Psycholinguistics

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

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? Yun-Pi Yuan

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 (I’d, I’m, can’t, won’t…) 4. Be expressive: Semantic expressiveness & rhetorical expressiveness * Conclusion: Four rules are competing with each other. (Nash 14) Yun-Pi Yuan

Be Clear (1) • Examples (Russian) • dom “house”—masculine, inanimate subject • ulica“street”—feminine, subject • čuvstvo “sensation”—neuter, subject • What’s the ending if the word is used as object? Yun-Pi Yuan

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. Yun-Pi Yuan

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 Yun-Pi Yuan

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 Yun-Pi Yuan

MAT CAT Be Expressive (1) • Ways to express the image: Yun-Pi Yuan

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 Yun-Pi Yuan

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). Yun-Pi Yuan

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 Yun-Pi Yuan

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 Yun-Pi Yuan

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) Yun-Pi Yuan

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.” Yun-Pi Yuan

Standard English “I am eating” Hawaiian Pidgin Me kaukau “Me eat” I kaukau “I eat” Hawaiian Creole (+progressive) I stay kaukau “I stay eat” Hawaiian Creole Yun-Pi Yuan

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. • They’re children’s 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. he’s exposed to. Yun-Pi Yuan

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 location—concept of relation of location/spatial relations—placed 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” Yun-Pi Yuan

UOP A: Pay attention to the ends of words. • Turkish postpositions (faked): • pot stove on • spoon pot in • Chinese: • 球在盒子裡 Yun-Pi Yuan

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 ishandsome. • S-V agreement: The woman comes here every day. Yun-Pi Yuan

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 Yun-Pi Yuan

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 Yun-Pi Yuan

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 Yun-Pi Yuan

Summary of 4 Rules and UOP • Pressures on language: • Psychological pressures—language must conform to the ways in which the MIND works. • Communicative pressures—language must meet all the needs of communication • 1. informativeness • 2. clarity • 3. efficiency • 4. effectiveness • 5. reasonably quick (on-going time) Yun-Pi Yuan

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 doesn’t transmit all sounds (e.g., f, s, m, n) • In class: selective listening • Rough model #1 Yun-Pi Yuan

Comprehension (2) • Constituents: “sentence parts” • e.g.: The old manwent to the store. subjectpredicate • 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. Yun-Pi Yuan

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 speaker’s intent. Yun-Pi Yuan

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) Yun-Pi Yuan

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. Yun-Pi Yuan

Comprehension phonetic input Identify phonology situation; lexicon remember morphology typical syntax situation. semantics pragmatics Production phonetics output production Comprehension (6)Rough Model #2: Yun-Pi Yuan

Comprehension (7) • Bring in phonetic stream and segment it into phonological representation. • Immediate organize into constituents. • Use constituent analysis to construct propositions. • Figure out speaker’s intent (and respond appropriately). Yun-Pi Yuan

Psycholinguistics