语言学教案Chapter 6 Language Processing in Mind
Chapter 6 语言学Language Processing in Mind-T
Chapter VI Language Processing in MindIntroductionWhy study language? LANGUAGE is a mirror of the mind in a deep and significant sense. It is a product of human intelligence, created anew in each individual by operations that lie far beyond the reach of will or consciousness. (Chomsky, Reflections on Language, 1975)Psycholinguistics is the study of “language and mind” , or to be more exact, can perhaps be glossed as the storage, comprehension, production and acquisition of language in any medium (spoken or written). PSYCHOLINGUISTICS is concerned primarily with investigating the psychological reality of linguistic structures. Less modestly, it sometimes also produces findings, which make their own mark on linguistic research, leading to the modification of theoretical ideas.PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAG语言心理学deals with more general topics such as the extent to which language shapes thought,PSYCHOLOGY OF COMMUNICATION 交际心理学includes non-verbal communication such as gestures and facial expressions.A possible divide within psycholinguistics is of those who style themselves COGNITIVE PSYCHOLINGUISTS are concerned above all with making inferences about the content of the human mindEXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLINGUISTS are somewhat more concerned with empirical matters, such as speed of response to a particular word.In practice the two schools of thought often overlap, but extreme supporters of each way of thinking sometimes perceive the gap as being a large one.Major strands of psycholinguistic research:and acquisition language.Section one: Language ComprehensionQ1: What is language comprehension?Q2: What is mind? brain/thinking processQ3: How do you understand language?Language comprehension: How do people use their knowledge of language and how do they understand what they hear or read?(includes both text comprehension and speech comprehension, either of which involves several processes. It is important for the reader or listener to take account of the grammatical structure and the meaning of what is being presented. Meaning is extracted from text or speech by reliant what is presented to information stored in long-term memory. )1. Word recognition is the first step in understanding any message, which includes not only the recognition of meanings of the words, but also the information that determines the syntactic structure of the rest of the sentence.How do we recognize words?Cohort theory集群理论: hypothesizes that auditory word recognition begins with the formation of a group of words at the perception of the initial sound and proceeds sound by sound with the cohort of words decreasing as more sounds are perceived.Factors affect word recognition:Frequency effect频率效应:Recency effect 近期效应：Context 语境: semantic association network: which represents the relationships between various semantically related words.2. Lexical ambiguityTwo theories used to distinguish ambiguous words:a)All the meanings associated with the word are accessedAll meanings of ambiguous words are accessed and time has to be taken to decide among them.b)Only one meaning is accessed initiallyFrequency and context effects are important here.3. Syntactic processingPsycholinguists generally assume that the syntactic structure is built as soon as possible rather than waiting to see what the whole string of word is before deciding what structure it has.Sentence ambiguity may occur due toa)The ambifuity of individual words and the different possible ways that words canbe fit into phrasesb)The ambiguous catefory of some of the words in the sentenceGarden path花园小径：a phenomenon concerning certain ambiguous sentences. Garden path sentences are sentences that are initially interpreted with a different structure than they actually have.How do people decide which structure an ambiguous sentence has in sentence processing?Minimal attachment theory最小接触理论: an idea that people initially construct the simplest (or least complex) syntactic structure when interpreting the structure of sentences.Other analysis: such as the one based on pragmatic plausibility.4. Semantic and sentence memoryMemory representations are not syntactic under certain conditions (see the experiment P202, which indicate that the syntactic details of linguistic material are not usually stored for very long and that it is a representation of a sentence’s meaning which a subject has available in his memory under normal circumstances.) Assimilation theory: emphasis on the importance of background knowledge in “normal”situations where we might memorize linguistic material.5. Basic process in readinga)Eye movement: information is obtained from the text only during fixationsand not at all during saccades.(P204)b)The perceptual span感知时距：the range of letters from which usefulinformation is extracted.c)The immediacy assumption即时假定：A reader is supposed to carry out theprocesses required to understand each word and its relationship to previouswords in the sentence as soon as that word is encountered.Section Two Discourse话语/text语篇InterpretationQ1. What is schemata and reference drawing?Q2. What is text interpretation?Introduction:Discourse serves as a context, affecting sentence and word-level interpretation, tipping the interpretation of what would otherwise be ambiguous words or phrases in a certain direction.a)General context effects: occur all the time when our generalknowledge about the world influences language comprehension.b)Specific context effects: involve information obtained from earlierparts of a discourse.1.Schemata 图式and inference drawing推论Schemata: packets of stored knowledge, whicha)can vary considerably in the information they contain. from the verysimple to the very complexb)are frequently organized hierarchically; for example, in addition toa rather general restaurant schema or script, we probably also havemore specific restaurant schemata for different kinds ofrestaurant(e.g. fat-food places, up-market French restaurants, andson on).c)operate in a top-down or conceptually driven way to facilitateinterpretation of environmental stimuli.Inference drawing: Language comprehension frequently requires us to go far beyond the literal meanings of the sentences we read or her. Essential information is often only implied. So that it is necessary to draw inferences in order to understand fully what is intended.The inferences which people draw are stored in long-term memory along with information about the sentences actually presented (Bransford, Barclay. And Franks,1972)2.Story structure:Our comprehension of and memory for stories are highly “ selective”, inthe sense that we focus on the central theme of the story rather than onthe relatively unimportant details. According to Van Dijik and Kintsch(1983), a story is first of all processed so that the individual propositionsare extracted (theory of story processing). The propositions of a storyenter into a short-term working buffer of limited capacity. When thebuffer contains a number propositions, the reader or listener tries torelate them to each other in a coherent fashion . In general terms,subsequent ability to remember the propositions depends on the length oftime they spend in the working buffer. Those propositions which arehighly relevant to the main theme of a story tend to be stored for arelatively long time in the working buffer. Therefore, thematicinformation should be better remembered than non-thematic information.Section Three Language ProductionQ1. What is Language production?Q2. What are the means of Language production?Language production: is very definitely a goal-driven activity, in the sense that people speak and write in order to make friends, influence people, convey information, and so on, which include two forms of production, namely, speech production and writing.1.speech productionAccording to Garrett (1976; 1984), there are altogether 5 different levels ofrepresentation involved in speaking a sentence, and they occur in the following sequence:1)The message-level representation2)The functional-level representation3)The positional-level representation4)The phonetic-level representation5)The articulatory-level representationErrors which may support that notion that speakers engage in reasonableelaborate planning before beginning to speak:Spoonererism首音互换/slip of the tongue舌头打滑): the initial letter orletters of two words are transposedAnticipation error预期错误: occur when a word is spoken earlier in thesentence than it should be: (the school is at school)Exchange error交换错误：two items within a sentence are swapped. (this isthe happiest life of my day).The following error prove the sequence of 2nd and 3rd proposed byGarrett:(speakers decide on the grammatical structure of a proposedutterance in the functional-level representation, and then select theappropriate words to fit into that structure in the subsequent position-levelrepresentation)Morpheme-exchange errors: in which roots or basic forms of two words areswitched leaving the grammatical structure unchanged. (He has alreadytrunked two packs)2.Written languageAccording to Hayes and Flower (1986), writing essentially consists of threeinter-related processes:1)The planning process2)The sentence generation process3)The revision processQ: What are the factors that influence or determine the quality of the writingplan? (relevant knowledge about the topic to be written about, strategicknowledge: knowledge of the methods used in construction a writing plan inorder to make it coherent and well-organized)Q: Who use the following writing strategies respectively, knowledge-tellingstrategy and knowledge-transforming strategy?knowledge-telling strategy: simply write down everything children can thinkof tht is relevant to a topic without organizing the information in any way(Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1987)knowledge-transforming strategy: involves focusing on potential problemswithin the planning process ( Are the main points arranged in the mostlogical order”)Here are some more examples of garden path sentences. Can you figure out what the structure of these sentences is?1.The boat floated downstream sank.2.While Mary was mending the sock fell off her lap.3.The daughter of the King’s son admires himself.。
语言学6PPT课件
• Thus the plural morphophonemic rules apply to the plural morpheme specifically, not to all morphemes in English.
Chapter 6 The Sound Patterns of Language
Hale Waihona Puke honology vs. Phonetics
• The study of how speech sounds form patterns is phonology
• The study of speech sounds is called phonetics
Additional example
• The patterns of Plural morph II: house /haus/ thief / i:f/ belief/bili:f/ foot /fu:t/ passer-by/pas bai/
• Morpheme of past tense • The phonological presentation
The Pronunciation of Morphemes
• Plural form of English
how to pronounce the plural morpheme?
• Allomorphs of plural morpheme
• To define the distribution of allomorphs by minimal pair
• The science of phonetics attempts to describe all of the sounds used in all languages of the world.
语言学教程 chapter6
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含义：
Metaphors are actually cognitive tools that help us structure our thoughts and experiences in the world around us. Metaphor is a conceptual mapping, not a linguistic one, from one domain to another, not from a word to another.
认知语言学
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Байду номын сангаас
含义 渊源 基本理论 应用
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What is Cognition?
Mental processes, information processing
Mental process or faculty of knowing, including awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.
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End-of-path schema
An image schema in which a location is understood as the termination of a prescribed path Example (English): In the following sentence, it is understood that one must traverse the hill before reaching Sam’s home, which is at the end of the path:
Standing upright Climbing stairs Viewing a flagpole Watching water rise in a tub
语言学教程Chapter 6. Language and Cognition
2. Recognition of words in print
1).Two questions in printed word recognition (1). Two different processes for…… A lexical route A non-lexical route Connectionist theories （连接主义模型理论） claim that…… (2). Quantitative analyses……
(1) Word recognition
Recognition of spoken words and words in print 1.recognition of spoken words 1)Features of speech could cause difficulty for listeners. (1). (2). (3).
Six research subjects within it
1)acquisition 2)comprehension 3)production 4)disorders 5)language and thought 6)neurocognition We will focus on the former three subjects, say, acquisition, comprehension and production.
The conceptual approach
Cognitive linguistics has addressed : 1) 2) 3) 4) Above all, it seeks to ascertain the global integrated system of conceptual structuring in language.
语言学导论第六章
pragmatics语用学 --- the study of how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication
Preliminaries: 1. If you ask somebody “Can you open the door?” he answers “Yes” but does not actually do it, what would be your reaction? Why? 2. If you are going shopping with your friend and she says to you “the bag I‟m carrying is heavy”, what does she possibly mean?
Analyze the locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionaly acts contained in the following sentences: • A teacher entered the classroom and saw all the windows were closed. Then he said to his students, “It is hot here. ” • A little girl is visiting a doll store with her mum and she says to her mum, “Mummy, the doll is so cute. ”
• commissives承诺类: I will return the book to you next week without fail. I will never do it again. • expressives表达类: I‟m sorry to hear that. Thank you very much! Happy birthday! I‟m glad to see you again. • declarations宣告类: I now declare the ceremony close. You are fired.
胡壮麟 语言学教程修订版 课堂笔记和讲义精选Chapter (6)
Chapter 6 Language Processing in Mind6.1 Introduction1. Language is a mirror of the mind in a deep and significant sense.2. Language is a product of human intelligence, created a new in each individual byoperation that lie far beyond the reach of will or consciousness.3. Psycholinguistics “proper” can perhaps be glossed as the storage, comprehension,production and acquisition of language in any medium (spoken or written).4. Psycholinguistics is concerned primarily with investigating the psychological reality oflinguistic structures.5. The differences between psycholinguistics and psychology of language.Psycholinguistics can be defined as the storage, comprehension, production and acquisition of language in any medium (spoken or written). It is concerned primarily with investigating the psychological reality of linguistic structures.On the other hand, the psychology of language deals with more general topics such as the extent to which language shapes thought, and from the psychology of communication, includes non-verbal communication such as gestures and facial expressions.6. Cognitive psycholinguistics: Cognitive psycholinguistics is concerned above all withmaking inferences about the content of the human mind.7. Experimental psycholinguistics: Experimental psycholinguistics is mainly concernedwith empirical matters, such as speed of response to a particular word.6.1.1 Evidence1. Linguists tend to favor descriptions of spontaneous speech as their mainsource of evidence, whereas psychologists mostly prefer experimental studies.2. The subjects of psycholinguistic investigation are normal adults and childrenon the one hand, and aphasics----people with speech disorders-----on the other.The primary assumption with regard to aphasic patient that a breakdown insome part of language could lead to an understanding of which componentsmight be independent of others.6.1.2 Current issues1. Modular theory: Modular theory assumes that the mind is structured intoseparate modules or components, each governed by its own principles andoperating independently of others.2. Cohort theory: The cohort theory hypothesizes that auditory word recognitionbegins with the formation of a group of words at the perception of the initialsound and proceeds sound by sound with the cohort of words decreasing asmore sounds are perceived. This theory can be expanded to deal with writtenmaterials as well. Several experiments have supported this view of wordrecognition. One obvious prediction of this model is that if the beginningsound or letter is missing, recognition will be much more difficult, perhapseven impossible. For example: Gray tie------ great eye; a name-----an aim;an ice man-----a nice man; I scream-----ice cream; See Mable----seem able;well fare----welfare; lookout------look out ; decade-----Deck Eight;Layman------laymen; persistent turn------persist and turn3. Psychological reality: The reality of grammar, etc. as a purported account ofstructures represented in the mind of a speaker. Often opposed, in discussionof the merits of alternative grammars, to criteria of simplicity, elegance, andinternal consistency.4. The three major strands of psycholinguistic research:(1) Comprehension: How do people use their knowledge of language, andhow do they understand what they hear or read?(2) Production: How do they produce messages that others can understand inturn?(3) Acquisition: How language is represented in the mind and how languageis acquired?6.2 Language comprehension6.2.1 Word recognition1. An initial step in understanding any message is the recognition of words.2. One of the most important factors that effects word recognition is howfrequently the word is used in a given context.3. Frequency effect: describes the additional ease with which a word is accesseddue to its more frequent usage in the language.4. Recency effect: describe the additional ease with which a word is accesseddue to its repeated occurrence in the discourse or context.5. Another factor that is involved in word recognition is Context.6. Semantic association network represents the relationships between varioussemantically related words. Word recognition is thought to be faster whenother members of the association network are provided in the discourse.6.2.2 Lexical ambiguity1. lexical ambiguity: ambiguity explained by reference to lexical meanings: e.g.that of I saw a bat, where a bat might refer to an animal or, among others,stable tennis bat.2. There are two main theories:(1) All the meanings associated with the word are accessed, and(2) only one meaning is accessed initially. e.g.a. After taking the right turn at the intersection….“right” is ambiguous: correct vs. rightwardb. After taking the left turn at the intersection…“left” is unambiguous6.2.3 Syntactic processing1. Once a word has been dentified , it is used to construct a syntactic structure.2. As always, there are cinokucatuibs due to the ambiguity of individual wordsand to the different possible ways that words can be fit into phrases.Sometimes there is no way to determine which structure and meaning asentence has.e.g. The cop saw the spy with the binoculars. “with the binoculars” isambiguity(1) the cop employed binoculars in order to see the spy.(2) it specifies “the spy has binoculars.”3. Some ambiguities are due to the ambiguous category of some of the words inthe sentence.e.g. the desert trains, trains (培训；列车)the desert trains man to be hardly. 沙漠使人坚韧。
语言学第6章
Language Processingin Mind1. Introduction2. Language comprehension3. Discourse/text interpretation4 Language production5. Task6.1 IntroductionPsycholinguistics is primarily concerned with investigating the psychological reality of linguistic structures.Other definitions of Psycholinguistics:▪ a. Psycholinguistics is the study of the relationship of “language and mind”.▪ b. Psycholinguistics “proper” can perhaps be glossed as the storage, comprehension, and production and acquisition of language in any medium (spoken or written)cf:a. Psychology of language deals with more generaltopics such as the extent to which languageshapes thought.b. Psychology of communication includes non-verbal communication such as gestures andfacial expressions.c. Cognitive psychologists are concerned withmaking inferences about the content of thehuman mind.d. Experimental psychologists is somewhat more concernedwith empirical matters, such as speed response to aparticular word.◆Evidencea. Psycholinguistics attracts supporters from both linguistics and psychology, though both of them have somewhat different approaches , esp. in methodology.Linguists are inclined to favor descriptions of spontaneous speech as their main source of evidencePsychologists more prefer experimental studies. b. Subjects of Psycholinguistic investigation are normal adults, children and aphasics patients ------people with speech disorders.Current issuesa. It is generally agreed that human language system is likely to be a “modular”, in the sense of being constituted out of a number of separate but interacting components. However, the point led to a major controversy concerning the integration of the modules.b. Another problem is the relationship between STRUCTURE and PROCESS, which can not reach agreement.c. Three major aspects of psycholinguistic research:COMPREHENSION Language:how do people use their knowledge of language, and how do they understand what they hear or understand?PRODUCTION language:how do they produce messages that others can understand in turn?ACQUISITION language:how language is represented in the mind and how language is acquired?6.2. Language comprehension●Word recognition:Word recognition is the initial step inunderstanding any message.●Factors affecting word recognition:a. Cohort theory hypothesizes that auditory word recognition begins with the formation of a group of words at the perception of the initial sound and proceeds sound by sound with the cohort of words decreasing as more sounds are perceived.b. Frequency effect, one of the most important factorsaffecting word recognition, studies how frequently the word is used in a given discourse or contextC. Recency effect, one of the factors affecting word recognition, describes the additional ease with which a word is accessed due to its repeated occurrence in the discourse or context.D.Context is another factor affecting word recognition. People recognize a word more readily when the preceding words provide an appropriate context for it.Syntactic processingfactors affecting the process of determining the structure of a sentencea.the ambiguity of individual words and the different possible ways that words can be fit into phrases.e.g.: The mother beat the his daughter with a play gun. ( prepositional phrase with a play gun used to modify daughter ; prepositional phrase with a play gun being the complement of the verb beat )b.the ambiguous category of some of the words in the sentencee.g.: the desert trains ( in different contexts, desert can serve as the subject of the verb trains or the modifier of the verb )C.garden path sentence, another factor affectingthe process of determining a sentence structure, are sentences that are initially interpreted with a different structure than they actually have. Forexample, reduced relative clauses often causesuch feeling of having been garden-pathed.e.g.: The horse raced past the barn fell ( thehorse that was raced past the barn fell )MINIMAL attachment theory, a way used when interpreting the structure of sentences, is theidea that people initially construct the simplest( or least complex ) syntactic structure.Basic processes in readingPerceptual span is the range of letters from which useful information is extracted, which varies depending on factors such as the size of the print, the complexity of the text, etc. and encompasses about three or four letters to the left of fixation and some fifteen letters to the right of fixation. Immediacy assumption means that the reader is supposed to carry out the processes required to understand each word and its relationship to previous words in the sentence as soon as that word is encountered.6.3.Discourse/text interpretationDiscourse serves as a context, affect sentence and word-level interpretation, tipping the interpretation of what would otherwise be ambiguous words or phrases in a certaindirection.General context effects means that our general knowledge about the world influences language comprehension, which occurs all the time, because a crucial aspect of language comprehension involves making use of any relevantgeneral knowledge that we possess..Specific context effects involve information obtained from earlier parts of a discourseSchemata and inference drawingThe origin of schemataThe concept of schema theory was put forward by Barlett in his writings. Barlett believed that our memory for discourse was not based on straight reproduction, but was constructive. The constructive process uses information frome experience related to the discourse at hand, to build a mental representation. He argued that , that past experience can not be an accumation of successive individuated events and experiences, it must be organized and manageable. (cited in Discourse Analysis written by Gillian Brown&George Yule )The definitions of Schema:Schemata are …high-level complex ( and even conventional or habitual ) knowledge structures‟ (van Dijk, 1981:141) which functions as …ideational scaffolding‟ (Andersion, 1977 ) in the organization and interpretation of experience. In the strong view, schemata are considered to be deterministic, to predispose the experiencer to interpret his experience in a fixed way. (cited in Discourse Analysis written by Gillian Brown &George Yule )b. Schemata can be seen as the organizedbackground knowledge which leads us to expect or predict aspects in our interpretation ofdiscourse. (cited in Discourse Analysis written by Gillian Brown &George Yule )The characteristics of schemata:a.Schemata can vary considerably in theinformation they contain, from the very simple to the very complex.b.Schemata are frequently organized hierarchically.e.g.:worsening environment/ecological deterioration↓desertification↓sand storms / Yellow dust↓deforestation /vegetationc.Schemata operate in a top-down or conceptuallydriven way to facilitate interpretation onenvironmental stimuli.how to use schemata:a.the activation of schematab.the reconstruction of schemataspecific use of schemata: research on the use of schemata are found in reading comprehensionand listening comprehension and listeningcomprehension. Now research on the use ofschemata begins in writing.Story structureVan Dijk and Kintsch (1983 ) argued that, in understanding of the gist of MACROSTRUCTURE of a story, readers and listeners make extensive use of their general knowledge to work out the major theme of a story, which leads to the production of MACROPROPOSITIONS which are general propositions used to form an overall macrostructure of the story.6.4 Language production●Language production is definitely a goal-directed activity, in the sense that people speak and write in order to make friends, influence people, convey information and so on.Speech productionGarrett put forward five different levels of representation involved in speaking a sentence:a. the message-level representationb. the functional-level representationc. the positional-level representationthe phonetic-level representationthe articulatory-level representationcomment on the theory: the complex theory of speech production has not as yet been tested thoroughly. However, there is support for some of its major assumptions.some concepts related to the theory: Spoonerism ( Slip if the tongue ) refers to the initial letters or letters of two words are transposed. For example, sounds or words from the end of a sentence intrude into the early part of a sentence, then this provides evidence for the notion of forward planning.b.Anticipation error, errors demonstrating theexistence of forward planning, means that aword is spoken earlier than it should be.e.g.: ＊The school is at school. ( at the school)c.Exchange error, errors, two items within asentence are swapped.e.g.: ＊This is the happiest life of my day.(This is the happiest day of my life.)d.Morpheme-exchange errors, refers to thephenomenon that the roots of basic forms of two words are switched leaving the grammaticalstructure unchanged.b.Anticipation error, errors demonstrating theexistence of forward planning, means that aword is spoken earlier than it should be.e.g.: ＊The school is at school. ( at the school)c.Exchange error, errors, two items within asentence are swapped.e.g.: ＊This is the happiest life of my day.(This is the happiest day of my life.)d.Morpheme-exchange errors, refers to thephenomenon that the roots of basic forms of two words are switched leaving the grammaticalstructure unchanged.e.g. ＊He has already trunked two packs.(He has already packed two trunks. )Written languageWriting process proposed by Hayers ans Flowers (1986 ):First, the planning process, which involves producing ideas and arranging them into a writing plan appropriate to the writing.Second, the sentence generation process, which translates the writing plan into actual sentences that can be written down.Lastly, the revision process, which involves an evaluation of what has been written for so far.Strategic knowledge, less obvious factors determining the quality of the writing plan, is knowledge used in constructing a writing plan in order to make it coherent and well-organized.6.5 Task:Work in groups and discuss the following questions: Give a definition of Psycholinguistics in your own words?Please explain how to figure our the correct structure of garden path sentences with four or more sentences ?Could you explain how to use schemata in listening, speaking,reading and reading with examples?Please explain the basic process in reading with a short passage or short paragraph?Distinguish the following definitions with at least one examples: slip of the tongue, anticipation error, exchange error and morpheme-exchange errors?Think about the acquisition of second language acquisition or firstlanguage acquisition from the perspective of psycholinguistics?。
语言学第六章chapter6课件
Five types of deixis
1. Person deixis: me, you, him, them. 2. Time deixis: now, then, tonight, last week. 3. Space/spatial/place deixis: here, there, and
6.2.2 Deixis
Deixis (指示), which means “pointing” via language, the interpretation of many words and expressions by reference to the situational context of tc form used to do this “pointing” is called a deictic expression, or indexical.
语言学第六章chapter6
(3) A: Can I borrow your dictionary? B: Yeah, it’s on the table.
antecedent, anaphor or anaphoric expression.
indirect anaphor or bridging reference : (4) I walked into the room. The windows
语言学第六章chapter6
A melamed [小学教师, Hebrew teacher] discovering that he had left his comfortable slippers back in the house, sent a student after them with a note for his wife.
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Chapter 6 Language Processing in Mind6.1 What is Psycholinguistics6.1.1 The Definition of Psycholinguistics6.1.2 Branches in Psycholinguistics6.1.3 Related Terms6.2 The Relationship between Language and Thought6.2.1 Early views on language and thought6.2.2 The Relation between Language and Thought6.3 Language Comprehension6.3.1 The Comprehension of Words6.3.2 The Comprehension of Sentences6.3.3 The Comprehension of Texts6.4 Language Production6.4.1 Speech Production6.4.2 Written Language Production6.1 What is Psycholinguistics6.1.1 The Definition of PsycholinguisticsPsycholinguistics is the study of language in relation to the mindPsycholinguistics is viewed as the intersection of psychology and linguistics, which studies the ways we acquire, produce and comprehend languages.6.1.2 Branches in PsycholinguisticsThere are mainly two branches in psycholinguistics: cognitive psycholinguistics which studies the continuity of language with the workings of the mind in general and seeking to ground a theory of psycholinguistics in account of cognition and experimental psycholinguistics which is the investigation through experiment of the psychological mechanism for the production and understanding of speech.6.1.3 Related TermsPsychology of language deals with general topic concerning the relationship between language and thought.Psychology of communication is the study of both verbal and non-verbal communications from the psychological point of view.6.2 The Relationship between Language and Thought6.2.1 Early views on language and thought1. Plato suggested that thought was the soul’s discourse with itself. In other words, thought and language were identical. This is the monistic.Aristotle argued that mankind could not have the same language and that language was put signs of psychological experiences. Too much evidence existed to contradict the monistic view.(1)“I don’t know how to express my ideas with words.”(2)Animals’ lack of language does not p revent them from thinking.(3)The deaf-mute is able to think but could not speak the language of his own community.(4)There are other channels for communicating our thoughts besides language like musicand sculpture.2. Whorfian-Sapir HypothesisThe hypothesis was proposed by the American anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir and later his student, Benjamin Lee Whorf. It has two major thoughts: linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity, which may be summarized as follows:1) One’s thinking is complete ly determined by his native language because one cannot but perceive the world in terms of the categories and distinctions encoded in the language.2) The categories and distinctions encoded in one language system are unique to that system and incommensurable with those of other system.6.2.2 The Relation between Language and ThoughtLanguage and may be viewed as two independent circle overlapping in some parts, where language and thought are consistent with each other and one never occurs without the other.Although language and thought may blend together and “verbal thought” and “inner speech”, there are occasions when one can think without language just as one may speak without thinking.Language does not so much determine the way we think as it influences the way we perceive the world and recall things and affect the case with which we perform mental tasks.6.3 Language Comprehension6.3.1 The Comprehension of WordsWord recognition may be explained by the following theoriesCohort theory (p.196)Frequency effect (p.197)Recency effects (p.197)Context (p.197)6.3.2 The Comprehension of SentencesPsycholinguists first began to examine the comprehension of sentences by basing their research on the model of sentence grammar originally proposed by Chomsky on the 1950s.Chomsky’s model claimed that all sentences were “generated” from a phrase structure skeleton which was then fleshed out in everyday utterances by a series of transformational rules.Psycholinguists based their early experiments on sentence pairs like the following:1)The dog is chasing the cat. (deep structure)2)Isn’t the cat being chased by the dog? (negative, passive, interrogative)Psycholinguists who first experimented with this call it the Derivational Theory of Complexity (DTC) because difficulty in comprehension was derived from the number of transformations that were added on to the original phrase structure of the kernel sentence.For example, subjects were given a random assortment of sentences like the following and were then asked to recall both the sentence they had just heard and a string of words spoken immediately after the sentence.1)The dog is chasing the car. (bus/green/etc.)2)The dog isn’t chasing the cat. (car/blue/etc.)3)Is the cat being chased by the dog? (bike/pink/peach/etc.)4)Isn’t the cat being chased by the dog? (train/yellow/stool/etc.)The general tendency for all listeners and readers to make increasingly confident predictions about the meaning of a sentence as it progresses is well-tested in psycholinguistics and is called garden path.Since Jay always jogs a mile seems like a short distance to him.Since Jay always jogs a mile this seems like a short distance to him.6.3.3 The Comprehension of TextsPsycholinguistic research into the comprehension of texts has demonstrated:Our syntactic memory may be vague, but it is not haphazard: we tend to remember sentences in a form that is actually simpler than the structure which we originally read or heard.The presence and absence of background information can dramatically felt the way we remember a piece of discourse.6.4 Language Production6.4.1 Speech ProductionSlips of the tongue provide the data that delight the psycholinguists in that they allow us to peek in on the production progress because we know what the speaker intended to say, but the unintentional mistake freezes the production process momentarily.An anticipation error occurs when a word is spoken earlier in the sentence than it should be.e.g. a leading list ( reading list)An exchange error occurs when two items within a sentence are swapped. e.g. hissed all my mystery lectures (missed all my history lectures)6.4.2 Written Language ProductionHayes and Flower (1986) proposed the theories of the writing process which consists of three inter-related processes.The planning process,which involves producing ideas and arranging them into a writing plan appropriate to the writer’s goals.The sentence generation process, which translates the writing plan into actual sentences that can be written down.The revision process,which involves an evaluation of what has been written so far; his evaluation can encompass individual words at one extreme or the overall structure of the writing at the other extreme.。