PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

1. PSYCHOLINGUISTICS Presentator FIRAT GİRAY

2. What is Psycholinguistics? Psycholinguistics explores the relation between the human mind and language.

3. Psycholinguistic research falls into six major areas: 1- Language processing: How do we manage to turn a grammatical structure into a piece of information? 2- Language storage and access: How is vocabulary stored in our mind and how do we manage to find it when we need it? 3- Comprehension theory: How do we manage to construct a global meaning representation from words that we hear or read?

4. 4- Language and the brain: Where does the brain store linguistic knowledge and semantic concepts? Is the language specific to human? 5-Language in exceptional circumstances: Why do some infants grow up with language impairments? How does brain damage or age affect language? 6- First language acquisition: How do infants come to acquire their first language? What stages do they go through in developing syntax, vocabulary and phonology?

5. LANGUAGE, SPEECH AND COMMUNICATION In considering whether language is a skill peculiar to human race, three approaches are possible: • We can specify what we mean by “language” and then attempt to establish if the communication system of any other species fits our criteria. - We can establish whether other species are capable of acquiring speech or language. -We can establish how language evolved and how long it has been property of the human race and its ancestors.

6. Communication • Simply communication means exchanged information by two individuals. • The language is not the only type of communication • There are also paralinguistic techniques to convey messages and feelings; those are hand signals, body language, smiles, nods etc. • However, there are other non-linguistic means of communication which do: for example, grunts, groans, snorts, sighs and whimpers. But, we can only classify such sounds as communication if the producer intends by using them to express some kind of message.

7. Language There are four important characteristics of language: 1- Language is voluntary (under individual control) 2- Language is symbolic. So the connection between the word “rose” and its reality we see on Earth is only arbitrary and conventional (accepted by people). 3- Language is systematic. For example, in English we do not use the word “afraid” for the whole range of types of fear because we have alternatives such as “timid, scared”. 4- Language operates in two different modalities: speech and writing.

8. Speech • Speech may be characterized by the fact that it involves vocalization • Two factors determine the ability of the language user to produce speech-like sounds: - The shape, size and position of the articulators that we use, - The ability to breathe and utter sounds at the same time. • There are two types of speech which we regard as less ‘meaningful’ than others: - Expletives such as Oh! to express surprise or Ow! to express pain. - Phatic utterances such as Nice day! or All right?

9. LANGUAGE AND THE BRAIN • According to Nativist, human infant must have a kind of genetically transmitted language faculty to acquire language so rapidly and successfully. Also, the structure form of the brain is different from other species. However, these differences do not prove the Nativist case. • So, we might approach the issue from the opposite (Cognitivist) angle and suggest that differences in the “operaiton” of the human brain are what enabled us to evolve language when other species could not.

10. parts of the brain • Broca’s Area: Involved inthe production of speech • Wernicke’s Area: Involved in the understanding of speech • The Motor Cortex: Controlling the movement of the muscles (moving hands, feet, arms etc.) • Arcuate Fasciculus: A bundle of nerve fibers which form a crucial connection between Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas.

12. Localization Localization means that different human abilities and behaviors were traceable to specific parts of the brain.

14. Lateralization Lateralization is the term used to refer any cognitive functions which are primarily localized to one side of the brain or the other. - According to researches and some evidences in aphasia studies shows that the language ability is on the left hemisphere of the brain.

16. Comparisons between the brains of human beings and other species 1- The cortex is much more extensive in human beings. 2- Human pre-frontal areas are up to six times bigger than those of chimpanzees. 3- The brains of other species are divided into two hemispheres as the brain of human being. 4- In human beings, agreater proportion of the motor area is given over to the control of mouth, tongue and jaw.

17. 5- The human cerebellum is much larger, relative to brain size, than in other species. 6- The motor areas in the human cortex appear to exercise a high degree of control over the larynx, which regulates the passage of air in breathing and speech

18. KNOWING A WORD An important distinction needs to be made between two types of item in the mental store: • CONTENT words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) which carry the kind of meaning that we can look up in a dictionary. • FUNCTION words which do not have a clear meaning but which contribute to the syntactic structure of the text. Ex: the, of etc.

19. KNOWING A WORD • On encountering a content word, a listener not only has to find a match in the phonological store but also has to access the meaning of the word. • On encountering a function word, a listener only needs to match the word to a phonological sequence which is stored in the mind.

20. Form • Phonological/ ortographic information: We need some kind of mental representation of a word against which we can match any example of the word that we encounter Phonological form Ortographic form(In speech) (In reading) /gıv/ give, give MEANING (GIVE)

21. Form • Morphological Information: In order to use a word, we need to know how to modify it when, for example, we want to refer to more than one item or to place an event in the past. There are two types morhology: Inflectional: Ex: Give Gave Derivational: Ex: Happy Un-happy

22. Meaning • Syntax: Syntactic information about a word. Using the example of ‘give’, the lexical entry would need to contain information on word class (give = a verb) to enable the word to be used in generating sentences. • Range of senses: One word may have several linked senses. For example “turn” in these sentences: - I turned the corner. - Turn over the page. - The room turned cold.

23. LEXICAL STORAGE AND LEXICAL ACCESS Psychology of words and word meaning makes an important distinction between: • Lexical Storage: how words are stored in our minds in relation to each other. • Lexical Access: how we reach a word when we need it.

24. Storage Assists Access Words are not stored in the mind independently. The notion of words as linked by a network of forms and meaning is an important one when considering an infant or a foreign-language learner acquires their vocabulary. For example if a child learns the word ‘terrified’, it has to a) form a connection with “horrified and terrier” which are similar in form. b) form a connection with “afraid and scared” which are similar (but distinct) in meaning.

25. Weak Links and Strong Links Within the mental lexicon, some words are clearly more closely than others. Connectionist view explains this as when a connection is used a great deal, it gets proportionately stronger; when a connection is little used, it gets weaker. • Frequency: the words we use most are the ones that are easier for us to retrieve. • Collocation: we retrieve ceratin words together because they are so closely connected. Ex: heavy smoker but never *large smoker or *compulsive smoker.

26. Spreading Activation Part of the evidence for associative links between words come from a phenomenon called spreading activation. If you have just recently seen the word “doctor”, you will recognise words such as patient, hospital or medicine more quickly as a result. For example when you read a text with the title “camels”, your reading would benefit from two distinct processes: • Spreading activation: Seeing the word “camel” would trigger automatic associations with closely connected words in your lexicon such as hump, desert, sand and help you recognise these words more quickly. • World knowledge: Knowing that the text is about camels might lead you to expect that there may be something in the text about storing water in the hump, something about survival in a hot climate etc.

27. INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH • Behaviourists argued that the human mind was unknowable. The only scientific source of data for psychology was human behaviour, which was observable in a way that mental process were not. • Cognitivists reacted against behaviourism by proposing an approach which charts flow of information through the brain while a particular mental task is performed. Raw data is acted upon stage by stage by the mind and is progressively reshaped. Let’s have a look a kind of information processing which occurs when somebody asks you the way to the station.

28. Identify the words in the question ↓ Organise the words into a syntactic pattern ↓ Turn the question into a proposition(an abstract idea) ↓ Search your memory for information ↓ Retrieve the information ↓ Turn the information into words ↓ Utter the words

29. The Storage of Data Early information processing theory suggested that there were three types of memory store, with data transformed as it passed between them: • Sensory storage: an exact trace of the current stimulus • Short term storage: of information currently being processed • Long term storage: of knowledge

31. Levels of Representation The process of producing or understanding language involves taking linguistic information through a series of stages (levels of representation) and changing it at each step. • Bottom-up processing: A listener reaches the larger units from smaller units. For example; listener builds acoustic features into phonemes, phonemes into syllables, syllables into words… until abstract meaning. • Top-down processing: Using higher-level information such as context and whole words to support lower-level processes such as word and phoneme recognition. For example, when we hear a word like “velatives”, we understand that it is actually “relatives”.

32. WRITING sYSTEMS • A writing system: a method of writing such as the alphabet. • A script: a form of writing (Arabic script, English script). • An orthography: the writing conventions of a particular language. Three different types of writing system are used by the world’s languages. • Alphabets: with a symbol for each phoneme of the language • Syllabaries: with a symbol for each syllable of the language • Logographic systems: with a symbol for each word of the language. - The first two are based upon the phonology of the language while the third is based upon the lexical system of the language.

33. DECODING IN READING - Lower level process includes decoding (recognising words in the text) and accessing lexical entries. They are highly automatic in a skilled reader; that is, few demands upon Working Memory and leaving capacity for higher level processes such as building overall meaning. - Higher level process includes applying bacground knowledge to the text, inferring meaning, interpreting the writer’s intentions… These are much more under the conscious control of the reader. Therefore, they make considerable demands upon Working Memory.

34. a) Sub-lexical and lexical route A lexical route based on the whole word and a sub-lexical route based upon phonology. (a lexical route) [READ] /r+i:+d/ (a sub-lexical route)

35. b) Analogy English readers and writers do not simply rely on the links between graphemes and morphemes but also rely upon analogy between new words and those that we already know. [READ] /r+i:+d/ LEAD-BEAD-MEAD

36. c) Neigbourhood effects The rime of –EAD in READ actually has two possible phonological interpretation. We can also pronounce a non-word as /gi:d/ by analogy with BEAD, LEAD(verb) and READ or as /ged/ by analogy with HEAD, DEAD, LEAD(noun) and READ (past form). Inner Speech: While reading a book or a letter from a friend, we read like we are speaking or we hear the voice of our friend in our head. There are two explanations for this kind of spoken form rather than a visual form: - Spoken information in memory is more durable than visual. - If we store words in spoken form, they are less likely to interfere with the visual process of decoding words on the page.

37. Issues in listening At the higher level of processing, there are strong parallels between listening and reading. But at lower levels, they are not comparable because the raw material of listening -connected speech- is very different in form from the word on the page. Few issues posing challenges to the listening researcher: The linearity issue: The spoken signal does not consist of a string of phonemes in the way that written language consists of a string of letters. The non-invariance issue: Because of theblending effect,there is not invariance in connected speech. The normalization issue: Every speaker has a distinctive voice (articulators, regional accents, pitch, speech rate)

38. The accommodation issue:A speaker is sometimes faced with a difficultmove from one articulation to another. The speaker often adopts ashort cut and adjusts the first sound to the second. (assimilation, elision) The Lexical segmentation issue: There are no consistent gaps between wordsin the connected speech as there are in written language. The storage issue: The reader has a permanent record on the page of the words they have encountered, and they can refer back when they need; however, listening is not recursive in the same way: the listener is entirely reliant upon their mental representation of the utterance so far.

39. CHARACTERISTICs OF SPEECH There are some pauses in our daily speeches which show us some clues about the characteristic features of thespeech: • Speech requires planning and the components (clauses, words, phonemes) have to be assembled. We prepare the next clause after delivering one clause. • Sometimes speakers find difficulty in retrieving an item from the lexicon. The reason may be from the item itself (infrequent word etc.) or may be because of the circumstances of the speaker (being tired or ill etc.). • The pauses sometimes indicate that the speaker is prepared to hand over the turn to the listener. • They also indicate that what comes next is important.

40. LONG TERM MEMORY AND SCHEMA THEORY Theories of memory distinguish between: - Working (short term) memory in which currently relevant information is stored temporarily and current processing operations are undertaken. - Long term memory in which permanent information is stored.

41. Long Term Memory (LTM) LTM would appear to involve multiple memory systems with different functions. A distinction is made: - Declarative memory (for facts and concepts): knowing that episodic memory- memory for specific events and experiences. semantic memory- memory for facts and concepts relating to the world. - Procedural memory (for skills and processes): knowing how

42. Schema Theory Background knowledge is often essential to an understanding of a text. Our knowledge of the world is said to be stored in the forms of shemas. - A shema is a set of interrelated features which we associate with an entity or concept.

43. A Schema for TABLE

44. EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES Sensory impairment - Deafness - Blindness Language disorders - Problems of fluency - Problems of written language

45. The Relationship Between Language and Cognition Some impairments show that there is a link between cognitive development and language, while the others show that there is not a link. • Down Syndrome: cognitive impairment – failure to acquire full linguistic competence • Autism: cognitive impairment – social impairment • Specific Language Impairment: language is impaired but cognition is not. • Williams Syndrome: cognitive impairment but full language competence. • Savants: mentally impaired but have some gifts such as language, music or painting.