INTRODUCTION LECTURE TO PSYCHOLOGY OF
LANGUAGE
Language is 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 perceptions
Intentionally: producer wants to achieve something
Communicate meaning: almost anything can be expressed
Non-verbal communication is not part of language. Sign-language for deaf people is included (it’s not a
universal language).
Usually thought of as rules, bus (psycho)linguistics are generally not prescriptivists1. Rather we describe
and try to understand and perhaps predict systematicities at different levels: sounds, phrases, clauses,
sentences, discourse.
However for this course it is expected for students to be able to write English proficiently and being able
to be understood without too many errors.
The most intuitive form-meaning unit is a word, but we will see that there are units of different sizes.
Un- in unpleasant will almost always make the other person understand that you mean the opposite
of the word.
The X-er the Y-er strategy. For example, the sooner the better or the more you pay attention the more
you’ll remember.
Language is spoken and heard, signed and seen, and written and read. It is acquired, learned and
sometimes forgotten.
We know that we can use language. We don’t necessarily know how we do it; a big part of it happens
unaware (how do your move your tongue when you speak?).
Intentional communication
We use language to exchange information, to express emotions, to get others to do something. This
makes language very important for students of communications sciences.
We can communicate almost anything, including deceiving and saying things that are not true
(prevarication) or talking about things that are not physically present or do not exist. These are two of
Hockett’s ‘design features’.
Linguistics
Language can be studied in a number of different ways, at different levels and with different foci. During
the course, you will be able to understand all these terms:
Phonetics – the study of raw sounds.
Phonology - the study of how sounds are used within a language. For example, in some languages the
letter a is pronounced in different ways but in other languages is not.
Morphology – the study of words and word formation. For example, the unpleasant example.
Semantics – the study of meaning. How does language map on to meaning, intentions?
Syntax – the study of word order. Most typical form of studying linguistics.
Pragmatics – the study of language use. So when do we use informal or formal communication?
Discourse studies – the study of language interactions.
1
People who think that language is mostly about rules, compared to how it is actually used (good and wrong).
,Psychology of language is the study of mind and brain. We focus on language acquisition processing, often
from a cognitive perspective (memory, attention, etc). But we approach language from a functional
perspective.
Which types of evidence are needed and valued when we research it? (class question)
o Actual language use (production and perception) observations
o Language processing data: eye tracking and brain activity
o Behaviour as influenced by language (how does asking polite influence behaviour)
o Attitudinal measures (the judgement from good to bad; ranking how language feels)
o Errors, problems in language use
So, we need 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.
In short, be critical. Ask yourself what does this experimental result imply for how much this imply the real
world.
Examination
Midterm exam: 35%
o Multiple choice
o Covers week 2-6 (from book chaptes and lectures)
o Not mandatory to pass. Is used in the weighted average.
Final exam: 65%
o Multiple choice + open questions
o Convers entire course.
Practice tips:
Crash course linguistics
Summary
Online testing materials
, LECTURE 2 LANGUAGE AND THE BRAIN
Second lecture of the course Pscyhology of Language on September 6th.
The one thing that sets us humans apart from other animals is the cortex. Humas have a much bigger
cortex than other animals. Language ‘happens’ in more than one part of the brain.
If we look at an actual brain visually, we see a lot of different areas. They are called Brodmann areas who
are anatomically different subareas of the cortex. Brodmann did not say they are necessarily functionally
different in performing different task, he just stated that these areas are made of different cell structures
and neural tissue. It is a reasonable starting point for further explanation. Opportunities for testing were
rare techniques until PET, fMRI, EEG were invented.
Within the Brodmann areas, spot 44 and 45 are called Broca’s areas and there’s another part that’s called
Wernicke’s areas.
Aphasia → an acquired language disorder caused by any focal brain injury.
Broca’s aphasia
With Broca’s aphasia the patient is still able to understand language and produce an answer; but the
answer produced comes very slow and incoherent. The response does try to answer the question and
makes sense. This kind of aphasia is also called motor aphasia or expressive aphasia. Halting speech, great
difficulty in choosing words/writing and gesturing but is quite good in comprehending the language.
Closed words are more are affected than open words, prepositions (voorzetsels), conjunctions,
determiners, pronouns. Open words are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
Closed words Open-class words
Prepositions Nouns
Conjunctions Verbs
Determiners Adjectives
Pronouns Adverbs
Wernicke’s Aphasia
With Wernickes’s aphasia the patient is able to produce coherent sentences with the words in the right
order but it does not make any sense. He repeats questions but is not able to respond to the actual
question. This kind of aphasia is also called sensory or receptive aphasia. The patient talks fluently, but
largely meaningless speech. Difficulty in comprehending the spoken and written language.
Anomia – difficulty in finding the right name for an object (which results in describing the object)
Frequent neologisms – using non-existing words.
Conduction aphasia (less frequent)
Difficulty in repeating speech and verbatim (=word by word). Fairly good production and comprehension.
For example:
The van was dirty.
