1. PSYCHOLINGUISTICS AND COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE
University of Split Danica Škara, PhD Office hours: Tuesday, 14:00-15:00h
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS AND COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE
Week 1:
INTRODUCTION:
DESIGN FEATURES OF
HUMAN LANGUAGE

2. Language/reality
Reality>experience>five senses>conceptualisation>linguistic categorization

3. Imagery What are your five senses?
Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, and Smell
An image conveys a sense perception , i.e., a visual picture, a sound, a feeling of touch, a taste, or an odor

6. What is Language?
Language, the principal means used by human beings to communicate with one another. Language can be spoken or written .
“A language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”
Noam Chomsky (1957)

7. A language is a system for encoding and decoding information.
Chomsky: Language is a special faculty apart from other higher faculties, genetically inherited (innate ability) as a special species-specific endowement within the species.
the term refers to the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind.
In linguistics the term is extended to refer to the human cognitive facility of creating and using language.

8. Linguistic-related areas
Phonetics and phonology are concerned with the study of speech sounds. Within psycholinguistics, research focuses on how the brain processes and understands these sounds.
Morphology is the study of word structures, especially the relationships between related words (such as dog and dogs) and the formation of words based on rules (such as plural formation).
Syntax is the study of the patterns which dictate how words are combined together to form sentences.
Semantics deals with the meaning of words and sentences. Where syntax is concerned with the formal structure of sentences, semantics deals with the actual meaning of sentences.
Pragmatics is concerned with the role of context in the interpretation of meaning.

9. Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language.
Psycholinguistics covers the cognitive processes that make it possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words, text, etc. Developmental psycholinguistics studies children's ability to learn language.

10. What is communication?
Any means by which two (or more) individuals exchange information
Paralinguistic techniques - hand signals, facial expressions, body language, nods, smiles, winks, etc.
Non-linguistic communication - that do involve vocalization
Grunts, groans, snorts, sighs, whimpers, etc.
Not all produced sounds are intended to convey messages, so they aren’t communication
e.g., snoring
Discuss how some things (e.g., clearing throat) may be used for communication or not.
What about laughter, is that communication?

11. Communication

12. Any natural human language is a complex sign system, designated to ensure infinite expressive capacity.
Each sign is a stable symbolic association between a meaning and a form.

14. The Linguistic Sign
Language is made up of signs, which have little to do with the referent, the actuasl objects in the world.
The signs are composed of two parts: the signifier and the signified (form/content)

15. Ferdinand de Saussure

16. Ogden & Richards Triangle

17. Language as human knowledge
When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the “human essence,” the distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique to man.
Norm Chomsky: Language and Mind
What does knowing a language mean?
Sound and no sound;
word and non-word;
well-formed sentences and ill-formed sentences
Sense and nonsense

18. Design Features of Human Language
1. Productivity (creativity)
Ability to produce and understand a virtually infinite set of messages.
In all other animal communication systems, the number of messages is fixed (i.e., is finite).

19. Design Features of Human Language Arbitrariness
No resemblance between the language signal and the thing that it represents
“dog”
“hund”
There are exceptions to this. “the hissing of a snake” hiss sounds like the actual sound made by the snake. This is called Onomatopoeia
“pas”
“cane”

20. Design Features of Human Language
MULTI-DIMENSIONALITY - Human language consists of several levels or dimensions of knowledge (competences).
Phonological knowledge,
Lexical knowledge
Syntactic knowledge
Semantic/conceptual knowledge

21. Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics, the study of psychological states and mental activity associated with the use of language.
Traditional areas of research include language production, language comprehension, language acquisition, language disorders, language and thought, and neurocognition.

22. How does the human language processor work?
How is it realized in the brain?
How is linguistic knowledge represented in the brain?
Where does our capacity for language emerge from?

23. Design Features of Human Language
Universality
Wherever human exists, language exists.
All languages are equally complex and equally capable of expressing any idea in the universe.
Similar grammatical categories are found in all languages, nouns, verbs, gender, time, etc.
Any normal child, born anywhere in the world, of any racial, geographical, social, or economic heritage, is capable of learning any language to which he or she is exposed. The differences we find among languages can’t be due to biological reasons.

24. Universals & specifics
If all cultures share certain features of social organization and behaviour it will not be surprising that all languages have terms referring to kinships, posession, war, etc.>cultural universals
Other universals may arise from technological transmission or from common features of the natural environment (biological, topographical terms)>technological universals and the universals of natural environment

25. Specifics Language reflects cultural, social, political attitudes.
The language of different cultures do not have the same vocabulary referring to the same referent, reality, e.g.
red wine > crno vino,
brown bread >crni kruh.
Even within one language speakers have different options to refer to the same reality:

26. One or many conceptual systems
The first question which arises is whether language is a single conceptual system or whether there are as many conceptual systems as there are languages?
A universal conceptual framework which is common to all human languages
Languages differ in the way they classify experience. Languages have a tendency to impose structure upon the real world by treating some distintions as crucial, and ignoring others. Sometimes the motivation is supplied by cultural norms, rather than by external reality.

27. The nature of human language
For centuries, scholars and thinkers have tried to unravel the nature of human language. Here are some views:

28. Philosophers were the first to ponder the roots of human language.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, says that use of words for communication stems from a desire to express our emotions.
Also in the 1700s, J. G. von Herder writes two essays arguing that human rationality is the basis for language.

29. Pierre Paul Broca, identifies Broca's Area in the brain's left hemisphere, a region, he says, controls human grammar and speech. Damage to Broca's Area impairs the ability to use words and construct grammatically correct sentences.
Later, Karl Wernicke, a German doctor, discovers another area related to language in the left hemisphere. Patients with injuries to Wernicke's Area speak fluently and grammatically, but make little or no sense.

30. In 1871, Charles Darwin, writes about a human "instinct for language" in his book, Descent of Man. He suggests that language evolved from more primal communication abilities in other animals.

31. Noam Chomsky, a linguist, says humans are born with an innate, or hardwired, knowledge of a universal grammar. He observes that all languages share certain rules.
Researchers continue to ask: Is language a uniquely human skill?

32. Steven Pinker He tries to combine the ideas of Noam Chomsky and Charles Darwin in his book, The Language Instinct. He offers an explanation for how natural selection might have shaped the evolution of human's "innate grammar."