Linguistics and Language Essay

Language Comprehension Language Production Language Acquisition Psycholinguistics is a branch of cognitive science What leave behind be covered in this class? How do we produce and recognize speech? How do we apprehend lyric poem, letters, and sentences? How do we learn and recall information from texts? How corporation we improve texts to oblige them easier to understand? How does the br ain function to operation phrase? What be the ca physical exertions and effectuate of reading disabilities?Is on that point language in other species? Central themes in psycholinguistics 1)What noesis of language is needed for us to use language? silent (implicit) effledge vs. Explicit knowledge tacit knowledge of how to perform something, entirely non aw be of full rules explicit knowledge of the processes of mechanisms in performing that thing 2)What cognitive processes are involved in the ordinary use of language? How do we understand a lecture, read a book, intimidate a conversation? Cognitive processes perception, memory, thinking, learning Some definitions of basic comp nonpareilnts of language Semantics The meaning of words and sentencesSyntax The grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence or phrase Phonology The sound imitate of language Pragmatics How language is used in a social scene Examples from psycholinguistics Parsing garden path sentences The novice accepted the deal before he had a chance to check his finances, which put him in a show of conflict when he realized he had a straight flush. 1) The suspect examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable 2) The essay examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable The process of parsing is the process of qualification decisions The effect of prior knowledge on perceptionThe procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, cardinal pile may be sufficient depending on how much in that location is to do. If you have to go somewh ere else due to lack of facilities, that is the next gradation otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to magnify things. That is, it is better to do similarly few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not face important, moreover complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life.It is difficult to counter any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, scarcely then one never can tell. After the procedure is completed, one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. eventually they will be used once more, and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life. Bransford & Johnson, 1973 Recall No context 2. 8 idea units out of a maximum of 18 Context afterwards 2. 7 idea units Context before 5. 8 idea units Child l anguage development How many words do you know?Hint Dictionary has about 450,000 entries Test high drill graduates How many words do they know? About 45,000 english words About 60,000 including names and foreign words The average six course of instruction old knows about 13,000 words. Learning about 10 words per twenty-four hours since age 1. (One every 90 minutes) How much do we have to apprize youngsterren to learn language? Do you have to teach a child to walk? Is it the same way of learning a language? My instructor holded the bilk rabbits and we patted them I eated my dinner A brief history of psycholinguistics Wilhem Wundt (early 1900s) gratify in mental processes of language productionSentence as the primordial unit of language Speech production is the transformation of complete apprehension processes into sequentially organized speech segments. Behaviorism (1920s-1950s) Rejected the focus on mental processes Measurement based on objective behavior (primarily in lab animals) How does experience (reward and punishment) shape behavior? B. F. Skinner Children learn language through shaping (correction of speech errors) Associative chain theory A sentence consists of a chain of associations between individual words in the sentence Whats wrong with the behaviorist approach?Noam Chomsky (1950s present) 1) Colorless commonalty ideas sleep furiously 2) Furiously sleep ideas green colorless. 3)George picked up the baby 4)George picked the baby up. Almost every sentence uttered is a saucy combination of words The Poverty of stimulus argument There is not enough information in the language samples given to children to account for the richnes and complexity of childrens language The pattern of development is not based on parental speech but oninnatelanguage knowledge Linguistic Diversity vs. Linguistic Universals Linguistic transmutation There appears to be a lot of diversity among languagesEven inwardly languages there is diversity When are two languages different? We speak the same language if we can understand each other Exceptions Norwegian and Swedish Cantonese and Mandarin Dialects within languages The myth of pure language How/why do languages change? why does there seem to be a correct side? Members of the sovereign (most powerful) sub-culture tend to speak one dialect and may punish those who do not Linguistic Chauvinism Belief that ones take language/dialect is the best of all possible languages Black English Vernacular (BEV) Study by William Labov Interviewed African-American street youthYou know, the like some people say if youre in effect(p) an sh*t, your spirit goin t promised land . . . n if you bad, your spirit goin to hell. Well, bullsh*t Your spirit goin to hell anyway, good or bad. Why? Why? Ill tell you why. Cause, you see, doesn nobody really know that its a God, yknow, cause I mean I have seen black gods, white gods, all color gods, and dont nobody know its really a God. An when they be sayin if you good, you goin theaven, thas bullsh*t, cause you aint goin to no heaven, cause it aint no heaven for you to go to. Place holders There vs. It in the copulaCopula Is, Was optional Negatives You aint goin to no heaven BEV just as linguistically complex as Standard American English We dont see/understand the complexity in other languages Moral on the whole languages seem to permit as colossal range of expressions as others Linguistic Universals What is in common with all languages? Sentences are built from words based on the same physiological processes All languages have words All humans have ways of making sounds. Languages tend to use a small set of phonemic sounds Phoneme The minimum unit of sound that contributes to meaning How many phonemes in a language?English 40 phonemes Range Polynesian 11 to Khoisan 141 Discreteness Messages in human language (e. g. speech sounds) are made up of units of which there is a discrete (limited) human action Arbitrariness The relati onship between meaning(prenominal) elements in language and their denotation is independent of any physical comparison between the two. Words do not have to look or sound like what they describe Openness New linguistic messages are created freely and easily Languages are not constrained in a way so that there are a limited number of messages that can be created.