Chapter 1

What is psycholinguistics?

What is psycholinguistics?

“Linguists and psychologists talk about different things…Grammarians are more interested in what could be said than in what people actually say, which irritates psychologists, and psychologists insist on supplementing intuition with objective evidence, which irritates linguists.”

Miller (1990, p. 321)

What are psycho-linguists

What are psycho-linguists

What psycholinguists don't do

1.They don’t study the language of crazy people (although schizophrenia and other disorders are studied by psycholinguists).

2.They don’t study why people act the way they do in society (sociolinguists are more likely to look at this)—although they do look at how anxiety and other emotions may affect how you process language

3.They don’t study why you want to punch your roommate every time she opens her mouth (although some psycholinguists do examine how language affects how you act)

Areas of psycholinguistics

There are at least three problems with which psycholinguists are primarily concerned:

1.The acquisition problem

2.The link between language knowledge and language usage

3.Producing and comprehending speech

Aitchison (1998, p. 2)

Areas of psycholinguistics

1.Comprehension:How is the acoustic or visual signal linguistically interpreted?

2.Production:How is the information that somebody wants to convey transformed? How is language put together in the mind?

3.Neurocognition:How is language processed in the human brain, i.e., what is the cerebral-functional architecture of our language faculty?

4. Language and thought:What role does human language play in thinking? And do different languages change the way we think?

5. Acquisition:How does a child acquire these skills (first language acquisition) and how are they extended to other languages (second language acquisition)?

6. Disorders:What causes the occurrence of transient or more permanent disturbances of the speech and language processing systems?

What psycholinguists do

1.Why can we sometimes remember the first letter of a word, but can’t remember the whole word?

2.Why are some people, after suffering a stroke, not able to recognize or recall names of fruit but can recognize all other kinds of words?

3.Can you think if you don’t have language? Do you need “inner speech” in order to think?

4.Why do we make speech errors?

5.Do simultaneous bilinguals take longer to learn and process words than non bilinguals?

6.What is dyslexia?

Example of psycholinguistics

Are there linguistic cues to the onset of Alzheimer's?

Example of psycholinguistics

Are there linguistic cues to the onset of Alzheimer's?

You'd need to have lots of recorded speech of person

Like President Reagan (who had it) Contrast with speech of Pres. Bush Sr (who

doesn't)

Example of psycholinguistics

Reagan was 69 when he started

Bush was 64

Example of psycholinguistics

Reagan was 69 when he started

Bush was 64

Reagan: Used fewer and fewer unique words Used more and more conversational fillers

You know, um

Used more non-specific nouns like “thing” instead of name of thing

Example of psycholinguistics

Stroop Test

Example of psycholinguistics

Christopher(Neil Smith, 1995)

Non-verbal IQ of 60

Cannot tie shoes or live on his own

Can speak 16 different languages.

Learned Dutch on the way to a talk show

Learned Hindi from brother-in-law just by listening to him speak

Notice links to MLA and LLBA on website.

MLA (International Bibliography and Periodicals Index)

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts

Notice guidelines for preparing article summary Guidelines

Why start with review of linguistics?

Refresher To get you thinking about processing So you see how hard language is To make you wonder how computer handles it

Review of place and manner of articulation

State of the glottis

What can vocal folds do?

State of the glottis

What can vocal folds do? Stay open (no vibration) Be held tightly so they vibrate along their entire

length (voicing) Be held loosely together (breathy voice) Be held tightly together so they only vibrate at one

end (creaky voice, glottal stop) Be held closed airtight (glottal stop, ejectives,

implosives)

State of the glottis

Vocal folds in motion Mel Blanc's vocal folds

Speech is not series of unique sounds

Is “bat” [b]+[ae]+[t]? Why not?

What does tongue do between [a] and [l] in “all”? How would cutting and pasting sounds handle

that? What would it sound like?

Speech is not series of unique sounds

Allophonic variation /t/ is different in “tack”, “pat”, “attack”, and “faculty” /l/ is different in “light” and “pail”

Speech is not series of unique sounds

Allophonic variation /t/ is different in “tack”, “pat”, “attack”, and “faculty” /l/ is different in “light” and “pail”

Coarticulation “steel” vs. “stool”

Speech is not series of unique sounds

Pronunciation varies according to: dialect

“merry, marry, Mary” “Don, dawn, cot, caught”

speed, register, context are “to” and “two” homophones?

“I have to go” vs. “I have two goats” in slow and fast speech “I have to go” vs. “I have two goats” in slow and fast speech

How could computer handle it?

Speech requires fine motor skills

Parents teach kids sign so they can communicate earlier

Speech movie 1

Speech ability isn't just physical

Can a word end in -mp -md

Can a word begin with fl- tl- sf-

Speech ability isn't just physical

Can a word have this in the middle? -stl- -brls- -nstr- mpstr-

Speech ability isn't just physical

Is this phonotactic knowledge binary or gradient? Order in terms of “goodness”

sl-, sf-, sp-

Speech ability isn't just physical

Is this phonotactic knowledge binary or gradient? Order in terms of “goodness”

sl-, sf-, sp-

Where does this knowledge come from? How would computer know?

English Consonants

4 ways to pronouce /r/

English Vowels

Speech pathology

What causes impediments? Poor hearing? Poor articulation? Is it psychological?

Impediment 1

Impediment 2

Speech therapy

Is applied linguistics One of most growing/needed specialists Involves helping people One of the best jobs to have

Are syllables real or necessary?

People generally agree on number of syllables But:

flour vs. flower hire vs. higher how many in fire, pearl, centering, centring?

Are syllables real or necessary?

Syllable based orthographies attest to reality People disagree on syllabification

balance city pastor camel spirit

What are phonemes?

Are phonemes real or a linguist's invention?

Are phonemes real or a linguist's invention?

Alphabets are phonemic

People are aware of phonemic distinctions but not allophonic ones

Concept formation experiment (queen, chemist, cape, kernel)

What are morphemes?

Free Morphemes

Content words: most nouns, adjectives, adverbs, adjectives

• go, space, yellow, true, tree

Function words: prepositions, articles, pronouns• at, in, around, for, the, his, we

What are morphemes?

How many morphemes in engine receive correspondent deconstructionalistic rejuvenating propulsion reimburse

Bound Morphemes

Affixes

-s, -ing, re-, un-, -ment, -tion

Tone

kùnù will weave

kúnù weaves (high tone on 1st syllable is present marker)

What is a word?

What is a word?

How many words?

fireman

white house

can-opener (or canopener? same frequency on Google)

compraríamos (we used to open)

dizer lhe ei (I will tell him)

voy a comprarlo / lo voy a comprar (I'm going to buy it)

psycho-linguist or psycholinguist

Speech is messy