ABSTRACT

Language involves speaking, listening, writing, and reading to communicate thoughts, ideas, information, feelings, etc. The first step in understanding (comprehending) language (communications) is speech perception, which involves translating sounds into speech units. Perception of speech also involves filling in missing sounds and determining “the boundaries between words” using context. Listeners process language as groups of words called “constituents,” listen to “surface structure and determine the underlying, deep structure of a sentence.” Sentences are harder to understand if they contain negatives, the passive voice, or ambiguities (Matlin, 1994, p. 260).