VERBATIM MEMORY OF INTONATION UNITS

Abstract

Combining separate units into a single representation is commonly illustrated at the letter level, when we associate a series of letters together as a word. When it comes to verbatim memory, it is not surprising that we combine in the same way separate consecutive words in an utterance into single representations. What is curious, however, is that these word sequences frequently overlap in speech; thus, the final word(s) of one word group, being at the beginning of the next group, acts as a memory trigger: the learner seems to use that word as a cue for the next group.