May 04, 2013

Outline
What is psycholinguistics? Essential concerns of psycholinguistics Basic concepts in psycholinguistic study

What is psycholinguistics?

Psycholinguistics= psycho + linguistics

Psycholinguistics is about how people use

language. It is principally an integration of the fields of psychology and linguistics.

Learning Vs Acquisition
Acquisition : The result of language acquisition is

subconscious. We are generally not consciously aware of the rules of the languages we have acquired. Instead, we have a feel for the correctness. Learning is conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them.

Theories of Learning
Learning: A relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge due to experience.

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

Theories: Behavioural
Primary Focus Observable behaviour Stimulus-response connections Assumptions Learning is a result of environmental forces Major Theorists Thorndike Pavlov Watson B.F.Skinner Principles Time/place pairings Biological basis of behaviour

Behaviourist views of L1 acquisition

Believed that language learned through imitation and habit

formation BUT
What we say is unique so children are unlikely to remember exactly

what they have heard Children are creative in their language use: say things they will never have heard before Children overgeneralize rules, e.g. In English add ed ending to past tense of irregular verbs Evidence that children also from an early stage accommodate to their speakers Children hear vast quantities of language too much to remember everything
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Modern behaviorism: B. F. Skinner:

The same premise: learning was the result of

environmental rather than genetic factors. His contribution: 1) extended the possible application of principles of conditioning by introducing the notion of operants, the range of behaviours that organisms performed or were capable of performing. 2) emphasized the importance of reinforcement.

Learning and Habit formation

The baby is hungry________________ stimulus
The baby cries_____________________ Response The mother picks and comforts_______ P. Reinforcement

The mother gets angry______________ N. Reinforcement

The same process happens again_______ Repetition Baby cries for food___________________ New behaviour

Behaviourist learning theory

The dominant psychological theory of the 1950s and 1960s

was behaviourist learning theory. According to this theory, language learning is like any other kind of learning in that it involves habit formation. Habits are formed when learners respond to stimuli in the environment and subsequently have their responses reinforced so that they are remembered. Thus, a habit is a stimulus-response connection.

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 All behaviour, including the kind of complex behaviour found in language acquisition, could

be explained in terms of habits.

Learning took place when learners had the opportunity to practise making the correct

response to a given stimulus. Learners imitated models of correct language (i.e. stimuli) and received positive reinforcement if they were correct and negative reinforcement if they were incorrect.

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Mentalist approach
All humans are hard-wired to learn to speak: defining

factor for humanity.

If this is so, how to we classify those persons born without

the power of acquiring spoken language?

Children cannot simply learn from what they hear as this is

often fragmentary, ungrammatical and imprecise. YET

Parents do accommodate their speech when taking to infants:

speak more slowly, more clearly and often in complete sentences Children have huge amounts of practice Parents do direct infants attention to aspects of language Infants early own can discover the limits of their communicative competence, which may lead to further L1 acquisition

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 L.A is a result of experience

L.A is a result of condition. L.A is a stimulus response process L.A is innate, inborn process L. is conditioned behaviour. L. is a species specific behaviour. Children learn L by imitation/analogy. Chldrn. L. by application L Lngg is mechanical L.L. is generative/creative Role of imitation,repetition Role of exposure L.A. is Nurture L.A. is result of nature

Theories: Social Cognition

Primary Focus Modelling Vicarious Learning Attitudes Sears Goals Assumptions Learning is a result of influences of social environment on thinking. Principles Subcategories Reciprocal Observational (Social) determinism Self-efficacy Goal-setting Individual Self-regulation responsibility

Major Theorists Bandura Vygotsky

Theories: Humanistic
Primary Focus Affect/Values Self-Concept/Self-Esteem Needs Assumptions Learning is a result of affect/emotion and goalorientation Subcategories Affect Motivation/Needs Self-concept Self-esteem

Major Theorists Rogers

Maslow

Principles Individual uniqueness Self-determination Dreams and goals are vital for success

Theories: Cognitive
Primary Focus Mental behaviour Knowledge Intelligence Critical Thinking Assumptions Learning is a result of mental operations/ processing Subcategories Information Processing Hierarchical Developmental Critical Thinking

Major Theorists Bloom

Piaget

Principles Memory is limited Changes in complexity Changes over time Good thinking requires standards

Connectionism
Models based on function of the

human brain Process of adjusting the strength of connections to produce a desired output No innate mechanism
Names: Rumelhart & McClelland (1986); Larsen-

Freeman (1991)

Other factors to consider

Many second language educators

believe that individual learner characteristics play an important role in language learning.
What are some individual

characteristics among students that would account for differences in their language learning?

Individual Differences
What are

some learner factors that result in individual differences?

Age Aptitude Attitude Motivation Personality Cognitive style Learning strategies

Individual differences
People sense things differently (physical environment, sensory modalities)

Learners differ in their social preferences

Learners differ in the way they process information (perception, speed, )

How does one accommodate these differences in the L2 classroom?

Introduction
Sixth sick sheiks sixth sheeps sick. Whether the weather is cold, or whether the weather is

hot, well be together whatever the weather, whether we like it or not.

Two classic models of language acquisition

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) We recall how, starting with purely practical and quasi-physiological groups, the child begins by elaborating subjective groups, then arrives at objective groups, and only then becomes capable of representative groups.

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) Every function in the childs cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people..., and then inside the child. This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals.

Four theories of L2 Acquisition

Stephen Krashen's Five Hypotheses The natural order hypothesis The Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis The Monitor Hypothesis The Input Hypothesis The Affective Filter Hypothesis

Interlanguage Larry Selinker

The learner does not learn the target language structure, they learn an intermediate structure As the learner becomes more capable in the target language their interlanguage model drifts closer to the target language structure Fossilization occurs when the learner ceases to be interested in the nativisation of their interlanguage

The reduced L1 model S. Pitt Corder

The learner starts with a simplified model of their L1, and uses that to build their L2. As they become more capable in the target language the learner elaborates their model of the target language Fossilization occurs when the learner feels they have a sufficient model of the target language

Second Language Acquisition Contrastive Analysis growing out of work by Fries (1945) and Weinreich (1953) most work on Second Language Acquisition in the 40's and 50's shared the assumptions of Contrastive Analysis (Lado 1957)

Contrastive Analysis based on transfer from Native Language (NL) to Target Language (TL) or First Language (L1) to Second Language(L2) shared structures facilitate acquisition distinct structures cause problems positive transfer when L1 and L2 share structures
e.g. Det Adj N structure in NP in English and German

the mean dog - der bse Hund

negative transfer when L1 and L2 have different structures e.g. NP Adv VP in Urdu versus Adv NP VP in English
Hum rozana ghar jaatey hain Tomorrow we go home
so research in Second Language Acquisition

tended to revolve around comparison of language pairs

Language Acquisition was seen as developing a set of habits to be practiced in accordance with Behaviorist Theory
but researchers found errors not predictable by language differences, and the psycholinguistic process of language acquisition can't be described solely in terms of linguistic products

Approximative Systems and Interlanguage

In the 1960's, linguists rejected Behaviorism and became interested in mentalistic theories evidence was mounting for a third system between L1 and L2 Nemser (1971) recognized an Approximative System for the learner with features of both L1 and L2

Selinker (1972) introduced the term Interlanguage for this individual language system
Interlanguages are highly variable, due to: limited cognitive attention, given so much to learn and remember simultaneously Learners lack of knowledge of rules simultaneous pull from L1 and L2 they represent transitional stages of development

but L2 tends to fossilize at some stage, due to:

1. Negative transfer from L1 e.g. putting temporal Adv before locative Adv *They went last week to Berlin.

2. Overgeneralization of L2 rules e.g. extending progressive pattern to stative verbs *I'm knowing him a long time

Error Analysis
concern with interlanguage and errors it contains and their relation gave rise to research in Error Analysis 1. Researchers first look for idiosyncrasies in learner's production

 Error Analysis ends up as a method of describing data, but not a psycholinguistic theory of language acquisition

Error Analysis loses sight of the whole picture of developing competence in L2 by focusing on errors; we could instead equate knowledge of L2 with fluency and understandability rather than lack of errors or we could instead focus on what learners do right and test to see if they do it right intuitively

Innateness, Input, Natural Order of Acquisition in L2 The Innateness Debate from Child Language Research carries over to research in Second Language Acquisition Does the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) work for L2 as for L1? If the LAD is at work, there should be a Natural Order of Acquisition in L2 as in L1. Could L2 learners simply reset the parameters from L1?

Dulay & Burt (1973) posit natural order of acquisition in L2 parallel to what Brown (1973) found for L1 at least learners with the same L1 background go through the same stages in acquiring L2 1. plural -s on nouns: the books 2. progressive -ing on verbs: they driving 3. forms of main verb be: this is London, she was there

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

forms of auxiliary be: she's driving articles a and the: a cat, the dog irregular past tenses: went, ate, came 3rd person sing pres -s: she waits possessive -s: Sally's truck

Krashen's Input Hypothesis and the Monitor Model Language Acquisition versus Language Learning subconscious acquisition like children's L1 acquisition
not affected by correction not based on formally learned rules

Input Hypothesis We acquire i + 1, the next rule along the natural order, by understanding messages containing i + 1. (a necessary but not sufficient condition for acquisition) i = current level in phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis

Bilingualism
individual bilingualism versus societal bilingualism Compare: bilingualism versus diglossia (Ferguson) balanced versus unbalanced bilingualism

dominant, usually first, native language versus weaker, second or foreign language (second or foreign language for special purpose)

First Language Acquisition

Natural acquisition with no special learning necessary

critical period resulting from a combination of factors:

development of connections between nerve cells myelination of nerve cells

 lateralization of brain functions dominance of left hemisphere corresponding development of motor skills general cognitive stages of development

(Piaget)

Developmental sketch Age Language (months) 9 10 babbling first words recurrent, maintained General

crawling standing,

Age Language (months) 11 5-10 recurrent words fulfills requests like: bring me the blue ball show me the big red dog
5 distinct vowels 5 distinct consonants

General

first steps, recognizes pictures in books

starts walking

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Age Language (months) 13

General

recognizable words daddy nein ball allgone

running, climbing furniture

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imitations: horse, train simple puzzles, reduplications: turns book pages choochoo, byebye, tiktik clock

Age Language (months) 16

General

recognizes own name 20+ words vocabulary explosion 2-word units:

points to himself: Where's Nicky? climbs stairs without rail

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Age Language (months) 20

General

3-word units: hangs on monkey baba ghar (aya) bars, points to also: eyes, nose, mouth haben Nicky cookie

Age Language (months) 22

General

verb + particle: lock up / play, 4-word units: Chacha Bazar Gaey hain Inni gute Nacht sagen

dramatic stuffed animals, dolls

Age (months): 24
Language General

verb endings: Inni spuckt bisschen kicks soccer ball, statement: Nicky auch essen plays hide-n-seek, question: Nicky auch essen, ja? draws details: command: Nicky auch essen ears, tails, wheels word-formation: cutter knife auskleben tear apart umwrts

Age Language (months)

General

32

first real narrative: It was a wooden lamby and it was on the floor in a barn and they took it home and they washed it and it wasn't ugly

builds Legos, draws people and house with chimney and windows

Age (months): 36 Phonetics voiced th: initial okay in the this etc medial v in other voiceless th: initial s in sing final f in both vocalizes final l and r mispronunciations: amimals, cimamon, pasketti

Morphology double plurals: mens, feets, mices double preterites (Past): sawed, stooded regularized Past: goed, sitted reverse word-formations: popcorner, mowgrasser Syntax negation: I see it not, That doll sits not right questions: What it did? What the lady said? counting: 1 2 3 4 5 6 20 14 fiveteen 16

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) as standard measure of first language development as opposed to age

Natural order of acquisition:

"Why mama and papa?

Jakobson's order for phoneme acquisition
in babbling, children produce all kinds of sounds and sound combinations; many children produce imitations after babbling but around age 2, children narrow their sound repertory and begin to produce sounds of their language in fixed order

order reflects an attempt to create the clearest possible set of distinctions at any given point, within the given physiological limits this order of acquisition also reveals parallel between different languages most salient distinction is between Vowels (V) and Consonants (C)

Vowels are characteristically open and resonant: the prototypical V is a Consonants are characteristically closed and obstruent: stops are prototypical Cs the prototypical stop is p

the prototypical syllable is CV: maximizing the C-V distinction, a child's first syllable should be pa given children's tendency to reduplication, a child's first real word should be papa

after the Cs p and m , the child usually acquires t , then the third voiceless stop k and so on: p m t k

child moves on to ever larger patterns with increasing numbers of distinctive features

Order of acquisition for syntax

at first, kids produce: one-word utterances with holistic meaning two-word utterances with no fixed word order three-word utterances without inflections prepositions or other markers then they begin to acquire syntax

Brown's (1973) order of acquisition for syntax:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

present progressive prepositions plural irregular past tense possessive articles regular past tense

girl playing ball in water toys, dishes went, told Ann's toys a dog, the dog jumped, hugged, wanted

8. 9. 10. 11.

regular 3rd person irregular 3rd person auxiliary contracted auxiliary

she goes, talks, watches she does, has be: I am, you are, she is I'm, you're, she's

order of acquisition as reflecting general learning strategies and stages of development (Piaget) or as evidence of innate language acquisition device (Chomsky)

Innateness Debate Chomsky (1986: 150) writes: What we "know innately" are the principles of the various subsystems [phonology, syntax, thematic structure etc.] of S0 [the initial state of the child's mind] and the manner of their interaction, and the parameters associated with these principles. What we learn are the values of the parameters and the elements of the periphery (along with the lexicon to which similar considerations apply).

That is: We "know innately" as part of Universal Grammar (UG) that sentences will have noun phrases and verb phrases in some order, but we have to learn the order. Chomsky argues children must know innately what they can not learn by observation.

Poverty of Stimulus Argument (POS): Some patterns in language are unlearnable from positive evidence alone (due to the hierarchical nature of languages) You are happy. Are you happy?

possible rules: 1) the first auxiliary verb in the sentence moves to the front 2) the main auxiliary verb in the sentence moves to the front

but compare:

The girl who is on the bus is happy. *Is the girl who __ on the bus is happy? Is the girl who is on the bus __ happy?
Children don't see sentences like this enough to

decide which rule works but nobody ever chooses the wrong rule

Grammaticality judgments: Who do you think Mary knows? Who do you think that Mary knows? Who do you think knows Mary? *Who do you think that knows Mary? Note translations!

Consider the acquisition of vocabulary:

Websters dictionary: 500,000 words Average educated persons vocabulary: 40,000 words (+ another 40,000 proper names, idioms, sayings) thus: monolingual speakers acquire about 4,000 words per year or about 10 words every day to age 20

Slobin's Operating Principles & Universals of Acquisition

Whether parts of language acquisition are innate or not, developing kids seem to follow specific strategies and their acquisition processes reveal universals Operating Principles A. Identify word units. B. Forms of words may be systematically modified. C. Pay attention to the ends of words. D. There are elements which encode relations between words.

Universal 1: postposed forms learned before preposed forms articles before nouns less salient than noun suffixes

Two languages in one brain Types of bilinguals Weinreich (1953) distinguished three kinds of bilingualism

A. Coordinate: L1 and L2 acquired in separate contexts

each system is complete in itself

person functions as monolingual in

both communities

B. Compound: L1 and L2 acquired in same context

the two systems are merged person doesn't function as monolingual in either community person may experience interference from L1 to L2 and from L2 to L1

C. Subordinate: L2 acquired based on L1

only one system person functions as monolingual only in L1 person experiences interference only from

L1 to L2

Notice that Weinreichs typology works only at the lexical level, but bilinguals may experience interference at all levels from phonetics up to semantics.

As Paradis (1979, 1985) shows, bilinguals come in many types Bilinguals may differ with regard to: manner of acquisition (formal, informal) mode of acquisition (oral, written) method of acquisition (deductive, inductive, analytic, global) age of acquisition (during or after critical period) stage of acquisition degree of proficiency

 frequency and modes of use language-specific features of L1 & L2 sharing features and rules at various levels

on every linguistic level, structures might be shared or separate e.g. if L1 speaker produces L2 perfectly, except for phonetics, i.e. has lots of interference from L1 to L2 at the level of phonetics, we could model the situation as follows:

Language comprehension
means understanding what we hear and read comprehension as active search for coherence and sense based on expectations arising from context, not a passive item-by-item recording and analysis of words in a linear sequence.

meaning and real-world expectations play a more important role than grammar top-down versus bottom-up processing
Until the age of four, kids interpret a-d the same way; even adults require longer to respond to c, d: a. The cat chased the mouse. b. The mouse was chased by the cat. c. The mouse chased the cat. d. The cat was chased by the mouse.

Comprehension of words Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP): separate, simultaneous and parallel processes work to identify words

by pronunciation: to recognize homophones leadN and ledV pst by spelling: to recognize homographs windN and windV to recognize smell as noun or verb while hear can only function as verb synonyms like little and small antonyms like little and big hyponyms like car versus vehicle etc

by grammar:

by semantics:

Bathtub Effect: recall is best for beginnings and ends of words, like the head and feet of a person which are visible though the middle remains submerged in the tub

Comprehension of sentences Chomsky proposed Generative Transformational Grammar (TG) as a model of Competence, suggesting that psycholinguists should figure out how Performance could be related to his model Psycholinguists began to test for transformational complexity

Sentences involving more transformations like PASSIVE, NEGATION, QUESTION FORMATION etc should be harder to comprehend than sentences involving fewer transformations processing time should increase for sentences a-e: a. Judy called the boy. b. Judy didn't call the boy. c. The boy was called by Judy. d. The boy was not called by Judy. e. Wasn't the boy called by Judy?

They found that negatives were harder to process than either passives or questions, even though negation seemed like a simpler transformation Subjects seemed to have difficulty processing negatives generally. Consider the difficulty of: It's not true that Wednesday never comes after a day that isn't Tuesday.

Subjects also processed passives more easily than actives, if the passives made more sense, e.g. The struggling swimmer rescued the lifeguard.
The struggling swimmer was rescued by the lifeguard. Apparently, semantics was more important than derivational complexity as predicted by TG analysis

Garden Pathing is most obvious when we have to backtrack after an unexpected switch, as in sentence a; the addition of this in sentence b, or a comma, as in sentence c, eliminates the problem

a. Since Jay always jogs a mile seems like a short distance to him. b. Since Jay always jogs a mile this seems like a short distance to him.
c. Since Jay always jogs, a mile seems like a short distance to him.

Tests revealed other syntactic processing differences. Right-branching constructions are easy to process: This is the cat that chased the rat that stole the cheese that lay in the cupboard. Here each construction is closed before the next is added.

But left-branching constructions are difficult. The rat the cat chased stole the cheese. Left-branching requires that the listener keep the first construction open (in short-term memory) while processing the second. Adding a third makes processing impossible because of the demands it places on short-term memory. The cheese the rat the cat chased stole lay in the cupboard.

Comprehension of metaphor
metaphors consist of three parts: tenor, vehicle, ground tenor billboards are vehicle warts on the landscape

ground (tertium comparationis) = 'ugly protrusions on some surface'

Comprehending sentences Given-New Contract (Clark & Clark 1977): Listeners expect information in a regular pattern. Coherent texts generally exhibit a characteristic information flow: begin each utterance with given information then move on to new information

e.g. The ballerina captivated a musician during her performance. The one who the ballerina captivated was the trombonist. (with the ballerina as given and the rest of the first sentence as new)

In the second sentence, all the information is given, except the fact that the musician was a trombonist. Hearing the first sentence reduces processing time for the second.

Theory of Instructed Language Learning Rod Ellis

L2 utterances are Consciously planned or Unplanned Pragmatic learning is more important to the learner than semantic learning Teaching should attend to form as well as meaning

The lobes of the cerebral hemispheres

Planning, decision making speech

Sensory

Auditory

Vision

The Cerebral Cortex

Aphasia impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Brocas area (impairing speaking) or to Wernickes area (impairing understanding) see clips Brocas Area an area of the left frontal lobe that directs the muscle movements involved in speech Wernickes Area an area of the left temporal lobe involved in language comprehension and expression

Language Areas
Broca Expression
Wernicke

Comprehensionand reception Aphasias

LEFT HEMISPHERE

Paul Broca [1800s]

Suggested localization

Brain Lateralization

Our Divided Brains Corpus collosum large

bundle of neural fibers (myelinated axons, or white matter) connecting the two hemispheres

Hemispheric Specialization
LEFT
Symbolic thinking (Language) Detail Literal meaning

RIGHT
Spatial perception Overall picture Context, metaphor

Contra-lateral division of labor

Right hemisphere controls

left side of body and visual field

Left hemisphere controls

right side of body and visual field

Split Brain Patients

Epileptic (abnormal excessive or synchronous

neuronal activity in the brain) patients had corpus callosum cut to reduce seizures in the brain Lives largely unaffected, seizures reduced Affected abilities related to naming objects in the left visual field

Brain Plasticity

Brain Plasticity
The ability of the brain to reorganize

neural pathways based on new experiences Persistent functional changes in the brain represent new knowledge Age dependent component Brain injuries

Parts of Neuron

EEG measures patterns of brain activity.

MEG
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a technique for

mapping brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electrical currents occurring naturally in the brain.

L2 acquisition and language in mind & brain

Brain activity in Spanish-English bilinguals reading words in native Spanish & second language, English.

MEG responses to first language words, second language words, and pictures during lexico-semantic processing (~400 ms after a word is shown). Regions with arrows indicate areas where responses to pictures and L2 words are similar, but differ from the responses to L1 words.

 Nativist Noam Chomsky,proposed that children are

born with a language acquisition device (LAD), an innate ability to understand the principles of language. Once exposed to language, the LAD allows children to learn the language at a remarkable pace.

 Linguist Eric Lenneberg suggests that like many other

human behaviors, the ability to acquire language is subject to what are known as critical periods. A critical period is a limited span of time during which an organism is sensitive to external stimuli and capable of acquiring certain skills.

What is psycholinguistics?
Psycholinguistics deals with the mental processes a person uses in producing and understanding language.
language comprehension (how we perceive and understand speech

and written language)

language production (how we construct an utterance from idea to

completed sentence)
language acquisition (how human beings learn language).

Essential questions of psycholinguistics At its heart, psycholinguistic work consists of two questions.
What knowledge of language is needed for us to use

language?
What processes are involved in the use of language?

Basic assumption in linguistics:

The knowledge question

A persons linguistic abilities are based on the knowledge that they have.

The teachers eyes sparkled and her lips broke into a gentle smile.

The knowledge question

In a sense, we must know a language to use it, but we

are not always fully aware of this knowledge.

Tacit knowledge: (not spoken) the knowledge of how to

perform various acts

Explicit knowledge: (fully and clearly expressed) the

knowledge of the processes or mechanisms used in these acts (e.g. e-mailing, speech)

Although everyone knows and uses a specific language,

few people understand what they know (Miller, 1991) .

The knowledge question

linguistic knowledge: about the meaning of words encyclopedic knowledge: about the way the world is

spinster: (often derogative) woman who remains single after the usual age for marrying friend: a person whom one knows, likes and trusts They are cleaning women.

Example S
NP VP

They

NP

are cleaning

women

Example
NP

VP

They

NP

are

ADJ.

cleaning

women

The knowledge question

The knowledge question

Four broad areas of language knowledge:
Phonology: how to pronounce words Syntax: how to construct grammatical sentences Semantics: meanings of sentences and words. Pragmatics: how to communicate properly

It is not ordinarily productive to ask people explicitly what they

know about these aspects of language. We infer linguistic knowledge from observable behavior.

The process question

What cognitive processes are involved in the ordinary use of language?
ordinary use of language: e.g. understanding a lecture, reading a

book, writing a letter, and holding a conversation, etc.

cognitive processes: processes like perception, memory and

thinking.

Although we do few things as often or as easily as speaking

and listening, we will find that considerable cognitive processing is going on during those activities.

garden path sentence

The complex houses married and single students and their families. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. Would you hit a woman with a baby? No I'd hit her with a brick. The old man the boat. The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Multan. Fat people eat accumulates.

garden path sentence

Garden path sentence: human beings process language

one word at a time. (from the saying "to be led down the garden path" meaning "to be misled)
garden path sentences: the subjective impression is one

of following a garden path to a predictable destination until it is obvious that you were mistaken in your original interpretation and thus forced to backtrack and reinterpret the sentence.
The point is that in the course of comprehending language

we are making decisions---we are doing mental work.

Basic concepts in psycholinguistic study

Serial and Parallel processing

Top-down and bottom-up processes Automatic and controlled processes

Modularity

Serial and Parallel processing

If a group of processes takes place one at a time, it is called

serial processing. If one or more of the processes take place simultaneously, it is called parallel processing.
Serial processing (sequential processing): two or more

pieces of information are processed in sequence

Parallel processing: two or more processing operations are

carried out at the same time or in parallel.

Example of serial and parallel processing

Starting point: the idea that the speaker wishes to convey Ending point: the actual articulation of the idea
A serial model: divide the process into stages: developing the phrase

structure of the sentence, retrieving the lexical items, inserting lexical items into the structure, determining the correct pronunciation of these lexical items. The serial model would assume that these stages occur one at a time, with none overlapping.
A parallel model: all these processes could take place at the same time.

We could be phonetically specifying one word while we search for the next word, or both of these processes could take place as we flesh out the syntactic structure.

Example of serial and parallel processing

In the first instance,

we interpret the middle letter as an h in one word but as an a in the other despite the fact that the letter is physically identical in the two cases.
Why?

Example of serial and parallel processing

It seems reasonable to say that we are using the context to help

decide the identity of the obscured letter.

However, that context is a word, and we normally think of first

identifying the letters and then identifying a word. How can we use the word to help identify the letter?
The answer lies in parallel processing. Assume that we are identifying

the individual letters and, at the same time, actively trying to fit the letters into various possible words. Some of the identical letters enable us to recognize the word as a familiar word, and then we identify the obscured letter from our knowledge of the spelling of the word. Thus, we are processing at the letter and the word levels simultaneously.

Top-down and bottom-up processes

Top-down and bottom-up processes

Language processing (e.g. listening) occurs on a set of levels.
At the lowest, the phonological level, identify the phonemes and

syllables.

At a higher level, the lexical level, use the identification of phonemes

and syllables to retrieve the lexical entries of the words from your semantic memory. constituents and forming a phrase structure for the sentence.

At the next level, the syntactic level, organize the words into

Finally, at the highest level, the discourse level, link the meaning of a

given sentence with preceding ones and organizing sentences into higher-order units.

Examples of top-down processes

Please call me if you want a lift, its very convenient for me as I

pass your home every day. floor.

You simply pass the button, and the lift will take you to your They have moved 30 tons of food to the flooded village in a

single lift.

The fog lifted and the sun came out. The Japanese government rejected Washingtons demands to lift

its beef embargo.

Top-down and bottom-up processes

Bottom-up processing: that which proceeds from the lowest level to

the highest level of processing in such a way that all of the lower levels of processing operate without influence from the highest level.
A top-down processing model, in contrast, states that information at

the higher levels may influence processing at the lower levels.

Speaking more intuitively, we may say that a top-down model of

processing is one in which ones expectations play a significant role.

Automatic and controlled processes

We have a fixed processing capacity for handling information. When

the task is complex, one part of the task may draw substantial resources from this limited pool of resources, thereby leaving insufficient resources for other parts and resulting in overall impaired performance.
Tasks that draw substantially from this limited pool of resources are

called controlled tasks, and the processes involved in these tasks are referred to as controlled processes.
Tasks that do not require substantial resources are called automatic

tasks; processes that do not require extensive capacity are referred to as automatic processes.

Automatic and controlled processes

Perhaps one of the best examples that illustrates how both processes

work is the human act of driving a car.

Almost everything you do on the way [to your destination] will be

automatic: breathing, blinking, shifting in your seat, daydreaming, keeping enough distance between you and the car in front of you, even scowling and cursing slower drivers." Meanwhile, you may be consciously thinking about something other than driving, or perhaps annoying other drivers by chatting with a friend on the cellphone.

Automatic and controlled processes

Consider:

What factors might influence the extent of

automatic processing? Can a person improve his or her level of automaticity?

Modularity
Modularity is a term taken from computer technology for a concept of

subsystems with specific tasks, which due to the fact that they function independently, can to a large extent be isolated.
For Chomsky, grammatical regularities are not based on general

cognitive principles, but on principles that are specific for language. This grammatical knowledge is independent of other kinds of knowledge. It is conceptualized as a module next to other modules such as visual perception.

In psycholinguistics, modularity refers to particular systems in information processing.

Modularity
Modularity has two meanings: first, it refers to the degree to which

language processing is independent of general cognitive processes such as memory and reasoning.
The modularity position: the language processing system is a

unique set of cognitive abilities that cannot be reduced to general principles of cognition.
The alternative position stresses the interconnections between

language and cognitive processes by emphasizing the role of concepts such as working memory, automatic processing, and parallel processing in language comprehension, production and acquisition.
It also refers to the degree to which an aspect of language is

independent of other aspects of language.

A brief summary
Brain Anatomy
First Language acquisition Second Language Acquisition

A brief summary
we have covered
definition and scope of psycholinguistics two core questions of psycholinguistics basic concepts in language processing serial and parallel processing, top-down and bottom-up processing,

and automatic and controlled processes as well as modularity.

We have a number of ways of processing linguistic information. That is,

language processing is not just determined by linguistic structure but jointly by that structure and by processing considerations that are independent of language.

An exploration into the relationship between language and culture.

Fundamental Question
a. What is the relationship between language and culture? b. Humans are the only animal to have culture. c. Humans are the only animal to have language. d. How do the two connect? e. What is language? what members of a particular society speak (Wardhaugh 1).

Different Meanings of Language

a. I know I don't speak English correctly. b. Most French-Canadians prefer to speak French, even though they can speak English too. c. The treaty wasn't ready to sign until both sides had a chance to look over the language. d. A polyglot is someone who knows many languages. A linguist is someone who can analyze language structure. e. English is the most widely-spoken language in the world. f. American thought and language. g. I need to work on my language skills. h. When Fred speaks to Sam, sometimes he uses English and sometimes Arabic.

Three Views of Language

o Language as Grammar:
o Language as communication: o Language as thing:

Language as Grammar
The object of a science of linguistics (Saussure).

Noam Chomsky (1928-)

Syntactic Structures Review of Skinner: Verbal Behavior (1959)

Universal Grammar difference between surface structure and deep structure in language

Grammar
Three sub-systems
Representational

Phonology (sounds), graphic, gestural morphology; words and morphemes

Lexical

(Syn)tactic = syntax

Language as communication
Language as Text. The Interaction of People The Interpretation of Texts What do you communicate? Ideas? Emotions? Intentions? How do you communicate? Messages: The interpretation of messages The construction of messages

Language as thing
Language as an element in social constructs. Language planning, code switching, dialect debates.

Note: to distinguish between and language and communication, look at the following questions:
1. Is language as Dawkins suggests part of the DNA of homosapiens? 2. Is there a creative component (the horrible honeybee story)

Competence v. Performance
Langue v parole Structure v event Structural v communicative universal v dialect

Approaches to language and culture

Wardhaugh, quite sensibly, argues that sociolinguistics is both macrolinguistic and microlinguistic: Microlinguistic-- language emphasis Macrolinguistics social emphasis Whorf, Politeness; French Structuralism (Lvi-Strauss). Communicative approaches: p. 14 Language and power (Fairclough), Social construction of reality (Berger and Luckmann); Language and Symbolic Power (Bourdieu); Pragramatics (Austin) Use Approaches: Language Planning, Multilingualism

LINGUISTICS AND SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Linguistics is the study of language includes

psycholinguistics, historical linguistics, morphology, syntax, semantics etc Sociolinguistics is the study of variation of language in use we use different words or grammatical forms depending on context

Variation
Variation is determined by social class, gender, place,

age, situation etc. Would you use the same words, syntax and phonology (or even the same language) to ask for a loan from a YB, friend, father, mother, bank, total stranger?

Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching

Implications and questions for language teaching
Teachers are supposed to teach to teach

communicative competence. Therefore should they try to teach language as it is actually used? If so, as used by whom?

continued
Teachers need to consider the language/dialect/accent

used by their students Malay dialects(?), Javanese, Manglish, Singlish, Black English, Chinese dialects(?) May be different from teachers variety and from standard language

LANGUAGE, DIALECT, ACCENT, CODE, VARIETY

Imagine you move to a village or housing estate 5 miles

from you home do people speak differently? 50 miles? 200 miles To Indonesia To Rapanui (eye=mata,fish=ika, bird =manu)

continued
When do you stop understanding people?
When do people stop understanding you? How long to learn the local ?

continued
When does an accent become a dialect?
When does a dialect become a language? A linguist would say if pronunciation is the only

difference, it is a dialect, if words and grammar are different, but still still intelligible, it is a dialect.

continued
What would a sociolinguist say? Depends on social attitudes and politics

a language is a dialect with an army and a navy

(maybe a parliament, a newspaper and a TV channel is enough)

continued
But does this describe social reality? For a linguist, if two people understand one another

they are speaking the same language Serbs, Croats, Bosnians understand each other but insist they speak different languages (since 1991)

Continued
Indians speaking Hindi understand Pakistanis

speaking Urdu but claim they speak a different language Speakers of Hokkien dialect cannot understand Cantonese or Mandarin speakers, but do not claim to speak a separate language

continued
Why did Scots and Ulster Scots suddenly become

languages in the 1990s? Before then, they were only dialects but now are languages recognised by the Scottish and Northern Ireland parliaments

Is this English?
Hear all see all say nowt Eat all sup all pay nowt

And if tha ever does owt for nowt, allus do it

for thisen

Answer
Nearly everybody would say yes. Yorkshire dialect

(distinctive lexis and some grammar, distinctive pronunciation)

Is Arabic a language?
Arabic, Algerian Saharan Spoken

Arabic, Algerian Spoken Arabic, Babalia Creole Arabic, Baharna Spoken Arabic, Chadian Spoken Arabic, Cypriot Spoken Arabic, Dhofari Spoken Arabic, Eastern Egyptian

continued
National language. 246,000,000 second-language speakers of all Arabic varieties (1999 WA). Not a first language. Used for education, official purposes, written materials, and formal speeches. Classical Arabic is used for religion and ceremonial purposes, having archaic vocabulary. Modern Standard Arabic is a modernized variety of Classical Arabic. In most Arab countries only the well educated have adequate proficiency in Standard Arabic, while over 100,500,000 do not.

Answer
Arabs generally insist there is only one language.

Sociolinguists would have to agree with them but would also analyse the relationship between the different varieties.

Is English a language?
Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, West Country, East Anglia,

Birmingham (Brummy, Brummie), South Wales, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cornwall, Cumberland, Central Cumberland, Devonshire, East Devonshire, Dorset, Durham, Bolton Lancashire, North Lancashire, Radcliffe Lancashire, Northumberland, Norfolk, Newcastle Northumberland, Tyneside Northumberland, Lowland Scottish, Somerset, Sussex, Westmorland, North Wiltshire, Craven Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, Sheffield Yorkshire, West Yorkshire. Lexical similarity 60% with German, 27% with French, 24% with Russian.

Code and variety

The lines between accents, dialects and languages are

blurred, chamging and socially determined Sociolinguists like to talk about code and variety Avoids arguments about what is a language and what is a dialect

Is Malay a language?
Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Malayu, Malayu, Melaju,

Melayu, Standard Malay Dialects Trengganu, Kelantan, Kedah, Perak (Southern Malay), Sarawak Malay, Bazaar Malay (Low Malay, Pasar Malay, Pasir Malay, Trade Malay). 'Bazaar Malay' is used to refer to many regional nonstandard dialects. Over 80% cognate with Indonesian.

Is Indonesian a language?
Bahasa Indonesia Classification Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Malayic, Malayan, Local Malay Language use Official language. Over 140,000,000 second-language speakers. Language development Roman and Arabic scripts. Grammar. Comments Reported to be modeled on Riau Malay of northeast Sumatra. Has regional variants. Over 80% cognate with Standard Malay.

Questions
Is Malay one Language? How many dialects?
Is English?

Chinese?
Arabic?

Summary
For a linguist the rules for deciding whether a variety is

a language or dialect are simple. Can people understand each other? In sociolinguistics it is difficult to decide history, attitudes and politica have to be considered also.

Speech Communities
A group of people with the same rules about the use

and correctness of language May not coincide with language or dialect E.g. Malaysian Chinese, Arabs, Ireland

continued
Semi-speakers of dying languages Celtic languages in

Britain
Linked to communicative competence may not be

the same as linguistic competence

Sociolinguistic Methods
Questionnaires Interview

Observation
Participant-Observation Experiments

Analysis of Texts
Archive research

Sociolinguistic questions

How and why do languages change (and die)? How do people decide which variety to use? Are men and women different? To what extent can governments control the use of language? Does language vary with social class?

continued
To summarise sociolinguists study how linguistics

features vary When variation is extensive enough and found across domains, sociolinguistics talk about varieties and codes Sometimes these are the same as languages and dialects (as described by linguists)

continued
But sometimes not sociolinguists also consider social

attitudes and status.

1.

2.

Social structure may influence or determine linguistic structure and/or behaviour Linguistic structure/behaviour influences or determines social structure (Whorfian hypothesis)

3. Language and society affect each other

4. No relationship at all between language and culture

Desperate Definitions: Sociolinguistics is an attempt to find correlations between linguistic structure and social structure

Sociolinguists
whatever it is, is about asking important questions concerning the relationship of language to society (Wardhaugh 11)

This is not reassuring

Even our textbook seems unable to give us a

straightforward, agreed upon definition of sociolinguistics. Lets try the discussion questions on page 12 of Wardhaugh. Get into groups of 4 or 5 and take 15 minutes to go over questions 1 and 2.

Methodological principles
Wardhaugh p. 18
1. Cumulative 2. Uniformation 3. Convergence 4. Subordinate shift 5. Style shifting 6. Attention 7. Vernacular 8. Formality

Sociolinguistics (summary)
to:

What is sociolinguistics?
It studies why people speak differently according

- Whom they are talking to? - What they are talking about? - In what kind of context they are

talking?

More specifically
1. Social motivation for language variation: - socio-economic status - gender - ethnicity - region etc. 2. Language contact - Pidgin language - Creole language

Basic concepts you should know:

Dialect vs. language:
Mutual intelligibility:
Situation in which speakers of different language varieties are able to understand and communicate with the other. - Chinese dialect, a special case

Dialect continuum:
Situation in which a large number of contiguous dialects exist, each mutually intelligible with the next, but with the dialects at either end of the continuum not being mutually intelligible.

Several points to be noticed:

Overt prestige vs. covert prestige - Overt prestige:
Type of prestige attached to a particular variety by the community that defines how people should speak in order to gain status in the wider community

- Covert prestige
Type of prestige that exists among members of nonstandardspeaking communities that defines how people should speak in order to be considered members of those particular communities. e.g. the young boy in American Tongues African American speech community

Pidgin vs. Creole language

Pidgin language:
Language developed by speakers of distinct language who come into contact with one another and share no common language among them. - originates to overcome communication barriers - typically spring up in trading centers - made of mixtures of elements from all of the languages in contact - most of the vocabulary derived from socially or economically dominant language

Creole language
Creole language:
a language that develops from contact between speakers of different languages and serves as the primary means of communication for a particular group of speakers - typical in plantation setting - some of them are stabilized pidgin - different from pidgin, Creole language serves as the first language for speakers

Diglossia
Holmes: The use of two varieties in a society, distinguished by function High and Low varieties; Typical functions of the H variety:
Literature, education,

law, government administration, news broadcasts;

H variety used on formal/official occasions e.g. delivering a speech; holding a meeting. The H variety is usually learnt in school. L variety used for everyday, more informal purposes. L variety is usually an L1 and learnt at home.
195

Attitudes to H and L varieties

H variety has high prestige;
Why doesnt a society use only the H variety?

Overt prestige
Covert (hidden) prestige

196

The Case of Singapore

Holmes Table 2.4 (p.32)
H (Mandarin, Singapore English formal variety) L (Cantonese, Hokkien, Singapore English informal

variety)

197

 Watch the video on Singapore and compare its

linguistic situation with that of Hong Kong (level of individual and societal bilingualism)

198

Diglossia without bilingualism

Luke & Richards (1982): A society where two or more languages are commonly used but in which: i) individual linguistic repertoires are largely confined to one of the languages ii) a single language is used for intra-group communication iii) bilingualism is restricted to certain areas of public life iv) the bilingual population is small v) the two speech communities rarely mix
199

Case studies
r-Lessness in New York City:
lack of [r] in words as four, card etc. in New York dialect

- misconception: there is a total lack of [r] in those words for

speakers

of the dialect. - Labov: speakers vary their use of [r] according to their social status. high status: the use of [r] low status: the lack of [r] hypothesis: salespeople tend to reflect the prestige of their customers. Salespeople from the highest prestige store would exhibit the highest incidence of [r] in their speech, while those from the lowest prestige store would exhibit the lowest incidence of [r]

Sociolinguistics
Study the relationship between language and society.

1. explaining why we speak differently in different social contexts 2. identifying the social functions of language and the ways it is used to convey social meaning.
An attempt to find correlations between social structure and

linguistic structure and to observe any changes that occur (Gumpers, 1971: 223) understand one without the other. number of social factors.

Language and society intertwined impossible to

The language used by the participants is influenced by a

Sociolinguistics vs. the Sociology of language

Sociolinguistics investigating the relationships between language and society with the goal of a better understanding of the structure of language and of how languages function in communication Sociology of language to discover how social structure can be better understood through the study of language, e.g. how certain linguistic features serve to characterize particular social arrangement

Sociolinguistics vs. the Sociology of language

Hudson, 1980: 4-5 a. Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society, b. Sociology of language: the study of society in relation to language Similarity: a. Both require systematic study of language.

The relationship between language and society

(wardaugh, : 10)

1. Social

structure linguistic structure and/or behavior a. age-grading phenomenon young children speak differently from older children and in turn, children speak differently from mature adults. b. studies the varieties of language that speakers use reflect such matters; their regional, social, or ethnic origin and possible sex. c. other studies particular ways of speaking, choices of words, and rules for conversing are determined by social requirement

The relationship between language and society

(wardaugh, : 10)

2. Linguistic structure and/or behavior may either influence or determine social structure (behind Whorfian hypothesis) 3. The influence is bi-directional; language and society may influence each other. 4. There is no relationship at all.

Social factors
The participants

Who is talking to whom (wife-husband, customershopkeeper, boss-worker)

The social setting and function of interaction

e.g. home, work, school

(informative, social)

The aim or purpose of the interaction

The topic; What is being talked about?

Example I
Tom Mum Tom Mum Tom : Hi mum. : Hi. Youre late. : Yeah, that bastard Soot bucket kept us in : Nanas here. : Oh sorry. Where is she?
again.

Analysis I
Language serves a range of functions; to ask for and

give people information, to express indignation and annoyance, as well as admiration and express feelings.

Example II
Tom : Good afternoon, sir. Principle : What are you doing here at this time? Tom : Mr. Sutton kept us in, sir.
For the analysis, see Holmes, 1995: 2-3

Example III
Every afternoon my friend packs her bag and leaves her Cardiff office at about 5 oclock. As she leaves, her business partner says goodbye Margaret, (she replies goodbye Mike) her secretary says goodbye Ms Walker, (she replies goodbye Jill) and the caretaker says Bye Mrs. Walker (to which she responds goodbye Andy). As she arrives home she is greeted by Hi mum from her son, Jamie, hello dear, have a good day?, from her mother, and simply youre late again! from her husband.

Example III
Later in the evening the president of the local flower

club calls to ask if she would like to join. Good evening, is that Mrs. Billington? she asks. No, its Ms Walker, but my husbands name is David Billington, she answers. What can I do for you? Finally a friend calls Boradar Meg, hows thing?

Example IV
Sam : You seen our enrys new ouse yet? Its in alton you know. Jim : I have indeed. I could hardly miss it Sam. Your Henry now owns the biggest house in Halton. It illustrated a range of social influences on language choice.

Social dimensions
A Social distance scale concerned with participant

relationship A status scale concerned with participant relationship A formality scale relating to the setting or type of interaction Two functional scales relating to the purposes or topic of interaction

The solidarity social distance scale

Intimate
High solidarity

Distant
Low solidarity

The scale is useful in emphasizing that how well we know someone is a relevant factor in linguistic choice. e.g. meg vs. Mrs. Belington

The status scale

Superior high status
Subordinate e.g.
1. The use of sir, Mrs., to the lecturer by the students 2. The [h]-dropping reflect someones lower social group

low status

The formality scale

Formal High formality
Informal
1.

Low Formality

Useful in assessing the influence of social setting or type of interaction on language choice. 2. Often degrees of formality are largely determined by solidarity and status relationship. But not always.

The referential and affective function scales

Referential
High Information Content affective Low Affective Content low information content high affective content

The referential and affective function scales

1. The more referentially oriented an interaction is, the less it tends to express the feelings of the speaker.

 Chaika ( 1988, 10) the context determines meaning, 1. the social status of speakers 2. the speech event and social conventions governing it; 3. the social-cultural and physical environment 4. previous discourse between the speakers or known to them 5. the intent of the speaker.

Conclusion
Our word choices depend on who we are talking to. Language choices convey information about the social

relationships between people as well as about the topic of discussion. Linguistic variation occurs at other levels of linguistic analysis: sounds, word-structure, grammar as well as vocabulary.