lecture1_introduction+to+psycholinguistics_feb2015

BBI3215 Introduction To Psycholinguistics

Lecture 1: Beginning Concepts

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yap Ngee Thai

A029, Block A, FBMK [email protected]

603-89468673

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BBI3215 Introduction to Psycholinguistics Dr. Yap Ngee Thai

What is psycholinguistics?

An interdisciplinary field of study in which the goals are to understand

how people acquire language,

how people use language to speak and understand one another, and

how language is represented and processed in the brain.

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What is psycholinguistics?

Psycholinguistics is a sub-discipline of psychology and linguistics. It is also related to:

developmental psychology (studies how we develop and age) Cognitive development Social development emotional development, and physical development

cognitive psychology (studies internal mental processes, for e.g. how humans perceive, remember, think, speak and solve problems)

Nuerolinguistics (nueral mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language)

speech science (studies production, transmission and perception of speech)

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Key concepts about language

Serve to distinguish language from other aspects of human behaviour and cognition

Example of other aspects of human behaviour: Responses to sensory and mental information;

emotional responses;

non-verbal motor activity cycling, swimming etc.

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Key concepts about human language


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1. Language allows for creativity: Linguistic creativity

2. Language is not speech

3. Language is not thought

4. Language is more than just a system of communication

Study Questions for Chapter 1

1. What are the two types of linguistic creativity that give us insight into the nature of human language?

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Question 1 Two key concepts: linguistic creativity & nature of human language

What is linguistic creativity? Linguistic creativity vs. creativity in general

Linguisitic creativity is commonplace to every person who knows a language.

The two types of linguistic creativity:

We can use a finite (limited) knowledge of sounds, words, principles to produce and to comprehend an infinite number of novel sentences.

We can use language to communicate anything we can think of

Contrast these properties with the animal system of communication

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Nature of Human Language

No matter how eloquently a dog may bark,

he cannot tell you his parents were poor but honest.

- Bertrand Russell

(How do we know a dog cannot communicate this idea? What must the dog be able to do in order to be able to communicate this idea)

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What is language?


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Language is not speech, thought or merely a communication system.

How do you explain or support this statement ?

What is language?


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Children born with hearing difficulties may not learn to speak but they are not deprived of language. They can acquire a sign language. Therefore, language is not speech.

Children who cant speak can still do other cognitive tasks. They can still problem solve etc. Therefore, language is not thought.

Language has properties that most systems of communications do not have.

Eg. linguistic creativity and recursiveness.

Study question 2


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Why is it important to distinguish between language and general intelligence?

Question 2: Why is it important to distinguish between language and general intelligence? (see page 5)

Because language and thought can be disassociated as demonstrated by the different types of neurological pathologies.

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) lag behind their peers in terms of language development but perform within the normal range for non-verbal intelligence task.

Children with Williams Syndrome are deficient in many aspects of cognition but have good language skills (vocabulary and ability to form grammatical sentences).

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What is language?


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Language is a formal system for pairing signals with meanings. The pairing is arbitrary and has to be learned.

LANGUAGE

meaning signal

Different types of language signals: sound waves in speech or gestures in sign language

What is language?


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The linguistic system that enables sound and meaning to be paired contains a complex and highly organized set of principles and rules.

These rules are the source for the infinite creativity of language.

The set of rules that create sentences in a language is a languages grammar and the words of a language are its lexicon.

Knowing a language involves knowing its grammar and lexicon.

With this knowledge, you can organize ideas into words and sentences, and sentences into sequence of sounds. This knowledge is called tacit knowledge or implicit knowledge.

Universality of human language


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All human languages are highly similar. They all have a grammar and a lexicon that allow for linguistic creativity.

Because all humans have languages of similar organization and function, it strongly suggests that language is part of human biological endowment.

Implications for first language acquisition


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The universality of language has interesting implication for our understanding of language acquisition.

Young children effortlessly learn to talk and walk.

Learning the first language seem like a natural process and is likely a result of the fact that language is a faculty of the human brain.

As the brain develops, it organizes the language the child is exposed to in ways that are common in all humans.

BUT second language acquisition is different


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Second language acquisition often involves more effort.

Second languages are more difficult to master, in particular pronunciation

Why? First language interference

Age effects

Nature of exposure

Read page 11 for more details.

How does the language system work?


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All languages has a grammar and a lexicon.

There are three kinds of rules that make up the grammar: 1. Phonological rules: e.g. phonotactic rules, allophonic rules

2. Morphological rules: e.g. word derivational rules

3. Syntactic rules: e.g. movement rules


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The lexicon consists of all the words a person knows and the linguistic information connected with them.

Each lexical entry is associated with: Information about the words meaning

Information about the words morphosyntax

Information about the words morphophonology.

More study questions

5. What determines the meaning of a sentence? 6. What does it mean to say that a structure is psychologically real,

though abstract?

Clue: (see page 12- 14) In contrast to sounds and words, syntactic structure is not

represented in the spoken or written signal [but] it is a central aspect of every sentence. Though it has no physical reality, sentence structure has psychological reality: it must be represented by the speaker and recovered by the hearer in order for the meaning of a sentence to be conveyed. In other words, the meaning of a sentence depends on the structural organization of the sentences words.

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Final Study Question for Chapter 1

How do the views of contemporary psycholinguistics differ from the view of the behaviorists from the first half of the twentieth century?

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Behaviorist Psychology


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Behavioral psychologist in the 1950s believed that speech as simply a type of motor behavior exhibited by people. All complex behavior are associated to smaller behaviors.

Behaviorists believe that all organisms learn everything the same way through conditioning.

Learning consisted of the acquisition of behavioral routines, and all behavioral routines were acquired by the same principles of learning.

Modern Linguistics


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In the late 1950s, the view of language which is limited to speech and as behavioral routines was challenged by Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky argued that speech should not be the object of study to understand human language. Instead the object of study should be the set of rules (in the mind) that create speech and the grammatical system that underlie observable speech.

Although the grammatical system is not observable like speech, it is possible to test hypotheses about properties of the grammatical system and thereby discover the set of rules that constitute knowledge of language.

lecture1_introduction+to+psycholinguistics_feb2015

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