BIL6064

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE

ACQUISITION
Week 1-2

Question

What is language?

Language

A system of symbols and rules that

enables us to communicate (Harley,
2014).
Symbols are things that stand for other
things words, either written or
spoken.
Rules specify how words are ordered to
form sentences.

Question

Do animals have language(s)?

Animals communicate physical and

social needs using a simple system,
but only humans can use speech
sounds and, as far as we know, only
humans have developed a system of
symbols intricate enough to
communicate complex and abstract
ideas (Insup Taylor, 1990, pg.11)

Question

What about sign language?

There is one kind of human language

that is less arbitrary than spoken
language, namely, a communication
system of hand gestures for the deaf the sign language. In sign language,
the relation between an object and its
gesture sign can be iconic (depicting as
faithfully as possible the physical
appearance of an object or event)
(Insup Taylor, 1990, pg.7).

Question

What is the term commonly given to

the study of language?

Linguistics (Harley, 2014)

Phonetics (the
study of raw
sounds)
Phonology
(the study of
how sounds
are used
within a
language)

Pragmatics
(the study of
language use)

Linguistic
s

Semantics
(the study of
meaning)

Syntax (the
study of word
order)

Morphology
(the study of
words and
word
formation)

Linguistics

Linguistics examines language itself (Harley,

2014).
Language can be studied in a variety of ways.
We can distinguish between semantics (the
study of meaning), syntax (the study of word
order), morphology (the study of words and
word formation), pragmatics (the study of
language use), phonetics (the study of raw
sounds), and phonology (the study of how
sounds are used within a language).

Issues (Traxler, 2012)

What does it mean to know a

language?
How do languages work?
Where do they come from?
What made languages take their
current form(s)?
How is language related to thought?
Are thought and language identical?

Question

What is psycholinguistics?

Psycholinguistics (1)
Psycholinguistics is the study of language
behavior: how real (rather than ideal)
people learn and use language to
communicate ideas (Taylor, 1990).
Psycholinguistics ask questions such as,
How is language produced, perceived,
comprehended, and remembered? How is it
used for different communicative purposes?
How is it acquired? How does it go wrong?
How is it represented in the mind?

Psycholinguistics (2)

The use of language and speech as a

window to the nature and structure of
the human mind (Scovel, 1998).
Often referred to as the psychology of
language.
Over the years, psycholinguistics have
evolved into a conglomeration of subfields.

Sub-fields (Scovel, 1998):

(i). How are language and speech
acquired?
(ii). How are language and speech
produced?
(iii). How are language and speech
comprehended?
(iv). How are language and speech
lost?

Psycholinguistics (3)

Psycholinguistics is 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 in
the brain (Fernandez & Cairns, 2011).
It is primarily a sub-discipline of psychology
and linguistics, but it is also related to
developmental psychology, cognitive
psychology, neurolinguistics, and speech
science.

Psycholinguistics (4)

Psycholinguistics is the study of the

mental representations and processes
involved in language use, including the
production, comprehension and
storage of spoken and written
language (Warren, 2013).

Psycholinguistics (5)

Psycholinguistics examines the

psychology of language (Harley, 2014).
It studies the psychological processes
involved in language.
Psycholinguistics study understanding,
producing, and remembering language
- hence are concerned with listening,
reading, speaking, writing, and
memory for language (Harley, 2014).

Psycholinguistics focuses on how we

acquire language, and the way in which
it interacts with other psychological
systems (Harley, 2014).
It is closely related to other areas of
cognitive psychology, and relied to a
large extent on the experimental
methods used in cognitive psychology.

We construct models of what we think

is going on from our experimental
results.
We use observational and experimental
data to construct theories findings.

Origins of Contemporary
Psycholinguistics

Contemporary psycholinguistics is an
interdisciplinary field combining the two
disciplines of linguistics and experimental
cognitive psychology.
The inception of the field of psycholinguistics
occurred in the summer of 1951 when, at a
meeting of the Social Science Research Council
at Cornell University, a committee on
Linguistics and Psychology was formed,
with Charles Osgood as its chairman (Kess,
1992) cited in Fernandez and Cairns (2011).

Subsequently, in the summer of 1953,

a seminar was held at Indiana
University in conjunction with the
Linguistic Institute.
This seminar formed the basis of the
first book with psycholinguistics in its
title, Psycholinguistics: A Survey of
Theory and Research Problems
(Osgood & Sebeok, 1954) cited in
Fernandez and Cairns (2011).

Traditional view

At that time, linguists focused on a

taxonomic analysis of languages, which
meant that they had as their primary
goal the classification of observable
aspects of language.
The behaviorist psychologist of that
day took the domain of psychology to be
behavior (of people or animals), rather
than mental operations of any kind
(Fernandez & Cairns, 2011).

They believed that all behaviors

could be explained as associated
(linked) chains of smaller
behaviors.
Thus, speech was regarded as
behavioral units of sound combined
into words, which were then associated
to form phrases, and so on (Fernandez
& Cairns, 2011) (i.e. Information
theory)

Information theory:
This theory emphasized the role of
probability and redundancy in language.
Central to this approach was the
importance of the most likely
continuation of a sentence from a
particular point inwards (Shannon &
Weaver, 1949) cited in Harley (2014).
It influenced the development of the field
of cognitive psychology

Acquisition in the child was thought to be

the process by which correctly associated
speech behaviors were built up by
rewarding the desired ones and failing
to reward the undesired sequences.
Behaviorists believed that this system of
learning, known as conditioning, was
common to all organisms, and that all
organisms learned everything the same
way (Fernandez & Cairns, 2011).

Thus, the general view of linguists and

psychologists at this time, was of language
as a system of discrete behaviors that
could be observed, classified, and
understood in the individual as chains
of associated behaviors, created by
conditioning in childhood. These
principles of conditioning were taken to be
general principles of learning for all
organisms (Fernandez & Cairns, 2011).

Opposing views

However, there were opposing views.

The famous linguist Edward Sapir
wrote a paper entitled The
psychological reality of phonemes,
suggesting that the mental
representation of language should be
addressed rather than focus exclusively
on its physical representation (Sapir,
1949) cited in Fernandez and Cairns
(2011).

The psychologist Karl Lashley wrote

the now-classic paper The problem of
serial order behavior, questioning the
explanatory power of associative
chaining (Lashley, 1951) cited in
Fernandez and Cairns (2011).

The traditional view was further

challenged, beginning in the late
1950s.
Professor Noam Chomsky, from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
proposed a new approach, that
speech should not be the object of
study for those who want to
understand human language.

Instead, the object of study should be

the set of rules in the mind (which is
really an abstract term to refer to the
brain) that create sentences and
underlie observable speech.
This is the grammatical system (i.e.
transformational grammar), and it is not
observable in the same way that
speech is observable (Chomsky, 1975)
cited in Fernandez and Cairns (2011).

Children acquire language as

effortlessly as they do, not because
there are any general principles of
learning that apply to all organisms (as
argued by behaviorist psychologists),
but because this internal system of
rules is biologically based in the
human species (Chomsky, 1975)
cited in Fernandez and Cairns (2011).

This view is supported by psychologists such

as George Miller (1965) and Sol Saporta
(1961).
Sol Saporta (1961) published a journal
volume supported by the Social Science
Research Councils Committee on Psychology
and Linguistics, titled Psycholinguistics: A
Book of Readings, which included papers
by Chomsky and Miller ignited a debate that
supported the new approach.

Contemporary view

Both fields (linguistics and psychology)

predominantly accept the Chomskyan
view of language as an abstract
system represented in the mind or
brain that is unique to the human
species, develops in the maturing
infant, and underlies but is only
indirectly related to physical
speech (Fernandez & Cairns, 2011).

Issues in Psycholinguistics
(Harley, 2014)
Are language
processes
related to one
another (e.g.
reading and
speaking)?

Do processes in
language
operate
independently or
interact
(modularity)?

How can the

study of
language be
applied to
everyday life?

How do
languages
differ?

What are the

processes
involved in
producing and
understanding
language?

What is innate
about language?

STUDY OF
LANGUAGE

Do we need
specific rules for
language
processing?

Issues

What are the processes involved in producing and

understanding language?
How do languages differ?
Are language processes related to one another
(e.g. reading and speaking)?
Do processes in language operate independently
of interact (modularity)?
What is innate about language?
How can the study of language be applied to
everyday life?
Do we need specific rules for language processing?

Question

What are the relationships

among psycholinguistics,
second language
acquisition and
bilingualism?