Chapter 9 Psycholinguistics

Introduction to Linguistics

Instructor: DU Shihong

School of Foreign Languages, Southwest University

Classroom Activities

Watch video clips Listen to my talk Have some discussion

Objectives

You will learn how the human mind /brain supports the learning, comprehension, and production of language. The students will understand the relation of language to thought.

Objectives You will be able to 1) develop general knowledge of basic issues in

psycholinguistics, including: language acquisition, language production, language comprehension, and the relation of language to thought;

2) identify the basic areas of the brain involved in language and describe the functions carried out by these areas;

3) list the major issues in the areas of speech perception, word recognition, sentence processing, text processing, reading and language acquisition;

4) explore the major theories in the area of psycholinguistics.

Key points at a glance

1) The biological foundation of language 2) Language acquisition: overgeneralization

and undergeneralization 3) Language production: conceptualization,

formulation, etc. 1) The biological foundation of language

2) Language acquisition: overgeneralization and undergeneralization

3) Language production: conceptualization, formulation, etc.

4) Language comprehension: the comprehension of sound, word, sentence, and text

Procedures

Step 1: Question and video clips Question1: You know birds and beasts,

both of them can produce sound. The question is whose sound production is more like human being’s sound making?

Watch a video clip—“An Einstein bird” (3 min.)

Questions

A bird is much cleverer than a beast. Right?

Have you ever watched a beast talk in a “language”?

Can we teach a bird to learn a language?

The other way round, can a bird teach a human to speak? (Watch a video clip—17 seconds)

An aphasiac American

Question

What is needed in learning a language? In other words, how do we learn a language? This is one of the central issues in

psycholinguistics. To answer the questions here, you have to

concern about human brain/mind, language acquisition, language production, language comprehension, and language and thought. These are the central topics in psycholinguistics.

1. What is psycholinguistics?

Let’s draw a definition of psycholinguistics. Take a try?

Definition 1: ( Cf. Para. 2 , Page 220, TB) Definition 2: Psycholinguistics is a new

science which attempts to study language as a psychological process, a study of great theoretical and practical significance. It takes the human language and its psychological processes as its subject area. Its aim is to find out about the structures and processes that underlie human being’s ability to learn, to speak and to understand language.

2. What are the central issues in psycholinguistics?

Try again human brain/mind language acquisition language production language comprehension language and thought. Easy tasks?

2.1 The biological foundation of language

Dogs cannot produce human language simply because they do not have speech organs of human type. What’s more, they do not have human brain.

2.1.1 Speech organs (Review) Name parts of our speech organs? Take

a try!

Discussion 1: Damages cause a person to lose speech?

Instances of abnormal or damaged speech organs

Damage to the nasal cavity Damage to the vocal cord (李文华 ) Abnormal lips/ tongue/ teeth (motor

mouth—thin lips, thick lips; Churchill)

Discussion 2 ： A dead person with perfect speech organs talks?

Imagine Can a dead person talk? What’s the difference between a dead

person and an a living person? Airstreams? Brain?

2.1.2 Modification of air stream

Birds are much better than beasts in modifying air stream.

That’s why Professor Deacon claims that you cannot teach a dog to learn a language. But we can teach some birds to speak.

The question is that we think a dog is much more intelligent than any chicken. Right? Brains

2.1.3 Human brain

Russell dreams of a super power to unlock the universe. Outer universe vs. inner universe

We know little about our brain, but we do know something for sure in regard to language.

1848: discovery of language ability as located in the left part of the brain.

Phineas Gage influenced 19th-century discussion about the brain

Phineas P. Gage was a railroad construction foreman now remembered for his incredible survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying one or both of his brain's frontal lobes (大脑前庭 ), and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior—effects so profound that friends saw him as "no longer Gage."

2.1.3.1 Parts of the brain

Brain stem（脑干） : connects the brain to the spinal cord

Corpus callosum（脑胼胝体） : connects the two hemispheres

Left hemisphere Right hemisphere

2.1.3.2 Locations of language functions in the brain

Broca’s area(布洛卡区 ): anterior speech cortex involved in the production of speech

Wernicke’s area（威尼克区） : posterior speech cortex: involved in the understanding of speech

Supplementary motor area（辅助运动区） : superior speech cortex: involved in the physical articulation of speech

Broca’s area: the red area

2.1.3.3 The localisation view

Oversimplified view Specific aspects of language ability can

be accorded specific locations in the brain

Recent research: Left hemisphere: analytic processing Right hemisphere: holistic processing

Birds and beasts do not have such a complicated brain.

Transition ： ( 骂人：“鸟人”与“畜生”不通人性，不懂人话。 )

Question : How do human beings acquire language?

3. How do human beings acquire language?

Language acquisition (Chapter 12) Chomsky’s view—Language is innate.

LAD & UG Pinker’s view—Innate Vaneechoutte and Skoyles—MAD

(music acquiring device) vs. LAD (language acquisition device)

Discussion: How do you pick up your mother tongue?

Evidence??? Empirical knowledge????

3.1 Overgeneralization

The extension of a rule beyond its limit—Overgeneralization.

Presupposition: Language is rule-governed. That is, sentences follow the rules of some natural language. Grammar rules transform underlying meanings into grammatical sentences of natural language.

Examples of over-generalization

An example of over-generalization is the use of dog to refer to other mammals roughly the size of dogs such as goats in addition to dogs.

me three / comfortabler The cat is on the mat, the cat is on top

of the mat. *The mat is under the cat, the mat is

beneath the cat etc. Question : Why is there overgeneralization in

language acquisition? Cf: Negative-transfer

3.2 Under-generalization

When a child uses a word(or a linguistic construct) in a more limited way than adults do, this phenomenon is called undergeneralization.

Examples of under-generalization are harder to observe because they require noticing that the child fails to use a word for a referent where an adult would use the word. An example would be the use of dog to refer only to a particular dog.

Discussion

Ask the students to give some examples.

Do adults have the problem of undergenerlization?

Press: "Mr. President, how do you feel about the situation with Katrina?"

Bush: "Well, once we find Katrina, we're going to bring her to justice!"

Bushism – a mirror of language production

"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" —Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

4. Language production

The problem of overgeneralization or undergeneralization occurs in the process of language acquisition. However, it also tells us something about language production. Indeed, it mirrors the process of language-producing.

Language production is a process from idea generation to language expression. It is a mental process that is heavily influenced by language users' culture.

4. Language production

Language production contains four successive stages: conceptualization, formulation, articulation and self regulation.

4.1 Conceptualization

There is general agreement as to the fundamental components which are constitutive for the language production apparatus. Conceptualization, formulation, articulation, and self-regulation, this four-partitive model has been the referential frame for most of the work on language production. Following several years of intensive research in the field of language production, insights have been gained into the two components that involve linguistic structures: the formulator and the articulator. The conceptualizer, however, is still more or less terra incognita. It is not only that we are unable to specify the nature of the processes involved, we do not know what the format and units are in which to model a LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT.

Discussion: Is there a mentalese (mental language)?

There are a number of diverging hypotheses on the point in question, the role of language. Three positions can be distinguished:

The radical position 1: processes in the conceptualizer are language-free, universal, and operate on the basis of conceptual primitives. This is the view put forward, for instance, in the approach to language and concepts by Jackendoff and related work on production by Bierwisch and Schreuder .

Discussion

The radical position 2: processes in the conceptualizer are language-based in nature (Whorfian view). This position is advocated in recent work by Lucy and Levinson.

Discussion

The moderate position: there is an interdependence between conceptualization and linguistic knowledge with two possible assumptions:

Discussion

a. The preverbal message, as the result of the conceptual planning process, is language-oriented. This means that a reorganization of the conceptual material takes place at the end of the planning process, thereby shaping the message according to language-specific requirements. Levelt assumes that these processes do not affect the WHAT or content of the message. This belongs to macrostructural planning. According to his model, language specificity concerns only HOW content is packaged for verbalization. Language-specific planning occurs therefore only at the microstructural level.

Discussion

b. The THINKING-FOR-SPEAKING hypothesis, which argues that conceptualization as a component of language production is always based on language-specific principles. The level of specificity of these principles remains an open question (Talmy 1988). Important for the line of argumentation is that under this view language-dependent conceptualization is relevant at the global (and local) level of message generation.

4.2 Formulation

Cf: pages 224-225, TB One view of formulation: Segmentation Selection Structuring Linearization (Evidence from speech errors)

Discussion: Speech errors

Spoonerisms 首音误置 Well-oiled bicycle well-boiled icicle 冰柱

Try: Peter Piper picks a pack of pickled pepper

4.3 Articulation

Articulation of speech sounds is the third and a very important stage of production. Once we have organized our thoughts into a linguistic plan, this information must be sent from the brain to the muscles in the speech system so that they can then execute the required movements and produce the desired sounds.

We depend on vocal organs to produce speech sounds so as to express ourselves. In the production of speech sounds, the lungs, larynx and lips may work at the same time and thus form co-articulation.

4.4 Self-regulation

Finally, we monitor our speech, assessing whether it is what we intended to say and whether we said it the way we intended to.

Self-repairs Self interruption Editing expressions

Discussion

Do native speakers make mistakes? Errors are committed only by non-

native speakers, but not by native speakers.

Native speakers often make “mistakes” and correct themselves immediately, which gives us deep understanding of the production process.

5. Language comprehension

Questions to think about: Question 1: Is comprehension rule-

governed? Question 2: Is comprehension

analytical? Question 3: Is comprehension

language-based? Context-based? Image-based?

Understanding?

Message?

5. Language comprehension

One of the primary aims of psycholinguistics is to understand how people create and understand language.

Language comprehension is an important aspect of day to day functioning in adulthood. Comprehension of written and spoken language relies on the ability to correctly process word and phrase meanings, sentence grammar, and discourse or text structure.

5.1 Speech perception/ Sound recognition

The main problem of word recognition is deciphering the speech signal.

Speech is a continuous signal; there is usually no pause between units of meaning.

Also, a single phoneme will be acoustically very different when pronounced by different people at different times.

Question

How do we understand what we hear?

5.2 Word recognition

Question: How do we recognize words?

One theory is the cohort theory: it hypothesizes that word recognition begins with the formation of a group of words beginning with the initial sound and proceeds sound by sound, with the cohort of words decreasing as more sounds are perceived:

5.2 Word recognition

A model of cohort theory: (Demonstrate the word letter by letter)

SPINNING Support for Cohort Theory Many experiments have shown that

word recognition is much more impaired by the mispronunciation of the initial letter of the word than by the mispronunciation of later letters

Question: What about situations with no clear word boundary?

In spoken language, there is usually no pause between one word and the next.

So, for example, [papepozd], it could be either Papa posed or Pop opposed. More examples are:

What about situations with no clear word boundary?

grey tie a name an ice man I scream see Mable

great eye an aim a nice man ice cream seem able

5.3 Sentence recognition/ Syntactic processing

Once a word has been identified, it is used to construct a syntactic structure.

Psycholinguists generally assume that the structure is built as soon as possible, rather than waiting to see what the whole string of words is before deciding.

Ambiguity

However, there are complications due to the ambiguity of individual words and the different ways they can be fit into phrases.

For example: The cop saw the spy with the

binoculars. The horse raced past the barn

fell.

Garden Path Sentences

“ Garden Path” sentences like this one are often extremely difficult to parse; not because they are syntactically complex (The car driven past the barn crashed is much easier to understand but syntactically identical), but because of the way we make meaning while we listen.

The "garden path" is a reference to the saying "to be led up the garden path", meaning "to be misled".

Question

How do people create the meaning of sentences as they listen?

赵本山语言小品？

5.4 Text comprehension

Text Comprehension is "intentional thinking during which meaning is constructed through interactions between text and reader". Research suggests that text comprehension is enhanced when readers actively relate the ideas represented in print to their own knowledge and experiences and construct mental pictures in their memory.

Text comprehension

Organization at different levels affects comprehensibility

1) Microstructure - local structure 2) Macrostructure - global structure

6. Language and thought

A variety of different authors, theories and fields purport influences between language and thought.

Many point out the seemingly common-sense realization that upon introspection we seem to think in the language we speak. A number of writers and theorists have extrapolated upon this idea.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

in linguistics states that the structure of a mother language influences the way adherents to it perceive the world. It has found at best very limited experimental support, at least in its strong form. For instance, a study showing that speakers of languages lacking a subjunctive mood such as Chinese experience difficulty with hypothetical problems has been discredited. However, another study has shown that subjects in memory tests are more likely to remember a given color if their mother language includes a word for that color.

Question

Does language determine thought? Or the other way round?

Linguistic relativity

Linguistic relativity Linguistic determinism: Strong vs.

weak

The nature of thought

Animal thinks? Mental language Mental image

Views

Piaget’s view Sapir-Whorf’ hypothesis Chomsky’s view (Pinker’s view) Wittgenstein’s view

Discussion

Questions to think about: Is a length-less stick possible in mind? Is thought inseparable from language?

Review

Exercises and Discussion Questions

The end

Thank you for your patience and participation!