Publications
Publication details [#4701]
Isham, William P. 2000. Phonological interference in interpreters of spoken-languages: an issue of storage or process? In Englund Dimitrova, Birgitta and Kenneth Hyltenstam, eds. Language processing and simultaneous interpreting: interdisciplinary perspectives (Benjamins Translation Library 40). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 133–150. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Publication type
Article in jnl/bk
Publication language
English
Abstract
In this paper, the author discusses the problem of what implications the interference of phonological memory has in simultaneous interpreting. Isham reports on an experimental study with undergraduate students including a listening task, a concurrent articulation task, and a dichotomous listening task. The result showed a disadvantage for the concurrent articulation condition as compared to the other conditions, while there was no difference between these two. The interpretation of this study and its implications for simultaneous interpreting between two oral languages is that it is not the two incoming speech streams per se that interfere with phonological memory, but rather the fact when the vocal tract is engaged in articulation, as it is in the concurrent articulation task, there is no room for refreshing the phonological form of the incoming signal through sub-vocal rehearsal, which results in a decay of its trace.
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