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Psychology of Language
Hoorcollege week 1
Defining language
A system of form-meaning pairings that can be used to intentionally communicate meaning
- System: there is structure to the madness
- Form-meaning pairings: of different sizes, at various levels of specificity
- Use: different modalities, production, and perception
- Intentionally: producer wants to achieve something
- Communicate meaning: almost anything can be expressed
Usually thought of as ‘rules’, but (psycho)linguists are generally not prescriptivists.
- Meaning that most researchers do not consider it their job to establish or guard the rules
of preferred language use (such as the use of ‘proper’ grammar, style, spelling, etc.)
- As teachers, however, we must sometimes make an exception…
Rather, we describe and try to understand and perhaps predict systematicities at different levels:
sounds, words, phrases, clauses, sentences, discourse
The most intuitive form-meaning unit is a word, but we will see that there are units of different
sizes:
- Un- in unpleasant
- The X-er the Y-er (the sooner the better; the more you pay attention, the more you’ll
remember)
Language is spoken and heard, signed and seen, and written and read. Language is acquired,
learned, and sometimes forgotten or lost.
- We know that we can use language
- We don’t necessarily know how we do it: there is much about which we are unaware
(how do you move your tongue when you speak?)
Intentional communication
- We use language to exchange information, to express emotions, to get others to do
something, etc.
- This makes language very relevant for students of communication sciences.
Communicationg meaning
We can communicate almost anything, including:
- Deceiving and saying things that are not true (prevarication)
- Talking about things that are not physically present or do not exist (displacement)
These are two of Hockett’s ‘design features’, more about these in week 3.
Language can be studied in a number of different ways, at different levels and with different foci
Phonetics The study of raw sounds
Phonology The study of how sounds are used within a language
Morphology The study of words and word formation
Semantics The study of meaning
Syntax The study of word order
Pragmatics The study of language use
Discourse studies The study of language in interaction
,Psychology of Language
The study of language in the mind and brain
- Focus on acquiring and processing language
- Often from a cognitive point of view (memory, attention, etc.)
- Approaching language from a functional perspective
What types of evidence would we need and value when we research it?
- Actual language use (production and perception)
- Language processing data: eye tracking, brain activity
- Behavior as influenced by language
- Attitudinal measures
- Errors, problems in language use
Lots of experimental data (e.g., reaction times in lexical decision tasks)
- Tightly controlled for many factors, but…
- Not very realistic/close to what people do in real life
So be critical! Keep asking yourself: what does this experimental result imply for how we store
and use language?
Hoorcollege week 2
Brodmann areas (AD 1909)
- Anatomically different subareas of the cortex (i.e., different cell structures making
up the neural tissue)
- These subareas are not necessarily functionally different (i.e., involved in
performing separate sets of tasks)
- Opportunities for testing the function of particular cortical areas in
humans were rare until techniques like PET, fMRI, and EEG were invented
,Defenition Aphasia (Afasie):
- An acquired language disorder caused by a focal brain injury
- (Een taalstoornis, als gevolg van een hersenbeschadiging)
Broca’s aphasia
- Ookwel motor aphasia of expressive aphasia
- Halting speech, great difficulty in choosing words (in spoken and signed languages alike)
o Also, difficulty in writing and gesturing
o Closed-class words are affected more than open-class words
o Very slow speech
Closed-class words Open-class words
Prepositions nouns Nouns
Conjunctions verbs Verbs
Determiners adjectives Adjectives
Pronouns adverbs Adverbs
- Fairly good speech and reading comprehension
o But difficulty with complex structures and unusual word order (e.g., “It was the
girl who was chased by the boy”)
Wernicke’s aphasia
- Ookwel sensory aphasia of receptive aphasia
- Fluent but largely meaningless speech
o Anomia: difficulty in finding the name for an object (resulting in roundabout
expressions like “the thing that we used to do with the thing that was like the
other one”)
o Frequent neologisms: non-existing words like smoodle, pinkered skucker (usually
of the expected part-of-speech)
- Great difficulty comprehending spoken and written input
Conduction aphasia (verbinden Broca en Wernicke)
- Difficulty repeating speech verbatim (= word by word)
- Fairly good production and comprehension
- The underlying deficit is an inability to keep phonological
information active (but long enough to interpret the meaning
first)
Input: “The van was dirty.”
Forced choice: A. “The van was dirty.”
B. “The truck was dirty.”
C. “The apple was dirty.”
(A and B chosen equally often; option C avoided)
, The Wernicke-Lichtheim-Geschwind (WLG) model
- Perceptual and motor processing are dealt with by separate brain networks. In language
comprehension and production, these networks cooperate.
Wernicke’s area Broca’s area
• Perceptual network • Motor network
• Storing lexical information (meaning) • Constructing grammatical sequences
(syntax)
• Storing corresponding phonological codes • Planning speech movements (articulation)
(sound)
Arcuate fasciculus:
Communication between Wernicke’s and Broca’s area
Problems for the WLG-model
- Not all patients with damage to Broca’s/Wernicke’s area have aphasia
- Patients showing the “classical” profile of language impairment nearly always have more
extensive damage than Broca’s/Wernicke’s area
- Recent evidence (e.g., using VLSM) shows a much larger network of brain areas involved
in language processing
o Sometimes not involving Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas
o And very much dependent on the exact task that subjects performed (e.g.,
comprehending simple vs. moderate vs. complex sentences)
Declarative-procedural model
- Current model for how language function might be organized
o Inspired by evidence from vision and hearing research
- Declarative memory: ventral stream (onderste gedeelte hersenen)
o Knowledge about ‘what’
o Important for accessing word meanings
- Procedural memory: dorsal stream (bovenste gedeelte hersenen)
o Knowledge about ‘how’
o Important for processing sounds, articulation, word repetition
Aphasia in the Netherlands
- 30,000 people with aphasia in the Netherlands
- 10,000 new cases occurring every year
- Most recovery in first 3-6 months (around 40%), others have aphasia rest of their lives
(but with significantly improved function compared to first days after injury)
Treatment of aphasia
Intensity matters, as does time between stroke and onset of intervention
Acute Longer term
Blood-pressure drugs (to stimulate blood flow Stimulant drugs (to boost reorganization)
to area around the lesion)
Speech and comprehension therapy
Most patients receive a combination of drugs
and therapy
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