Download • psycholingu is the study of how individuals comprehend, produce

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
Chapter 1: Introduction – Themes of Psycholinguistics
Main Points
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psycholingu is the study of how individuals comprehend, produce and acquire language
the study of psycholinguistics is a part of the field of cog sci – cog sci reflects the insights of
psycho, lingu and fields like artificial intelligence
psycholingu stresses the knowledge of lang and cognitive processes involved in language use
psycholinguists are interested in social rules involved in lang use and brain mechanisms
associated with lang
interest in psycholinu began in 1950s
Introduction
• psycho of lang deals with mental processes that are involved in language use
• three sets of processes: language comprehension (how we perceive and understand speech and
written lang), language production (how we construct an utterance, from idea to completed
sentence) and lang acquisition
• psycholinguistic: psychological study of langauge
The Scope of Psycholinguistics
• psycholingu part of cognitive sci
• cognitive science: interdisciplinary venture that draws into psycho, lingu, computer sci,
neurosci, and philo
- study prob solving memory imagery and lang
• linguistics: branch of sci that studies origin, structure and use of lang
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Language Processes and Linguistic Knowledge
psycholingu 2 questions
first question: what knowledge of lang is needed for us to use language
- distinction between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge: tacit is the knowledge of how to
perform acts – explicit knowledge is knowledge of processes or mechanisms used in these acts
- sometimes know how to do something without knowing how we do it
- distinguish knowing how to speak and knowing processes involved
- most of our lingu knowledge is tacit rather than explicit
4 areas of lang knowledge: semantics (meaning of sentences and words), syntax (grammatical
arrangement of words within sentence), phonology (system of sounds in lang), pragmatics
(social rules in language use)
second question: what cog processes are involved in ordinary use of language
- in conversation
- processes like perception, memory and thinking
Four Language Examples
garden path sentences: subjective impression is one of following a garden path to a predictable
destination until it is obvious that you were mistaken in your original interpretation and forced
to backtrack and reinterpret the sentence
- store two diff meanings for a word – part of our semantic knowledge
- in our semantic knowledge we also have relationships between words
- we choose which words seems to be the most appropriate – mental work
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indirect requests more polite than direct – part of our pragmatic knowledge of language – as
“requests”
- these requests force us to consider lang in social context
- sociolinguistics: study of relationship between lang and social behaviour
aphasia: language disorder due to brain damage
- ex Wernicke's aphasia (breakdown in semantics – speech smooth
- neurolinguistics: study of the relationship between the brain and lang
- brain injuries let us analyze an apparently unified program of lang abilities into its separate
components and raise questions about how abilities become integrated in normal adult
language acquisition:
- children usually express themselves in two words at a time by elimination closed class or
function words (prep, conjunctions) for open class or content words (nouns verbs adj) – know
these classes of syntactic knowledge (children)
The Historical Context
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Early Psycholinguistics
Wundt – believed that study of lang could provide important insights into nature of mind
- master of psycholinguistics (Blumenthal) because wrote about diff aspects of language
- concerns = grammar, phonology, lang comprehension, child lang acquisition, sign lang,
reading and other topics of contemporary concern
- said the sentence not the word = primary unit of lang and prod of speech = transformation of a
complete thought process into sequentially organized speech segments
- speech prod = word by word process than view that it begins with whole sentence (like bottom
up top bottom)
Huey
- eye voice span: the lag between eye position and voice when reading aloud
- tachistoscope: machine that presents visual stimuli for very brief periods of time
Behaviourism and Verbal Behaviour
behaviourism: 1920s – study obj beh than mental processes
- experience in shaping beh
- envir contingencies like reinforcement and punishment
- liked to talk about verbal beh
thought speaking was a consequence of being raised in an envir in which correct lang models
were present and in which child's speech errors were corrected – aka by Skinner
also studied meaning
semantic differential: Osgood – tool for measuring the associative meaning of words by asking
ppl to rate words on dimensions like good/bad and srong/weak
Later Psycholinguistics
1950s psycho and lingu interested in talking to each other
chomsky – most influential person in 20th century lingu
associative chain theory: sentence consists of a chain of associations between individual words
in a sentence – by behaviourists
- each word in a sentene = stimulus for the next word – thus entire sentence is produced left to
right
discontinuous constituent: like picked THE BABY UP
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- this suggests that there is a long range dependencies among words in a sentence
chomsky said lang acquisition cannot be explained in terms of children's lang experience
poverty of stimulus argument: there is not enough info in the lang samples given to children to
fully account for the richness and complexity of children lang
- says lang children acquire is intricate and subtle
- development is based on innate lang knowledge not parental speech
Slobin – person who has learned a lang has formed something that is psychologically equivalent
to a grammar
longitudinal investigations: sample of child speech is collected at diff points over period of
years – and grammars of child lang were written modelled after adult grammar
- major quesitons: what set of rules governs child developing grammar
rationalistits emphasize role of innate factors in human beh and use of argument
empiricists stress role of experience in beh and favor the collection of data as means of
evaluating hypotheses
lingu usually approach lang in rationalistic manner – psych usually empirical
Current Direction
more interested in phonology semantics and pragmatics not only syntax
strong interest now in lang prod
development of techniques to see visual images of brain – for aphasia
beginning to see application of psychlingu principles useful to society – like in bilingualism and
lang disorders