ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the internal cognitive processes which make speech encoding possible. Psychologists have not yet progressed very far in unravelling the language of thought in which conceptual messages are represented, but people can at least list some of the things those representations must contain. Butterworth obtained speech samples by asking speakers to make out the best case they could in support of some social or political proposition. Presented with a speaker holding forth fluently on some topic or other, how can we get a handle on explaining the way that speaker is formulating messages, translating them into language, and articulating the chosen words and sentences. Evidence from slips of the tongue also points to the significance of clauses in language encoding. Shorter pauses in speech which do not fall at clause boundaries often seem to reflect less dramatic, more quickly resolved, word finding problems.
