required to sort words into categories when the categories are paired with one another. Therefore, the participants may need to decide a cued word (e.g., spider) belongs in, for instance, the
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‘good’ or ‘flower’ category, or the ‘bad’ or ‘insect’ category, and the result suggested decreasing discomfort from pre- to post-test for words that were targeted in the task.
2.3.2 Continued versus Single Response
Regarding the process of the perceived cues are associated, two types of word association tasks can be classified. Continued word association allows a sequence of associated responses which is naturally seen as dynamic process for a stream of ideas, while single word association limits the response only one directly association from each cued word to prevent the possibility of other indirect or unrelated associations.
In the research of De Deyne, Navarro, and Storms (2013), each participant was permitted to generate free associations for three different responses to each cue. The result reported that this type of format enables a better approximation of weak connections in the network, and also provides better predictions of lexical access and semantic relatedness.
On the other hand, since more responses given to the same cued word, the associative connections may become less predictable and less well researched, Aldridge, Fontaine, Bowen, and Smith (2018) suggested to focus on the tasks with single response to explore the access of the mental lexicon. Their result also illustrated that the more the responses are elicited, the weaker the connections they have.
2.3.3 Semantic vs. Phonological Relation
The lexical organization in the mental lexicon reveals word development and knowledge; the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations therefore suggest the function of language exposure and the knowledge of an individual word. Research by word association tasks usually analyzes the result of the responses to the prompt words regarding the relation
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between paradigmatic and syntagmatic shift (e.g., Entwisle, 1966; Nissen & Henriksen, 2006; Sheng, McGregor & Marian, 2006; Dell, Oppenheim & Kittredge, 2008).
Words are classified as paradigmatic relation by distinguished between alternative semantic connections, in terms of one of the semantic relations of synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy or meronymy, but locating within the same syntactic slot, i.e., the same word class. In addition, the words which could be understood as a conventional and commonly accepted icon or symbol of the target word (e.g., ‘love’ and ‘heart’) can also be categorized as this relation. By contrast, words are classified intosyntagmatic relation by connecting syntactic relations and the semantic combination, i.e., with a different word class that the target word has (e.g., ‘dog’ and ‘bark’). Also, words in the same syntactic category could still be classified as syntagmatic relation when a clear sequential connection happens (e.g., compound relations as ‘accident’ and ‘car accident’, or argument relations as ‘accident’
and ‘car’).
Numerous studies targeting on paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations from the responses of word association tasks are discussed. In Entwisle’s (1966) word association tasks, the unequal proportion of responses between syntagmatic and paradigmatic relation was reported that a higher amount of responses with the paradigmatic relation to noun targets was found, while a negative correlation between verb and adverb associates showed for the syntactic relation. Nissen and Henriksen (2006) have demonstrated that target words with different syntactic categories tend to trigger a distinguishing proportion of paradigmatic and syntagmatic responses that nouns prime a higher proportion of paradigmatic responses than verbs and adjectives. Dell, Oppenheim and Kittredge (2008)
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production. They found that during speech production, semantic information is dealt by paradigmatic relation while syntagmatic relation retrieves and predicts the words.
On another hand, as we mentioned in the section 2.2.5, many studies have investigated phonological relation in term of syllable structure within word association by the analysis of speech production errors (e.g., Dell, 1988; Meyer, 1991; Adams & Meyer, 2000; Vitevitch, 2008; Rebei, Anderson & Dell, 2019). Most of them all found that syllable-initial consonants work in a distinct way when participating in phonological errors.
For example, in Meyer’s (1991) speech production tasks with disyllable cued words, segments within a syllable retrieved in order was reported that the entire first syllable of the responses showed a stronger connection to the targets than just the onset. In Vitevitch’s (2008) demonstration of English phonological network, words with the same initial consonant (e.g., ‘peach’ and ‘peat’), and minimal pairs including the same onset, rhyme, or coda (e.g., ‘peach’, ‘preach’ and ‘each’) showed direct connections to the target word while others with loose phonological similarity (e.g., ‘peach’ and ‘speak’) have only indirect connections.