Lecture: Psycholinguistics Professor Dr. Neal R. Norrick

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Psycholinguistics

Universität des SaarlandesDept. 4.3: English Linguistics

SS 2009

1. Introduction

Psycholinguistics = the study of language and mind

mind versus brain • mind as understanding, senses, spirit, psyche• mind as total of cognitive capacities

Psycholinguistics is:

study of language production & comprehension

reflecting distinction of

competence versus performance

Psycholinguistics versus neighbor disciplines:

Sociolinguistics, Neurolinguistics,

Cognitive Linguistics

2. Biological foundations of speech

2.1 Organs of speech

humans have no specific organs of speech,

but we find specialization for speech in

many parts of system

2.2 Nervous system

central versus peripheral

descending, versus ascending, motor sensory

but both systems function together in complex activity, so that brain gets feedback on effects

nerve development from birth to two yearsreflects growth in motor and language skills

special areas of brain for language skills

organization of perception, language

and articulation in the brain:

motor cortex:

2.3 Brain Lateralization

specialization of function in left and right

hemispheres as part of evolutionary

development in brain

still, corpus callosum connects the two

hemispheres

3. Linguistics and mental entities

3.1 Words and concepts

• word meaning as mental image• words as signs of concepts, labels for concepts• concepts might be figures, images, models etc• concepts include perceptual and functional

information

Miller & Johnson-Laird's concept:

3.2 Sounds and phonemes

phonemes as psychologically real entities

abstract phoneme /p/

versus positionally variant allophones:

• aspirated [ph] word-initial, as in pill• preglottalized [p] word-final, as in lip• unaspirated [p-] after initial s, as in spill

these allophones are predictable variants

they don't distinguish meanings

ability to distinguish meanings defines

phonemes

hence: minimal pair test

pill - bill

but experiments show:words are recognized faster than phonemes

we recognize the letter b and the sound /b/faster in the word bat than in isolation

words are more salient than phonemes

suprasegmental features are alsopsychologically salient

intonation distinguishes statements

and questions

Sally's here. versus Sally's here?

stress focuses on any constituent in questions

Sally gave the new car to Judy today?• can question whether it was Sally (not Suzy),• whether she gave (not loaned) the car,• whether it was the new (not the old) car etc

3.4 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis sees language and

human cognition as related in non-arbitrary

ways

Sapir 1921, 1929, 1949, Whorf 1950, 1956

proposed a relationship between language,

meaning, culture, and personality, generally

called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The strong version of the hypothesis says our language determines our perception. We see the things and processes our language has names for and ignore or cannot see what our language doesn't name.

The weak version of the hypothesis says our language influences our perception. We attendto the things and processes our language has names for and tend to ignore or find it difficult to attend to what our language doesn't name.

Slobin's ‘thinking for speaking’ notes that any

language system enforces certain choices in

grammar and lexis, no matter how our underlying

thought patterns work,

Compare:

I like it, mir gefällt es, mi piace, I'm cold, mich friert, mir ist kalt, isch hann kalt, j'ai froid

If we must always attend to certain distinctionsand ignore others, in speaking and thinking,shouldn't that influence the way we think?

4. Words in the Mental Lexicon

Mental Lexicon versus dictionary• words accessible via sound, meaning,

related words

Mental Lexicon versus encyclopedia• Encyclopedia contains all kinds of knowledge,

usually unnecessary for normal word use,

e.g. for dog

4.1 Word Association Tests (WATs)

Experiments show:

we recognize concrete words like table

faster than abstract words like trouble

table chair faster, more consistent

trouble bad lower, less consistent

WATs also show paradigmatic versus

syntagmatic relations:

• paradigmatic apple, pear, banana, plum• syntagmatic apple, red, juicy, eat

in WATs:• adults respond paradigmatically:

pillow bed• children respond syntagmatically:

pillow soft

WATs show faster recognition after associated words:

we recognize roof faster after housethan after some unrelated word like apple

so Lindsay & Norman (1972) postulate

lexical networks

4.2 Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomena

Thinking on Tip-of-the-Tongue (TOT) phenomena begins with James (1890)

James speaks of “a gap that is intensively active” in consciousness when we try to recall aforgotten name.

Meringer and Mayer (1895), Fromkin (1973) keptpersonal catalogues of error types to gather natural data.

Brown and McNeill (1966) collected intuitions on remembering in diary studies, e.g.

unable to recall the name of the street on which a relative lives,

one of us thought of Congress and Corinth and Concord

and then looked up the address and learned that it was Cornish.

Burke et al. (1991) write, “When a TOT occurs, a lexical node in a semantic system becomesactivated, giving access to semantic information about the target word, but at least some phonological information remains inaccessible.”

Subjects in the TOT state often report that a word related to the target comes repeatedly and involuntarily to mind, yielding ‘blockers’,‘interlopers’or ‘persistent alternates’, e.g.

sexton or sextet for sextant

Burke et al. (1991) identify a semantic system or

network of nodes connecting concepts • the concept chastity is connected with “is a virtue,”

“take a vow of” etc • the concept baker with “bake bread” “get up early”

“sell cakes” “knead dough” etc

4.3 Discourse, frames, prototypes

Cognitive linguists look at discourse contexts where

words occur, e.g. if, for an item like roof,

The house needs a new roof

Then "house has a roof" is part of discourse frame

Consider also frame effects:

We saw an old house.

The roof was in need of repair.

Consider typical collocations and metaphors:

she has no roof over her head

- for 'no house'

we're finally under one roof

- for 'in the same house‘

Moreover, Rosch and her co-workers have shown: • some properties are more salient than others• some members of a category are more typical

it may be impossible to define certain words without

exemplification,

e.g. colors, fruits, games etc

instead of: "a fruit is the edible part of a plant etc"

we find: "a fruit is like an apple, a peach or a banana"

word meanings and categories are generally not

defined by features or propositions, but by

prototypes

Testing for prototypes

A. Ask subjects to identify the most typical bird:

Prototype Effects:

prototype: A trout is a typical fish

marginal: A tadpole is a kind of a fish

non-member: Their daughter is a regular fish

Note: real members don't fit here:

*This trout is a regular fish

5. 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)

5.1 Developmental sketch

Age Language General

(months)

9 babbling crawling

10 first words standing,

recurrent, maintained

Age Language General(months)

11 5-10 recurrent words first steps, fulfills requests like: recognizesbring me the blue ball pictures inshow me the big red dog books

12 5 distinct vowels starts walking5 distinct consonants

Age Language General

(months)

13 recognizable words running,

daddy nein ball climbing furniture

allgone

14 imitations: horse, train simple puzzles,

reduplications: turns book pages

choochoo,

byebye, taktak ‘clock’

Age Language General

(months)

16 recognizes own name points to himself:

20+ words Where's Nicky?

18 vocabulary explosion climbs stairs

2-word units: without rail

ducky allgone

Nicky haben

Age Language General

(months)

20 3-word units: hangs on monkey

Nicky cookie haben bars, points to

also: eyes, nose, mouth

haben Nicky cookie

Age Language General

(months)

22 verb + particle: dramatic

lock up / deck zu play,

4-word units: stuffed Mami Auto fahren kauft animals,

Inni gute Nacht sagen 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’

umwärts

Age Language General (months)

32 first real narrative: builds Legos,It was a wooden lamby draws people and it was on the floor and housein a barn with chimneyand they took it home and windowsand they washed itand it wasn't ugly

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: sawed, stooded• regularized preterites: 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

5.2 Natural order of acquisition:

5.2.1 "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

5.2.2 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. present progressive girl playing 2. prepositions ball in water 3. plural toys, dishes 4. irregular past tense went, told 5. possessive Ann's toys 6. articles a dog, the dog 7. regular past tense jumped, hugged, wanted

8. regular 3rd person she goes, talks, watches 9. irregular 3rd person she does, has10. auxiliary be: I am, you are, she is11. contracted auxiliary 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)

5.4 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 hierarchicalnature of languages)

You are happy. Are you happy?

possible rules: 1) the first auxiliary verb in the sentence moves

to the front2) 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:

Webster’s dictionary: 500,000 words

Average educated person’s 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

5.5 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 PrinciplesA. 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

6. Second Language Acquisition6.1 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 böse Hund

negative transfer when L1 and L2 have different structures

e.g. Adv V NP in German versus Adv NP V in English

Morgen fahren wir nach Hause 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 bylanguage differences, and the psycholinguisticprocess of language acquisition can't be describedsolely in terms of linguistic products

6.2 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 Interlanguagefor 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

6.3 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 rightand test to see if they do it right intuitively

6.4 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 books2. progressive -ing on verbs: they driving3. forms of main verb be: this is London,

she was there

4. forms of auxiliary be: she's driving

5. articles a and the: a cat, the dog

6. irregular past tenses: went, ate, came

7. 3rd person sing pres -s: she waits

8. possessive -s: Sally's truck

6.5 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

7. 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)

A. Coordinate: L1 and L2 acquired

in separate contexts– each system is complete in

itself– person functions as

monolingual in both communities

7.4 Two languages in one brain7.4.1 Types of bilinguals

Weinreich (1953) distinguished three kinds of bilingualism

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 Weinreich’s 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 thesituation as follows:

8. 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 moreimportant 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.

8.1 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

by grammar: to recognize smell as noun or verb while hear can only function as verb

by semantics: synonyms like little and small antonyms like little and big hyponyms like car versus vehicle etc

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

8.2 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.

8.3 Comprehension of metaphor

metaphors consist of three parts: tenor, vehicle, ground

tenor vehiclebillboards are warts on the landscape

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

8.4 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 duringher 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.

REMINDER

Klausuranmeldung

Neue Studiengänge: on HIS LSF POS - July 01-10, 2009

Alte Studiengänge / ERASMUS / exchange students: Please write me an email @ Mattes.Heyne@gmx.de

(including full name, Matrikelnummer, Studiengang, information on your requirements – if you do need a Schein)

PREPARING FOR THE EXAM

• review of this semester’s topics in today’s lecture

• additional tutorial session on July 21, 09during the regular lecture time in the regularHörsaal (Matthias Heyne)

Please prepare questions or topics you’d like to revisit!

EVALUATION

Thank you for your participation!