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Summary Psychology of Language Premaster CI
Complete summary for Psychology of Language (book + lectures)
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Language in mind – An introduction to psycholinguistics (second edition)CHAPTER 1 SCIENCE, LANGUAGE AND THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE
In studying the language sciences, it’s especially useful to approach the field with the ‘how do you
know?’ mindset rather than one that asks which theory is right.
CHAPTER 2 ORIGINS OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
Language is deeply distinct from other activities for the simple reason that all humans do it. Language
is one of the few things about us that appears to be a true defining trait of what it means to be
human – so much so that it seems it must be part of our very DNA. There are two views on this:
- Nativist view
= The view that not only are humans genetically programmed to have a general capacity for
language, particular aspects of language ability are also genetically specified.
- Anti-nativist view
= The view that the ability of humans to learn language is not the result of a genetically
programmed “language template” but is an aspect (or by-product) of our extensive cognitive
abilities, including general abilities of learning and memory.
HOCKETT’S DESIGN FEATURES
= A set of characteristics proposed by linguist Charles Hockett to be universally shared by all human
languages. Some but not all of the features are also found in various animal communication systems.
1. Vocal-auditory channel
= Language is produced in the vocal tract and transmitted as sound. Sound is perceived through
the auditory channel.
2. Broadcast transmission and directional reception
= Language can be heard from many directions, but it is perceived as coming from one particular
location.
3. Rapid fading
= The sound produced by speech fades quickly.
4. Interchangeability
= A user of a language can send and receive the same messages.
5. Total feedback
= Senders of a message can hear and internalize the message they’ve sent.
6. Specialisation
= The production of the sounds of language serves no purpose other than to communicate.
7. Semanticity
= There are fixed associations between units of language and aspects of the world.
8. Arbitrariness
= The meaningful associations between language and the world are arbitrary.
9. Discreteness
= The units of language are separate and distinct from one another rather than being part of a
continuous whole.
10. Displacement
= Language can be used to communicate about things that are not present in time and/or space.
,Language in mind – An introduction to psycholinguistics (second edition)
11. Productivity
= Language can be used to say things that have never been said before and yet are
understandable to the receiver.
12. Traditional transmission
= The specific language that’s adopted by the user has to be learned by exposure to other users
of that language; its precise details are not available through genetic transmission.
13. Duality of patterning
= Many meaningful units (words) are made by the combining of a small number of elements
(sounds) into various sequences. For example pat, tap and apt use the same sound elements
combined in different ways to make different word units. In this way, tens of thousands of words
can be created from several dozen sounds.
14. Prevarication
= Language can deliberately be used to make false statements.
15. Reflexiveness
= Language can be used to refer to or describe itself.
16. Learnability
= Users of one language can learn to use a different language.
Productivity
= The ability to use known symbols or linguistic units in new combinations to communicate ideas.
Among nativists, the most common view is that humans have some innate capabilities for language
that evolved as adaptions.
Evolutionary adaptions
= A genetically transmitted trait that gives its bearers an advantage – specifically, it helps those with
the trait to stay alive long enough to reproduce and/or to have many offspring.
THE SOCIAL UNDERPINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
- Understanding the communicative urge
- Skills for a complex social world
(Humans are inclined to share information with each other, whereas other primates seem not to
have discovered the vast benefits of doing so)
Joint attention
= The awareness between two or more individuals that they are paying attention to the same thing.
THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE
COMBINING UNITS
= Combining smaller elements to make larger linguistic units takes place at two levels.
Duality of patterning: in which a small number of units that don’t convey meanings on their
own can be used to create a very large number of meaningful symbols.
Combine meaningful elements to make other, meaningful elements.
,Language in mind – An introduction to psycholinguistics (second edition)
Syntax
= In a given language, the set of “rules” that specify how meaningful linguistic elements are put
together so that their meaning can be clearly understood.
STRUCTURED PATTERNS
Anyone learning a language has to be able to learn its underlying structural patterns. And since, for the most
part, human children don’t seem to learn their native language by having their parents or teachers explicitly
teach them the rules of language, they have to somehow intuit the structures on their own, simply by hearing
many examples of different sentences.
Recursion
= Nesting or related clauses or other linguistic units within each other.
ARE WE WIRED FOR LANGUAGE STRUCTURE?
Instead of being born with a preconception of a specific human language, humans are pre-packaged with
knowledge of the kinds of structures that make up human languages.
Universal grammar
= An innately understood system of combining linguistic units that constrains the structural patterns of all
human languages.
Wilkins, an English philosopher famously proposed a universal language. In this more enlightened language, he
felt, the words themselves should illuminate the meanings of the concepts (e.g. Zita zi = beasts, t = oblong
headed, a = bigger kind).
Over the past few decades, claims about an innate universal grammar have met with resistance on several
fronts:
- Extremely young children are able to grasp quite a lot if information about structure by relying on very
robust learning machinery, this reduces the need to propose some pre-existing knowledge or learning
biases.
- Some language specific knowledge has been found to have a basis in more general perception or cognition
applying.
- Some knowledge that seemed language specific is found in other animals too, so that makes it not
language specific.
- Human languages are not as similar to each other as may have been believed.
- Researchers have be come more and more sophisticated and explaining how certain common patterns
across languages might arise form the fact that all languages are trying to solve certain communicative
problems.
THE EVOLUTION OF SPEECH
Two skills that contribute to human language: 1) the ability to use and understand international symbols to
communicate meanings, perhaps made possible by complex social coordination skills; and 2) the ability to
combine linguistic units to express a great variety of complex meanings are discussed. Now a third attribute is
considered: a finely tuned delivery though which the linguistic signal is transmitted.
Vocal sounds are made by passing air through the vocal folds/ vocal cords which act like flaps and vibrate as the
air is pushed up.
, Language in mind – An introduction to psycholinguistics (second edition)
Because the of the lowered larynx (strottenhoofd) and the down-curving tongue humans are allowed to make a
much wider variety of sounds than other primates. Also humans differ from other primates in the lack of air
sacs in the throat; the precise consequences of this anatomical difference are not known.
The purpose of babbling for babies seems to be to practice the complicated motions needed to make speech
sounds and to match these motions with the sounds babies hear in the language around them. Deaf babies also
babble with their hands instead of their mouth. This suggests that an important aspect of babbling is its
imitative function.
Affective pathway
= Sound production arising from states of arousal, emotion, and motivation. Affective sound production is
innate, doesn’t require learning and is generally inflexible (both done by humans and other primates).
Cognitive pathway
= Controlled, highly malleable sound production that requires extensive auditory learning and practice. Includes
human language sounds and some birdsong (done by humans and some songbirds).
Researchers hypothesize that the earliest forms of human language were gestural, and that at some later point
in time, humans developed the capacity to speak. Because:
- Great apes are terrible at learning communication with humans through speech, but good through
gestures.
- Apes communicate with each other and spontaneously use gestures.
- Gesture makes a plausible precursor to human language compared to vocal communication.
Beyond showing highly developed skills in vocal learning and imitation, songbirds also seem to avail themselves
of complex ways of structuring their songs, just like human structure their sentences.
HOW HUMANS INVENT LANGUAGES
Rather than being innately wired for language, humans invented it to fill a need and, being the supremely social
being that we are, then transmitted this knowledge to subsequent generations.
Homesign
= A personal communication system initiated by a deaf person to communicate through gestures with others
who, like the deaf person, do not know sign language (e.g. deaf babies with hearing parents).
WHEN GESTURES REPLACE LANGUAGE
In addition to being born with the capacity to learn language, children are born with the capacity to invent
language, and that these invented languages share some significant similarities with each other as well was
with more developed languages.
Linguistic code
= The system of symbols and combinatory rules that are conventionally agreed upon by a community of
language users as conveying specific meanings. Often, the linguistic code is not enough to fully convey
speaker’s intended meaning, so that hearers must augment the linguistic code with inferences based on the
context.
Sensitive period
= A window of time during which a specific type of learning (such as learning a language) takes place more
easily than at any other time.
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