Chapter one
An introduction to psycholinguistics: What do language users know?
Chapter Outline
Introduction
- The Domain of Pyscholinguistic Inquiry
Language
- What is language?
- Is language species-specific?
- Distinguishing between language & speech
What speakers & listeners know: A brief survey of linguistics
- Levels of language analysis
- Phonology
- Sequences of sounds: Phonotactics
- The lexicon & semantics
- Morphology: The study of word formation
- Syntax: Combining words to form sentences
- Pragmatics & discourse
- Metalinguistic capacity: The ability to analyze our own language
Language diversity & universals
- Oral & signed languages
- Written language
The evolution of psycholinguistic inquiry
The acquisition of language by children
Key Concepts From the Book
I. Language is one of the most basic elements of human existence. Although language is normally an effortless part of everyday life, its production, comprehension, and acquisition are based upon complicated mental processes. The goal of psycholinguistics is to explore and understand these processes. (Pages 2-3)
II.
All human languages are structured symbolic systems with conventions or rules governing a number of subsystems, including:
A. phonology
B. morphology
C. the lexicon
D. semantics
E. syntax
F. pragmatics (pages 2-3)
III. The ultimate goal of psycholinguistic inquiry is to develop an integrated account of language use and understanding. The field covers four basic fields:
A. Language comprehension; including speech perception, lexical access, sentence processing, and discourse. Concerns relevant to written language are also part of this domain. (Page 3)
B.
Speech production; the study of how concepts are put into linguistic form. To gain insight into these processes, investigators often must deduce probable conclusions from speakers' mistakes, including hesitations, pausal phenomena and speech disfluencies. (Page 4)
C.
Language Acquisition; how children learn to produce and understand language, or developmental psycholinguistics. (Page 4)
D.
A final area relevant to the study of psycholinguistics concerns the search for neurological bases of human language functioning. Neurolinguistics investigates the anatomical and physiological correlates of language behaviors. (Page 4)
IV.
Human language, unlike the communication systems of animals, is characterized by hierarchical structure making it infinitely creative and able to express the full range of speakers' experiences. Language is also governed by rules that are arbitrary in nature. The words of a language are symbols that are also arbitrary. Characteristics shared by all languages (such as the categories noun and verb) are known as language universals. (Pages 5-6)
V.
True language is considered a uniquely human behavior. Virtually all humans spontaneously acquire language without overt instruction. Many other species have fairly complex communication systems, and some animals (particularly primates) have been able to learn to use human language. However, animal communication remains context or stimulus driven. For this reason, language is considered species-specific. (Page 6)
VI.
Although most languages in the world are spoken languages, language is not the same as speech. A number of languages are signed or gestural, and these languages (American Sign Language is an example) embody all of the basic linguistic features of spoken languages. (Page 7)
VII.
Linguistics is concerned primarily with the structure of a particular language, or of languages in general. As a science, it is descriptive rather that prescriptive. Linguists attempt to account for what people actually say and find acceptable (or well-formed) rather than to formulate language rules that we must live by. (Page 7)
VIII. Language understanding is dependent upon a number of smaller tasks. These are:
A. recognizing the sounds of the message
B. identifying the words in the message and associating them with their meanings
C. analyzing the grammatical structure of the message
D. interpreting the message in its context (Page 8)
IX. Every human language may be analyzed in terms of its phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. These elements interact with one another in complex ways, and many aspects of our linguistic knowledge are subconscious in nature. (Page 8)
X. Part of language understanding relies upon phonology, or recognition of the particular sounds used in a language. Any single language usually employs a subset of approximately 23 consonants and 9 vowels. These distinctive sounds in a language are its phonemes. Phonemes are contrastive: changing from one to another within a word produces either a change in meaning or a non-word. (Pages 8-9)
XI. Speakers of a language must be able to produce all the meaningful sound contrasts in a language, and know which sound contrasts are not meaningful. Words that differ in only one phoneme are minimal pairs (they have one contrasting phoneme). Some sounds are separate allophones of the same phoneme. Phonemes that are separate in some languages are allophones in others, and vice versa. (Pages 9-10)
XII. Although competent speakers of a language have no trouble recognizing allophones as variations of the same phoneme, the variety of different sounds encompassed by a single phoneme complicates such tasks as programming computers to understand speech. (Pages 10-12)
XIII. An understanding of phonology encompasses an understanding of phonotactics: the permissible sequences of sounds and the rules for combining sounds in a language. The final phonological task is the interpretation of prosody: intonation and stress patterns. (Page 12-13)
XIV. Each languages has its own lexicon, or dictionary of words. A competent speaker-hearer possesses a vast mental lexicon. Semantics is the study of word meaning and the ways in which words are related in the mental lexicon. (Page 13)
XV. The meaning of a word is not so simply explained as it might appear. Linguists categorize words as content words (words with external referential meaning) or function words (words that serve particular functions within the sentence by making the relations between the content words clear.) While the meaning of content words can be easy to define, the same cannot always be said of function words. (Pages 13-14)
XVI. In linguistics, the smallest meaningful unit in a language is a morpheme. A free morpheme is one that can stand by itself. A bound morpheme (such as a suffix) cannot stand alone. When certain morphemes are added to words, they change the word meaning or part of speech: these are called derivational morphemes and can be used to create new words. Inflectional morphemes, on the other hand, provide additional information about a word or its grammatical function. (Pages 14-15)
XVII. The rules for combining words into grammatical sentences depends upon syntax. English syntax is often highly dependent upon word order: changing word order can completely change the meaning of a sentence. Because the typical word order in English is subject-verb-object, English is sometimes called an S-V-O language. Some 75% of the world's languages are either S-V-O or S-O-V languages. Some languages are V-O-S or V-S-O, but O-V-S languages are quite rare. (Pages 16-17)
XVIII. Languages that are less dependent on word order express differences in sentence meaning with bound morphemes such as affixes to mark grammatical roles in a sentence. (Page 17)
XIX. Words in a sentence may be combined together to form constituents that can be combined into larger and larger units (such as clauses) that may be embedded within one another to form complex sentences of almost infinite length. Linguists describe the creativity of a natural language in terms of recursion: the ability to create new sentences by recursively embedding a new constituent into an existing constituent of the same type. (Page 19)
XX. Another type of linguistic creativity is found in coordinate sentences in which complete sentences are conjoined linearly. The ability to break sentences down into constituents makes it possible for us to understand or produce novel utterances. Our understanding of the rules that govern word combinations makes it possible for us to produce an endless number of comprehensible and well-formed sentences. (Pages 19-20)
XXI. Over the years, linguists have explored possible universal rules or grammars for language production and comprehension. In order to be meaningful, these rules would have to be learnable, and they would also need to capture common features of the grammars of all languages (Pages 19-20)
XXII. Linguist Noam Chomsky developed the theory of Transformational Generative (TG) Grammar, which is now known as the Standard Theory. He suggested that knowledge of the grammar of one's language consists of an abstract system of rules and principles that make up a speaker's grammatical competence. Competence is distinct from the actual use of language, or performance. (Page 20)
XXIII. According to the Standard Theory of TG grammar, language consists of deep structures (underlying meanings) and surface structures (the final spoken or written form of the utterance.) Grammatical rules can be divided into phrase-structure rules and transformational rules. Phrase structure rules specify the different constituents of a phrase and how they might combine to form the surface structure of a sentence. Transformational rules govern how structures may be modified without altering deep structures, by, for example, changing an utterance from active to passive voice. (Pages 20-22)
XXIV. The original theory of TG grammar offered the possibility of capturing our knowledge of language in a precise way, addressing the concepts of infinite creativity and universality. However, it suffered some learnability problems. Some of the posited transformational rules were very complicated. Furthermore, some of these rules were considered obligatory, while others were optional. The rules seemed too difficult to be mastered by children in a short time. (Page 23)
XXV. TG grammar stated that passives and other constructions take longer to process than simple sentences because the listener has to "undo" the transformations used to create these structures. This Derivational Theory of Complexity (DTC) hypothesis has been only partially supported by experimental results: more complex sentences do not necessarily take more time to process. This result may be due to parallel processing effects. (Pages 23-24)
XXVI. In the 1970s and 1980s, TG theory underwent substantial modification. The major successor to TG theory, Principles and Parameters Theory (PPT) (a.k.a Government and Binding [GB] theory) retains many of the fundamental notions of Transformational Grammar. However, in PPT, phrase-structure rules and transformational rules are greatly streamlined. (Pages 24-25)
XXVII. PPT posits that when elements of a sentence have been moved out of their regular places, they leave behind a "hole" or a trace in the sentence. Some research has shown that readers may reactivate this trace to its original position while reading. PPT also states that the movement of wh- words within a sentence is governed by Bounding Theory, which only allows them to move to "local landing sites." (Pages 25-26)
XXVIII. PPT states that the lexicon has a large role in the production of syntax. According to PPT, words in the lexicon are already associated with a number of rules governing their appropriate use in sentences. Information associated with individual words thus takes the place of many of the phrase structure rules codified by TG theory. (Page 26)
XXIX. PPT attempts to solve the learnability problems of TG by replacing the transformational rules with a few powerful innate principles called Universal Grammar (UG). Universal Grammar limits the number of hypotheses the language learner must choose among in order to understand the grammar of a language. UG accounts for the differences among languages by positing a number of parameters in the form of "yes-no" switches that a speaker must "set" to construct the grammar of her particular language (e.g. the "Null Subject Parameter" indicating whether a language requires a stated subject [English] or does not [Italian].) According to PPT theorists, these principles and parameters are innate. (Pages 26-27)
XXX. Syntactic theorists in the 1990s further streamlined of PPT to come up with the minimalist Program. According to this school of thought, d-structure and s-structure levels have been eliminated, leaving only Phonetic Form and Logical Form. Other current syntactic theories posit various non-transformational models, such as Lexical Function Grammar, Construction Grammar and Role and Reference Grammar. (Page 28)
XXXI. How language is used to accomplish various ends in the world is the domain of pragmatics, i.e. the appropriate wording and interpretation of language in a social context. Pragmatics requires that a speaker understand her audience and tailor the message accordingly -- using indirect, rather than direct commands as part of a politeness system for example. Knowledge of pragmatics also includes awareness of linguistic conventions about how to express oneself to different audiences. These specially-marked ways of speaking are called registers. (Pages 27-29)
XXXII. Pragmatics also covers the study of discourse -- verbal or written interactions longer than single utterances. Discourse processing often requires an understanding of a situational setting or context. Discourse conventions govern the way we understand and use connected language. (Page 29)
XXXIII. Metalinguistic capacity refers to our ability to analyze and reflect upon our own language. Although saying and understanding sentences (part of linguistic ability) is usually effortless, codifying the subconscious rules we use to make and understand well-formed sentences (part of metalinguistic ability) is far more difficult. Much of our knowledge of language is implicit, requiring psycholinguists to devise special experimental techniques to answer such metalinguistic questions as "How do I understand the meaning of a word?" "How do I find the words when I want to talk about things?" or "Are some words harder or easier for people to understand?" (Pages 29-31)
XXXIV. The languages of the world differ from each other greatly. One of the tasks of psycholinguistics is to come up with universal principles that apply to all languages, both in their use and in their acquisition. Linguists continue to search for rules, parameters and options that might form part of a Universal Grammar. Most research in this area has been carried out in the domain of developmental psycholinguistics. Possible operating principles governing the acquisition of language include the idea that children tend to listen to the ends of words (accounting for the rapid acquisition of inflectional endings) and that they avoid discontinuous elements, such as embedded clauses and the English present progressive (accounting for the fact that these elements occur later in language development, regardless of the language being learned.) (Pages 31-32)
XXXV. In addition to the many spoken languages of the world, there are a number of signed languages, that, like spoken languages, differ in their phonology, syntax, and lexicon. Basic similarities exist in language processing, whether a language is signed or spoken, including similarities in the types of language impairment exhibited by brain damaged subjects. (Pages 32-33)
XXXVI. The minimal unit of a written language system is called a grapheme. Systems, such as English, whose graphemes represent phonemes, are called alphabetic. Other systems include syllabaries (in which the graphemes represent syllables) as well as systems that are not sound-based, such as those that use logograms (symbols that represent whole words) or ideograms (symbols that represent ideas). (Pages 33-34)
XXXVII. Philosophers and scientists have been intrigued by the processes of language acquisition and production since the time of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), considered by some as the founder of modern psycholinguistics, developed early theories of speech production and devised many basic experimental measures such as reaction time. The field of psycholinguistics truly came into being during the early 1950s. Early psycholinguistic theories were largely based upon behaviorist principles. Many later theories were guided by Chomsky's Transformational Generative Grammar. The field of psycholinguistics is still evolving. (Pages 34-38)
XXXVIII. The study of language acquisition by children is an active area of psycholinguistic inquiry. Scholars are divided as to how much of language learning can be accounted for by the role of the environment, and how much is innate. (Pages 38-39)
