Instructor: DU Shihong

School of Foreign Languages, Southwest UniversityChapter 9 PsycholinguisticsIntroduction to Linguistics

Classroom ActivitiesWatch video clipsListen to my talkHave some discussion

ObjectivesYou 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.

ObjectivesYou will be able to1) 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 glance1) The biological foundation of language2) Language acquisition: overgeneralization and undergeneralization3) Language production: conceptualization, formulation, etc. 1) The biological foundation of language2) Language acquisition: overgeneralization and undergeneralization3) Language production: conceptualization, formulation, etc.4) Language comprehension: the comprehension of sound, word, sentence, and text

ProceduresStep 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 beings sound making?

Watch a video clipAn Einstein bird (3 min.)

QuestionsA 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 clip17 seconds)

An aphasiac American

QuestionWhat 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?Lets 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 beings ability to learn, to speak and to understand language.

2. What are the central issues in psycholinguistics?Try againhuman brain/mind language acquisitionlanguage productionlanguage comprehensionlanguage and thought.

Easy tasks?

2.1 The biological foundation of languageDogs cannot produce human language simply because they do not have speech organs of human type. Whats 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 ()Abnormal lips/ tongue/ teeth (motor mouththin lips, thick lips; Churchill)

Discussion 2A dead person with perfect speech organs talks?ImagineCan a dead person talk?Whats the difference between a dead person and an a living person?Airstreams? Brain?

2.1.2 Modification of air streamBirds are much better than beasts in modifying air stream. Thats 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 brainRussell dreams of a super power to unlock the universe. Outer universe vs. inner universeWe 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 (), and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavioreffects so profound that friends saw him as "no longer Gage."

2.1.3.1 Parts of the brainBrain stem: connects the brain to the spinal cordCorpus callosum: connects the two hemispheresLeft hemisphereRight hemisphere

2.1.3.2 Locations of language functions in the brainBrocas area(): anterior speech cortex involved in the production of speechWernickes area: posterior speech cortex: involved in the understanding of speechSupplementary motor area: superior speech cortex: involved in the physical articulation of speech

Brocas area: the red area

2.1.3.3 The localisation viewOversimplified viewSpecific aspects of language ability can be accorded specific locations in the brainRecent research:Left hemisphere: analytic processingRight hemisphere: holistic processing

Birds and beasts do not have such a complicated brain.Transition()Question : How do human beings acquire language?

3. How do human beings acquire language?Language acquisition (Chapter 12)Chomskys viewLanguage is innate. LAD & UGPinkers viewInnateVaneechoutte and SkoylesMAD (music acquiring device) vs. LAD (language acquisition device)

Discussion: How do you pick up your mother tongue?Evidence???Empirical knowledge????

3.1 OvergeneralizationThe extension of a rule beyond its limitOvergeneralization.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-generalizationAn 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 / comfortablerThe 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-generalizationWhen 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.

DiscussionAsk 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 productionThe 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 productionLanguage production contains four successive stages: conceptualization, formulation, articulation and self regulation.

4.1 ConceptualizationThere 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 .

DiscussionThe 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.

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

Discussiona. 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.

Discussionb. 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 FormulationCf: pages 224-225, TBOne view of formulation:SegmentationSelection StructuringLinearization(Evidence from speech errors)

Discussion: Speech errorsSpoonerisms Well-oiled bicycle well-boiled icicle Try: Peter Piper picks a pack of pickled pepper

4.3 ArticulationArticulation 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-regulationFinally, 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

DiscussionDo 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 recognitionA model of cohort theory: (Demonstrate the word letter by letter)SPINNINGSupport for Cohort TheoryMany 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 eyean aima nice manice creamseem 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 SentencesGarden 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".

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

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 comprehensionOrganization at different levels affects comprehensibility1) Microstructure - local structure2) 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.

QuestionDoes language determine thought? Or the other way round?

Linguistic relativityLinguistic relativityLinguistic determinism: Strong vs. weak

The nature of thought

Animal thinks?Mental language Mental image

Views Piagets viewSapir-Whorf hypothesisChomskys view (Pinkers view)Wittgensteins view

DiscussionQuestions 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!