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College notes in Psychology of Language (TW1V13002)
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Notes from the lectures of the course Psychology of Language.
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Lectures Psychology of Language 2019-2020 1Psychology of Language – Lecture 01
09/09/2019
Behaviourists
- Reject → The study of the human mind as something scientifically possible.
- Goal → Solely to come up with a theory of how a certain behaviour is determined by certain external
stimuli.
Cognitivists
- Want → To understand the underlying mental processes
➢ The brain actively contributes and interprets what is perceived.
o Visual cognition: from perception of visual stimuli to the interpretation of something
as a particular object.
o In language: From sound to meaning
What your brain tells you does not have to be true about the world.
E.g. → Soldier and picture old woman/young girl
What is cognition?
The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience
and the senses.
What is modularity?
The degree to which a complex system can be broken apart in subunits (modules) which can be
recombined in various ways.
McGurk effect
- Demonstrates that different modalities (e.g. vision and language) interact and can influence
each other.
- It is relevant for the modularity issue because although different modalities appear to be
distinct, they do interact with each other and can even influence the final interpretation of
stimuli.
- Visual information interferes with the sound (eyes open).
- Sound perception changes with eyes open or closed.
Cultural/Social aspect = Language use
Biological aspect = Knowledge of language
Psycholinguistics =
▪ A science of what we know when we know language, and how we implement this
unconscious knowledge in real time.
▪ It’s a science that builds models of the rules and their implementation.
▪ It’s a science that strives to uncover the unconscious properties of the mind.
▪ It’s a science about where this knowledge comes from.
➢ Knowledge has something to do with the mind
➢ The mind had something to do with the brain
➢ What is the relationship between mind and brain?
,Lectures Psychology of Language 2019-2020 2
Computational theory of the mind
Mind = Analogous to software
Brain = Analogous to hardware
→ To know something means to have the necessary hardware that is capable of running a specific
program (software).
Three levels of understanding (computation theory of the mind):
1. Computations (what is done / what the brain does)
• Formal, content free, symbolic operations performed independently of the context.
o E.g. 3x + 2x = 5x independently of the nature of x
o E.g. John likes Mary vs. *John Mary likes
• Sensitive to structure
• Limitation related to memory, attention, etc
• In language research → Theoretical linguistics
2. Algorithm (how it’s done / how the brain does it)
• How the computation is carried out.
o E.g. 15 x 5 =
o 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 15
o (15 x 10) / 2
o (10 x 5) + (5 x 5)
o Which one is better? Depends on what system does the computation
• In language research → What happens in real time processing
3. Implementation (by what means it’s done / what rules)
• The way a system works
• In language research → Patterns of neural activation? Relevant brain structures?
Information-processing approach:
- Brain as an information – processing device
- Biological hardware vs. software
- Mind is what the brain does
Phonology (sounds)
• Unit of analyses = A phoneme
• Distinctive phonemes = Something distinguishable in a given language
• The first purely linguistic level
• The most elementary units of speech
• Sign languages have phonemes → Not acoustic signals but particular shapes
• Phonotactic knowledge, you do not have to go through your lexicon to know
Infant exposed to many different sounds → Which of the sounds are related to human speech
→ Infants are able to distinguish human speech/sounds (E.g. French → Different vowel systems)
No human language without symbols/structures
Morphology
• Morpheme = The smallest meaningful unit of speech
• Free and bound morphemes
• Sign languages have morphemes
• Click languages → A click is a phoneme that also can be a morpheme
• Tonal languages → A tone can be a morpheme
, Lectures Psychology of Language 2019-2020 3
Syntax
• Unit of analysis = A phrase
• Phrases are organized hierarchically
• The rules and processes are completely unconscious, fast and automatic
• We can produce, fast and effortlessly, rather long sentences and we can understand rather
complicated structures
➢ Language is not communication. Language is a biological property of the human brain and it
can be used for communication.
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