ABSTRACT
The organization of utterances apparently takes the following form. There is a structure of concepts and relations that corresponds to the speaker’s meaning. This structure falls into one or another generalized category of ideas, such as the idea of event, action, state, location, property, entity, or person. The speaker organizes and moves from one of these generalized ideas to another, for example, from the idea of an event to the idea of a location, and in so doing is guided in coordinating the articulation of the speech output. The unit of production, according to this statement, is based on the structure of concepts, and within this conceptual structure there are the processes for coordinating speech output. Kozhevnikov and Chistovich (1965) have defined these meaning units as syntagmata, or meaning units pronounced as single outputs. The output of speech shall be said to be coordinated within syntagmata. As new meanings are organized in the speaker’s conceptions fresh syntagmata become available. Hence, there is a coordinated articulation of speech output that corresponds with the organization of meaning.
