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Introduction

Langston Psycholinguistics Lecture 1. Introduction. What is psycholinguistics?. How many languages do you speak? Linguistics: The study of language itself. Psycholinguistics: How language develops, is used, and represented. A note about the class.

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Introduction

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  1. Langston Psycholinguistics Lecture 1 Introduction

  2. What is psycholinguistics? • How many languages do you speak? • Linguistics: The study of language itself. • Psycholinguistics: How language develops, is used, and represented.

  3. A note about the class • “This class was quite a bore. I think the professor tried to make the topics interesting but he failed miserably. He required us to write five reaction papers to pass the class, problem was... it was hard to find anything he said worth reacting to and it will be hard to make an A on these because his grading is very subjective. The class was a disappointment and I strongly suggest CDIS Language Acquistion if you would like to gain more knowledge about language because this class is far too broad and unorganized. It was one of those classes that are based on theories but no concrete answers. Unless you aspire to be a linguist, i don't suggest taking this class because the professor doesn't focus on one topic long enough for a student to have a clear understanding. I suggest no one take this class with the " i need an elective mentality" or this class will be your most confusing nightmare. I passed but I'm not ashamed to say that it was pure luck.”

  4. What interests us? • Who’s the boss? • Is secular humanism a religion? Who decides what words mean? • Humpty Dumpty

  5. Where do words come from and why? • From Savage Love (5/23/01): • “At the end of last week’s column, you asked what we should call it when a woman f***ks a man in the a** with a strap-on di*do. We should call it ‘a woman f***king a man in the a** with a strap-on dil*o.’ Does every sexual practice need a cute term? I’m sick of not being able to say everyday, previously run-of-the-mill phrases like ‘tossed salad’ because now everyone thinks I want…”

  6. “Author Toni Morrison, in her Nobel lecture, says that representations of violence are not just representations, they are violence,” says Worsham. “Language has a way of doing violence.” • What power do words have? Where do they get their power?

  7. How are words connected to the body? • Is hot under the collar hot? • Does the cold shoulder make you cold? • Is there such a thing as amodal cognition?

  8. The plan • The goal is to trace language through the system: • Some background • Speech: input to comprehension • Reading: input to comprehension • Words • Syntax (word order) • Semantics (meaning) • Development (biology, of a language, and of the individual)

  9. Language Facts • “man’s most important cultural invention” • “language pervades thought, with different languages causing their speakers to construe reality in different ways” • “children learn to talk from role models and caregivers”

  10. Language Facts • “grammatical sophistication used to be nurtured in the schools, but sagging educational standards and the debasements of popular culture have led to a frightening decline in the ability of the average person to construct a grammatical sentence” • “Engish is a zany, logic-defying tongue” • “English spelling takes such wackiness to even greater heights” ghoti

  11. Language Facts • All facts from Pinker (1994, p. 4) • Let’s look at them again. Pinker and I both want to convince you that all of this is wrong.

  12. Language Facts • “man’s most important cultural invention” • It’s biology. We will see a lot of these arguments at the end, but: • Species specific. • Replicated in every member of the species. • Differentiated spontaneously with maturation. • Certain aspects emerge only during infancy. • (List from Fernandez & Cairns after Lenneberg, 1967)

  13. Language Facts • “language pervades thought, with different languages causing their speakers to construe reality in different ways” • Language and thought are related, but language is not equal to thought. • Language evolved for communication of thoughts.

  14. Language Facts • “children learn to talk from role models and caregivers” • Much of what kids know is not explicitly taught. • The debate is not so much whether they are explicitly taught, but more about what is available in the information given to them. Can they pick up language without biology?

  15. Language Facts • “children learn to talk from role models and caregivers” • A unicorn is in the garden. How do you make it a question? • A unicorn that is eating a flower is in the garden. How do you make it a question? • Jabberwocky

  16. Language Facts • “grammatical sophistication used to be nurtured in the schools, but sagging educational standards and the debasements of popular culture have led to a frightening decline in the ability of the average person to construct a grammatical sentence” • Language evolves. • The problem of aks.

  17. Language Facts • “Engish is a zany, logic-defying tongue” • “English spelling takes such wackiness to even greater heights” ghoti • The goal of the system is different from people’s expectation. • Electric • Electricity

  18. More on the distinction • More Alice.

  19. More on the distinction • Markedness (linguistics): Some terms seem to have an extra feature (they’re marked). For example: • Long-short • Hot-cold • Happy-sad

  20. More on the distinction • Markedness: How do we know? • Unmarked is the name of the dimension (“this board is three feet long” versus “this board is three feet short”). • Unmarked can be used in questions without implying anything (“how long is it?” versus “how short is it?”).

  21. More on the distinction • Markedness (psycholinguistics): What does it do? • Marked terms take longer to access. • Marked terms are a possible account of a relationship between language and spatial processing.

  22. More on the distinction • Insert…

  23. History • Very abbreviated: • Behaviorism: Verbal behavior can be acquired through classical and operant conditioning just like the rest of psychology. • Not necessarily. We need to make the distinction between whether it can be learned and whether it is learned the way behaviorists expected.

  24. History • Very abbreviated: • Chomsky: • Poverty of the stimulus • John wants him to win. • John wants Bill to see him. • Trouble with associations as an account for language: • Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. • Competence/performance • Blit, blib, blish

  25. History • Very abbreviated: • A different model (the cognitive revolution): • Information theory: We can calculate how much information is in a message. • This can explain this: • MST PPL CN RD THS SNTNC. • And this: • The witness was examined by the _____.

  26. History • Very abbreviated: • A different model (the cognitive revolution): • It was also a philosophical change (e.g., you can have representations). • Methodology came along. • More subject matter (sometimes the way you look at things affects what you see).

  27. Our problem • The Language Instinct

  28. The End

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