Semester 5

Psycholinguistics
Week 1:Introduction

Prf. EL GHOUATI
 Course objectives
—The main objectives of this module
are:
— to introduce the students to the basics of
psycholinguistics
— to familiarize the sts with the intricate and
multi-faceted relations between language
and the human brain.
Course Contents
— Language and the human brain.
— The human brain and its functions.
— Speech perception.
— Speech production.
— Speech production and comprehension.
— The mental lexicon.
— Language acquisition.
Module Evaluation
— Final Exam (essay Writing)
PSCHOLINGUISTICS as a multidisciplinary area
— Psycholinguistics is a multidisciplinary area, signifying that it overlaps with
other areas of learning. Psycholinguistics has relationships with the
following areas of knowledge:
— 1. Linguistics: Psycholinguistics largely draws on linguistics for its basic concepts. It is
essentially the study of language in relation to mind.
— 2. Psychology (Cognitive Psychology): Mind is one of the principal subject matters of
psychology. Mind, its processes and faculties are basically studied in cognitive psychology
that deals with thinking, thinking about thinking, memory, attention, language,
perception, problem solving and coping ability, decision making ability, intuition and
creativity.
— 3. Philosophy: Philosophy (literally; love of wisdom) is essentially the study of reality.
Philosophy touches upon semantics, rhetoric, logic, aesthetics, metaphysics and
epistemology.
— 4.Computer Science: First of all, mind is often described and explained on analogy with
computer. Mind works like computer. Noam Chomsky modeled many of his concepts after
computer operations and programs. Second, the notion of artificial intelligence cannot be fully
appreciated without recourse to computer science. Artificial intelligence (AI) focuses on the idea of
transferring human abilities to machine.
— 5. Anthropology: Anthropology is the study of the physical structure of man, evolution, culture,
worldview and language. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis largely draws upon culture and language. Franz
Boas, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf looked at language from the perspective of
anthropology.
What is psycholinguistics?
— The study of the mental representations and processes involved in
language use, including the production, comprehension and storage
of spoken and written language (Warren, 2013)
— It explores the relationship between the human mind and language.
— It treats the language user as an individual rather than a
representative of a society
— An individual whose linguistic performance is determined by the
strengths and limitations of the mental apparatus which we all share
(Field 2003)
— It traces similar patterns of linguistic behaviour across large groups
of individual speakers of a particular language or of all languages.
— Tries to explain how the configuration of the human mind shapes
communication - even though the processes involved may be so
well established that we are no longer aware of them.
How is language represented in the brain?
— How are words stored in the mental lexicon, i.e. the
dictionary in our heads? Is the mental lexicon like a
dictionary? For instance, is ‘cat’ listed near the similar
sounding word ‘catch’ or near the meaning-related word
‘dog’? Or neither? Or both?
— Do we have phoneme-sized chunks of language in our
heads? That is, as part of recognizing the word ‘cat’ do we
also recognize the component sounds /k/, /æ/ and /t/?
— How is the meaning of a speech represented in our
memory?
— Is ‘government’ a single word or ‘govern’ + ‘ment’?
— Is the plural form of ‘cats’ represented in the lexicon, or
just the singular ‘cat’?
How is language processed in the brain?
— How do we recognize words so effortlessly?
— Do we analyze the speech signal phoneme-by-phoneme, or do we
identify complete syllables or even larger units?
— If ‘cats’ is not represented in the lexicon, does that mean that we use
a rule to get the plural form of ‘cat’, and how does this work for
irregular plurals like ‘children’?
— When we speak, how do we convert an idea into an utterance?
— As listeners, how do we get from hearing an utterance to developing
our own representation of the idea(s) being expressed by that
utterance?
— What stages do we have to go through during the construction of
utterances? For example, do we first generate a sentence structure
and only then populate it with words from our mental lexicon, or do
we first choose words and then build a structure around those
words?
How do we produce utterances/language?
— When we speak, how do we convert an idea into an
utterance?
— What stages do we have to go through during the
construction of utterances? For example, do we first
generate a sentence structure and only then populate it
with words from our mental lexicon, or do we first
choose words and then build a structure around those
words?
— Do the processes involved in language production and
comprehension influence one another, and if so in what
ways?
Main concerns of Psycholinguistics
— Language processing: What precisely goes on when we are listening, speaking,
reading and writing? What stages do we go through when engaging in these skills?
— Language storage and access: How is vocabulary stored in our mind? How do
we manage to find it when we need it? What form do grammar rules take?
— Comprehension theory: How do we manage to bring world knowledge to bear
upon new information that is presented to us? How do we manage to construct a
global meaning representation from words that we hear or read?
— Language and the brain: What neurological activity corresponds to reading or
listening? Where does the brain store linguistic knowledge and semantic concepts?
What neurological and muscular activity is involved in speech? Can differences in
the human brain account for the fact that our species has developed language?
— Exceptional circumstances:Why do some infants grow up with language
impairments such as dyslexia or stuttering? How does brain damage or age affect
language?
— First language acquisition: How do infants come to acquire their first
language? What stages do they go through in developing syntax, vocabulary and
phonology? What evidence is there that we possess an innate faculty for language
which enables us to acquire our first language, despite the supposedly poor quality
of the input we receive?
Linguistics Vs. Psycholinguistics?
— linguistics describes languages, dialects and speech styles accurately and in
detail: the different kinds of speech sounds, how the sentences are put together,
the kinds of meanings the words have, how the speakers make new words.
— Linguistics also gives us the concepts and vocabulary that we need to describe
language problems accurately. It also lets us catalogue the differences and
similarities between languages or dialects in ways that don’t make (or thinly
conceal) value judgments.
— Psycholinguistics: tries to discover how we manage to actually DO all the
things that go into speaking and understanding, reading and writing.
— How do sound waves hitting your ear become, in less than half a second, your
understanding of what another person means?
— How, in speaking a modest two-second sentence, have you managed to find the
dozen or so words that you need to express your meaning out of the tens of
thousands of words stored in your mind, put them in the right order so that they
make sense.
— Psycholinguistics uses experiments and intense laboratory observations to break
into these incredibly fast, highly skilled language performances.
— It also integrates the current findings of Neurolinguistics about how language
is remembered and deployed by our brains.
Summary
— The notion that language is a product of the human mind gives rise
to two interconnected goals, both the concern of psycholinguistics:
— to establish an understanding of the processes which underlie the
system we call language.
— to examine language as a product of the human mind and thus as
evidence of the way in which human beings organize their thoughts and
impose patterns upon their experiences.
Thank you