Beginning Concepts in

Psycholinguistics
Ahmed Qadoury Abed
PH D Candidate
Bagdad University-College of Arts
English Dept
2012/2013

Definition of psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics

is an interdisciplinary field

of study:
How do people acquire language?
How do people use language to speak and
understand one another?
How is language presented and processed in
the brain?
Brain vs mind
2

Psycholinguistics and other disciplines

Psycholinguistics

is a sub-field of psychology

and linguistics
It is related to:
Developmental psychology
Cognitive psychology
Neurolinguistics
Speech science
3

Creativity
Creativity

is the nost important feature people

have.
Creativity and other types:prose,poetry..
Linguistic creativity
All people have it since they know language
Know speak

Human language creativity vs animal

communication 2
1- Speakers of a language can create ,understand, and
process novel sentences for an entire lifetime
Both children and adults
Unconscious process (depends on interlocutors)
True for sign language
Possibility of creating infinite set out of finite set
Chomskyan orientation

Creativity
2-

the kind of creativity we have is the ability

of communicating:
Whatever , wherever ,
Animals have a little range of topics
Human language is flexible:
i- diffeent purposes
Ii- social interaction
Dominating the planet
6

Language & Speech

Speech is the most frequent mode for transmitting

language (linguistic information)
-sign language is creative ,transmitted by gestures
Graphics
The crucial differences:
Human is articulatory and auditory
It is based on knowledge of language as a finite
system to yield infinite set of possible

Language & Writing

Writing is materially based compared with speaking

or signing are biological
Writing is cultural artifact
Letter referring to sounds or symbolic
Writing is for formal ,history recording,court
Children learn to speak before to write (unconscious
vs conscious)
The complexity or sophistication of human lang is
independent of writing

Language & Thought

Thought is verbalized through lang

People can think but not speak like infants ,
children with Specific Language impairment SLI
People with neurological pathologies
Animals can think but expressed by movements , cries,..
Bilinguals can express one thought in two langs
Translation as a means for thought transmission
Fordor (1975) The Language of Thought Hypothesis
(LOTH):intelligence responsible for generating the language of
thought

Language & Communication

Language

is the primary communication

system:
Logic, mathematical, graphic,
programming,visual arts traffic lights gestures
Verbal vs non verbal
Psycholinguists concerned with language as
a biologically- based characteristic of human

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Some Characteristics of the Linguistic

System

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Language is a formal system for pairing signals and meanings:

Encoding vs Deccoding
Both speaker /listener have the same linguistic form for pairing
sound and meaning
Their linguistic system enables sounds and meanings to be
paired,and this is done by a complex and highly organized set
of principles and rules (grammar and lexicon)
Knowledge of such system is an implicit or tacit
Explicit knowledge is temporary and artificial like telephone
numbers
Tacit knowledge in the brain /mind and unconscious

Descriptive vs Prescriptive
Grammar

refers differently to teachers and

linguists.
Teachers are concerned with a standardized
set of rules.Prescriptive
Linguists are concerned with studying the
language system that underlies ordinary
use.Descriptive
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Descriptive vs Prescriptive

13

Examples of Prescriptive grammar:

1-The use of pronouns like me,her initially
-Me and Mary went to the movie.
/mary and me went to the movie.
In descriptive terms, these sentences are generated
by the speakers internalized grammar .
Members of one language community acquire
colloquial form of this internalized grammar
Prescriptive rules are tedious ,difficult ,conscious
learning is needed.

Descriptive vs Prescriptive

14

2-the notion of correctness The bulk of linguistic ability acquired

is not influenced or associated by linguistic correctness.
There are differences between acquired colloquial internalized
grammar and prescriptive rules.
This notion is related to dialect variations:
Geographic
Ethnic
Community
These all can result in systematic , lexical ,and syntactic
differences from the transitional standard version of the
acquired language

Descriptive vs Prescriptive

15

Which is more important:

Standard English or colloquial English
1- standard is used by few
2-Colloquial acquired naturally (the fruit of
psycholinguists)
3- linguists and psycholinguists are interested in
understanding how these internalized grammars are
acquired and then put into use

The Universality of Human Language

1
We

have thousands of languages or versions

spoken by different language communities
,all treated as a single entity by linguists
This is justified by all have an organization of
grammar and lexicon
Chomskyan finite into infinite

16

Universality

Universality has profound consequences for the way

psycholinguists analyze the human use of language
Psycholinguists state that all languages are cut from
the same mold because the organization of lexicons
and the formal properties of grammatical systems
are similar in all human languages

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What is specific and what is universal about

knowledge of the language the mechanisms that put
the knowledge of language to use.

The Implication for the Acquisition of

Language

18

Language acquisition is an important area in

psycholinguistics.
Children in every culture acquire the formal
properties and lexicon of their languages
(competence)
This competence or ability will be developed into
natural performance
This is the story behind the profound similarity in
child acquisition
Other skills like riding a bike are learned behaviours.

Language acquisition

19

The story is completely different and complicated

with L2 acquisition after childhood.
Children acquire another language/dialect naturally
vs conscious learning of adults
Certain aspects (pronunciation) are difficult to
master.
Exceptions are those who be native-like
Research now focus on psych- social factors:
proximity of exposure to L2 ,and now on age effects
in L2 acquisition( as memory ability).

How Language Pairs Sound to Meaning

1
The

grammar of any language has three

kinds of rules:
1- phonological rules
i - they describe the sound patterns of the
language
ii- they are used to create individual words
with the appropriate rhthem and intonation.
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How Language Pairs Sound to Meaning

2
2- Morphological rules
3- syntactic rules
These are responsible creating the structural
organization of words and sentences
The word phrase relationships indicate:
- the basic operation of these various rules
-The organization of the lexicon
A fundamental concept in psycholinguistics is that the
meaning is the resullt of the function of individual
words and how they organized stuturally.

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How Language Pairs Sound to Meaning

3

22

People aware of sentence individuals: consonants,

vowels, syllables ,words which can be identified
acoustically.
Sentence structure is not since it is regarded an
abstract unit, or has no actual physical reality.
Sentence structure has a psychological reality : it
must be represented by the speaker and then
recovered by the hearer in order for the meaning to
be conveyed.

How Language Pairs Sound to Meaning

4
Learning a new language is not memorizing new
vocabulary ,but how these vocabularies are
structured for meaningful sentences.
Bilinguals are more aware, sensitive conscious
towards this mechanisms than monolinguals:
-issues related to ambiguity are easily identified
Word-for-word translation is not working

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How Language Pairs Sound to Meaning

5

-The senators objected to the plans proposed by the generals.

-The senators proposed the plans objected by the generals.

-*The to plans senators objected proposed the by gerenals the.

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Thus a person with good knowledge of the lexicon of a

language with no sufficient proficiency in combining these
vocabulary into meaning structures, will not be able to have
solid idea representation.

How Language Pairs Sound to Meaning

6
Another

instance of how meaning depends

upon sentence structure is ambigious
sentences:
-The man saw the boy with the binaculars.

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Linguistic Competence and Linguistic

Performance 1

26

The formal properties of grammar ana a lexicon =

internalized grammar= linguistic competence
Linguistic competence is a technical term to refer to
the use of the knowledge of language resorted in
persons mind in the actual processing of sentences
(production and understanding)
Linguistic performance is the use of such knowledge
in the actual processing of sentences ( production
and understanding)

Linguistic Competence and Linguistic

Performance 2
Linguistic

competence is the fruit basket of

linguistics
Linguistic performance is the fruit basket of
psycholinguistics.
Pragmatics is the description of how
language is actually used.

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Linguistic Competence and Linguistic

Performance 3
Grammatical

aspects vs pragmatic aspects

The man saw the boy with the binaculars.
- identical grammatical aspects
- different meanings or interpretation
- one conveyed message by speaker
(intention) and hearer (recovery)
- if the message is conveyed differently , a
case of misunderstanding.
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Linguistic Competence and Linguistic

Performance 4
Encoding

29

vs decoding process

Linguistic Competence and Linguistic

Performance 5

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Encoding vs Decoding Process is so common

(unconscious) so that people never think of its complex
cognitive activity.
No one can tackle even a part of the whole process.
Recently psycholinguists have developed experimental
procedures which had led them to understand a great
deal about this unconscious , complex process.
Why complex to be observed? Any abstract idea must
have a physical representation deep in the neurological
connections of the brain, while the hearer has no such
representation.

The Speech Signal and Linguistic

Representation
1

31

The signal is the only physical link between the

speaker and the hearer.
This is a critical psycholinguistic point.
This signal must contain enough information for the
hearer to help him reconstruct the abstract structures
into abstract ideas.
Understanding the relationship between the signal
and its decoded linguistic representation is
necessary

The Speech Signal and Linguistic

Representation
2
What

is the relationship between the

phonological representation and the physical
speech signal?

The

phonological representation can be

thought of as an idealization of the physical
signal.

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The Speech Signal and Linguistic

Representation
3

33

Are the physical speech signal and abstract

phonological representation similar or different?
They are different.
The abstract phonological representation is made up
of discrete phonological units (consonants, vowels ,
syllables, rhythmic units, words with varied vocal
effects) whereas their corresponding portions in the
physical signals overlap and the therefore the
utterance is continuous

The Speech Signal and Linguistic

Representation
4

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Is the relationship between the continuous physical signal the

hearer receives its idealized phonological representation direct ?
Not always.
This continuous physical signal is subject to other linguistic and
extralinguistic factors:
Noise - chewing- radio- driving
What will be done in the hearers mind?
A set of complex mental processing mechanisms must consult the
hearers grammar and lexicon in order to reconstruct the linguistic
representation of the speakers meaning. This is the result of
neurophysiological operations specialized for speech perception as
a linguistic object.
A process done unconsciously since the actual stimulus (the
physical signal) is not available to us.

The Speech Signal and Linguistic

Representation
5

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Perception requires that the hearer should have

linguistic competence or knowledge .
Otherwise , what he perceives is just a jumble of
disorganized sounds.
Animal knowledge is a matter of a set of acoustic
signals associated with their names and commands.
For human , understanding a message involves
different processes related to sounds, words,
sentences takes the form of mental representation
reconstructed from the physical speech signal.

Origins of Contemporary
Psycholinguistics
1

36

The modern era of psycholinguistics started with the two

seminars sponsored by the Social Science Research Councils
(1951,1953) and then the subsequent publishing of Osgood and
Sebeeks Psycholinguistics (1965).
Taxonomic analysis was dominating where their method of
analysis was to listen to the speaker of the language, figure out
the phonological units, and then classify them into higher level
categories.
This was adopted by the behaviourist psychologists who
believed that all behaviours (language is one of them) could be
associated linked chains of smaller behaviours.
The thread that bound linguists and psychologists was the view
that everything interesting about language is directly observable
in the physical speech signal.

Origins of Contemporary
Psycholinguistics
2

37

Sapir (1949) didnt satisfied with this traditional view stating, in

his paper The Psychological Reality of Phonemes, that the
mental representation of language should be addressed rather
than its physical representation.
Chomsky opened the door for a new way to study the human
language stating that speech shouldnt be the object of the
study, instead the rules in the mind that create sentences and
underlie observable speech .
George Miller (1965) supported this Chomskyan view , and
their papers published in the second book of the Social Science
Research Council (Saporta1965).
The adaptation of Chomskys ideas in this 2010 book indicates
clear their domination nature.