Psycholinguistics

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Psycholinguistics

• I . Definition
• II. Four Rules
• III. Growth of Grammar to Meet the Four Rules
• IV.UOP (Universal Operation Principles)
• V. Comprehension// Production

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I . Definition

• Psycholinguistics the study of the mental
  processes of listening, speaking, and acquisition
  of language by children (Nash 10)
• Purpose
• To figure out what people have to know about
  lang. in order to use it how that knowledge is
  used to process lang.
• Issues
• How do you form an utterance in your mind and
  utter it?
• How do you take in lang. you hear figure out
  what it is?
• How do babies learn lang.?
• How do you learn a L2?

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II. Four Rules

• 1. Be clear one form one meaning (one-to-one
  mapping)
• e.g., Russian (one form?more than one
  meaning)
• 2. Be processible Grammatical markers (e.g.,
  relative pronouns) help.
• e.g., The editor who the authors who the
  newspaper hired liked laughed.
• 3. Be quick and easy time pressure in speaking
  (the use of contractions and run-ons, reduction
  of grammatical markers).
• e.g., Contraction (Id, Im, cant, wont)
• 4. Be expressive Semantic expressiveness
  rhetorical expressiveness
• Conclusion Four rules are competing with each
  other. (Nash 14)

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Be Clear (1)

• Examples (Russian)
• dom housemasculine, inanimate subject
• ulica streetfeminine, subject
• cuvstvo sensationneuter, subject
• Whats the ending if the word is used as object?

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Be Clear (2)

• Sentence examples
• Tanya killed Marsha. (Both are feminine
  nouns).
• Mašu ubila Tanja.
• Tanja ubila Mašu.
• Tanja Mašu ubila.
• Mašu Tanja ubila.
• Ubila Mašu Tanja.
• Ubila Tanja Mašu.

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Be Processible

• Which of the following sentences is easier for
  you to understand?
• The student whom the teacher hit cried?
• The student the teacher hit cried?
• What makes the difference?
• grammatical markers
• memory factor
• paying attention to the ends of words

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Be Quick and Easy

• Time pressure principle of lease effort
  (messages must be communicated before other
  things get in the way)
• the class ends other messages
• boredom memory factor
• Forms
• reduction of grammatical markers
• contractions
• run-ons
• Competing with Be Clear Be Processible

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Be Expressive (1)

• Ways to express the image

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Be Expressive (2)

• Semantic expressiveness
• basic meaning
• thought ? language
• Rhetorical expressiveness
• to communicate well and effectively (comm.
  needs)
• for different purposes
• emphasis
• focus
• point of view

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Conclusion on Four Rules

• Language must be able to communicate meaningful
  things (semantically expressive), must have many
  ways to present the same info. (rhetorically
  expressive), must be fast and fairly easily
  produced and comprehended (quick easy
  processible), and must be clear in meaning and
  form (clear).

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III. Growth of Grammar to Meet the Four Rules (1)

• Pidgin
• a simplified contact language
• mix languages, marginal language
• developed for practical purposes
• no native speakers
• limited vocabulary and reduced grammatical
  structure
• mostly based on European langs.? colonialism

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III. Growth of Grammar to Meet the Four Rules
(2)

• Creole
• a pidgin developed into a native lang.
• has NS and not restricted in its uses
• more complex sentence structures and vocabulary.
• classified according to the lang. from which
  most of their vocabulary comes from
• Eng.-based Jamaican Creole, Hawaiian Creole
• French-based Haitian Creole

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III. Growth of Language to Meet the Four Rules
(3)

• Pidgin ? Creole, under the pressure of Be
  Expressive
• Another pressure Be Processible
• Tok Pisin (with relative clauses)
• Hawaiian Creole (with progressive)

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Tok Pisin

• Examples
• Na pik IA ol ikilim bipo IA bai ikamap olsem
  draipela ston. And this (the) pig which they had
  killed before would turn into a huge store.
• Meri IA em i yangpela meri, draipela meri IA em
  harim istap. The girl, who was a young, big
  girl, was listening.
• Em wanpela American IA iputim naim long en. It
  was an American who gave her her name.

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Hawaiian Creole

• Standard English
• I am eating
• Hawaiian Pidgin
• Me kaukau
• Me eat
• I kaukau
• I eat

• Hawaiian Creole
• (progressive)
• I stay kaukau
• I stay eat

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IV. Universal Operation Principles (UOP)

• Universal learning strategies children
  automatically used by children based on the way
  the human mind works and closely related to the
  four rules.
• Theyre childrens initial expectations about how
  language works. The child brings certain
  operating principles (methods of attack) to bear
  on the task of learning lang., regardless of the
  lang. hes exposed to.

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Universal Operating Principle A

• UOP A Pay attention to the ends of words.
• Suffixes plural, possessive, present/past tense,
  participle, comparative, superlative
• Postposition markers of locationconcept of
  relation of location/spatial relationsplaced
  after the noun of location
• English preposition Hungarian
  postposition
• spoon in the pot hajó
  boat
• spoon outside the pot hajóban in
  the boat
• spoon next to the pot hajóbol
  moving out from
• 
  inside the boat
• 
  hajótol moving away from
• 
  next to the boat
• 
  

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UOP A Pay attention to the ends of words.

• Turkish postpositions (faked)
• pot stove on
• spoon pot in
• Chinese
• ?????

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Universal Operating Principle B

• UOP B There are elements of language (i.e.,
  grammatical markers) which show the relations
  between other elements of language (or words).
• Grammatical markers
• Relative pronouns The girl who danced with me
  was lovely.
• The
  book that is on the table is yours.
• Pronouns Rachel gave me her book.
• When the man fell down,
  he hurt his leg.
• Be The man is handsome.
• S-V agreement The woman comes here every day.

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Universal Operating Principle C

• UOP C Avoid exceptions.
• Children prefer consistent and regular systems.
• 5 stages (Nash 16)
• No marking
• Appropriate marking in limited cases
• Overgeneralization of marking
• Redundant marking
• Full adult marking system

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Universal Operating Principle D

• UOP D Underlying semantic relations should be
  marked overtly and clearly. ( Be clear.)
• Turkish
• object of plural
• -i -in -er
• Russian
• masculine animate
  object? -a
• feminine subject ? -a

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Universal Operating Principle E

• UOP E The use of grammatical markers should make
  semantic sense.
• Examples
• Process verbs (progressive aspect) vs. state
  verbs (states/conditions)
• Counter examples
• Irregular plurals in English
• mice, geese, feet, teeth ? mouses, gooses,
  foots/feets, tooths
• Irregular past tenses
• went, saw, ran ? goed, seed, runned

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Summary of 4 Rules and UOP

• Pressures on language
• Psychological pressureslanguage must conform to
  the ways in which the MIND works.
• Communicative pressureslanguage must meet all
  the needs of communication
• 1. informativeness
• 2. clarity
• 3. efficiency
• 4. effectiveness
• 5. reasonably quick (on-going time)

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Comprehension (1)

• How do you get from the acoustic signal (physical
  sound) to an interpretation of the message?
• Filter demonstration
• Shadowing demonstration
• Further examples
• Telephone doesnt transmit all sounds (e.g., f,
  s, m, n)
• In class selective listening
• Rough model 1

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Comprehension (2)

• Constituents sentence parts
• e.g. The old man went to the store.
• subject
  predicate
• Meaning units propositions (basic ideas)
• Coding units phonology, morphology, syntax,
  vocabulary, intonation
• Propositions refer to states or events indicate
  facts or attitudes say sth. About states or
  events qualify parts of other propositions.
• e.g., Mary was born in 1964. You must never
  arrive late again.

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Comprehension (3)

• Rough Model 1
• 1. Take in sounds, put in short-term memory,
  organize according to sound system.
• 2. Immediate organize into sentence parts
  (constituents) and determine content and
  function of teach part.
• 3. Use constituents analysis to construct
  propositions.
• 4. Keep propositions in memory, discard sound
  image.
• 5. Figure out speakers intent.

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Comprehension (4)

• Syntactic strategies used in identifying
  constituents (i.e., knowledge of syntax)
• Semantic strategies knowledge of the
  world/situation reasoning power
• The policeman held up his hand and stopped the
  car.
• Superman held up his hand and stopped the car.
• Tea example (Nash 20)
• Dentist (Nash 20)
• Soup (Nash 21)

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Comprehension (5)

• Making us of both syntactic and semantic
  strategies
• 1. We take in raw speech and retain a
  phonological representation of it in short-term
  memory.
• 2. We immediately attempt to organize the
  phonological representation into constituents,
  identifying their content and function.
• 3. Construct underlying propositions.
• 4. Retain 3 in long term memory discard 1 2.

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Comprehension (6)Rough Model 2

• Production
• phonetics output
• production

• Comprehension
• phonetic input Identify
• phonology situation
• lexicon remember
• morphology typical
• syntax situation.
• semantics
• pragmatics

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Comprehension (7)

1. Bring in phonetic stream and segment it into
   phonological representation.
2. Immediate organize into constituents.
3. Use constituent analysis to construct
   propositions.
4. Figure out speakers intent (and respond
   appropriately).