Introduction to

Linguistics

Chapter 9
Psycholinguistics
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 beings sound
making?

Watch a video clipAn

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?

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 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. 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 2 A dead person

with perfect speech organs
talks?

Imagine
Can a dead person talk?
Whats 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.
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 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 19thcentury 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 behavior
effects so profound that
friends saw him as "no
longer Gage."

2.1.3.1 Parts of the brain

Brain stem : connects the brain

to the spinal cord
Corpus callosum : connects
the two hemispheres
Left hemisphere
Right hemisphere

2.1.3.2 Locations of language

functions in the brain

Brocas area( ): anterior speech

cortex involved in the production of
speech
Wernickes area : posterior
speech cortex: involved in the
understanding of speech
Supplementary motor area
: superior speech cortex: involved in
the physical articulation of speech

Brocas 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 (
)
Question : How do human beings
acquire language?

3. How do human beings

acquire language?

Language acquisition
(Chapter 12)
Chomskys viewLanguage is innate.
LAD & UG
Pinkers viewInnate
Vaneechoutte and SkoylesMAD (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 rulegoverned. That is, sentences follow the
rules of some natural language.
Grammar rules transform underlying
meanings into grammatical sentences
of natural language.

Examples of overgeneralization

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 languagebased 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 languageoriented. 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
Well-oiled bicycle well-boiled icicle

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 nonnative 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 rulegoverned?
Question 2: Is comprehension
analytical?
Question 3: Is comprehension languagebased? 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?
great eye
grey tie
a name
an ice man
I scream
see Mable

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?

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 commonsense 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

Piagets view
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Chomskys view (Pinkers view)
Wittgensteins 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!