Week 1: Introduction: Course Overview
and the Study of Psycholinguistics:
The Study of Psycholinguistics:
➔ Understanding speech, language, and communication
➔ What makes human language unique?
➔ How is language learned and used?
➔ Language and other aspects of cognition
➔ Language and the brain
➔ The social aspects of language (+ language and technology)
Language Components:
➔ Syntax
➔ semantics/lexicon
➔ Morphology
➔ Phonology
Mental Grammar:
➔ We all have a sophisticated knowledge of language
➔ tacit/implicit
◆ You don’t need to be a linguistic to know what is and is not grammatical
◆ *Sally take the train to New York
◆ Sally takes the train to New York
➔ A shared system
➔ Our mental grammar is complex
◆ Probably more complicated than you realized
➔ Yet even young children can:
◆ Learn a language
◆ Distinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical utterances
Language in Mind: Chapter 1:
Science, Language, and the Science of Language:
➔ Language science is a fairly unstable point in is brief history, and that seismic shifts in
ideas regularly reshape its intellectual landscape
, ➔ Sizeable amount of what we “know” about language stands a good chance of being
wrong
➔ Understanding language involves more than just recognizing the words
Week 2: The Origins of Human
Language:
Textbook: Chapter 2: Origins of Human Language:
➔ Only humans talk
➔ 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
➔ Language is universal among humans
➔ Human language critically relies on symbolic representation
➔ Hocket’s design features: a set of characteristics proposed by linguistic 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
➔ We’re born with the capacity to learn any language
➔ Environment matters
➔ Productivity: the ability to use known symbols or linguistic units in new combinations to
communicate ideas
➔ Evolutionary adaptations: 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 have many offspring
➔ Skills that support language fall into categories:
◆ 1) those that are necessary to get language off the ground but aren’t really
specific to language
◆ 2) traits that evolved particularly because they make language more powerful and
efficient
➔ Humans are inclined to share information with one another, whereas other primates
seem not to have discovered the vast benefits of doing so
➔ Our words are quite literally figments of human imagination, they have meaning only
because we all agree to use the same word for the same thing
➔ Joint attention: the awareness between two or more individuals that they are paying
attention to the same thing
➔ Making words from sounds
, ➔ 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
➔ Anyone learning a language has to be able to learn its underlying structural patterns
➔ Languages don’t allow sounds to be combine in just any sequence, there are contrants
➔ Children seem to know many things about language that they've never been taught
➔ Humans aren’t born wired for specific languages
➔ Universal grammar: an innately understood system of combining linguistic units that
constraints the structural patterns of all human languages
➔ Affective pathway: sound production (vocalization) arising from states of arousal
emotions and motivation. Affective sound production is innate, doesn’t require learning
and is generally inflexible
➔ Cognitive pathway: controlled, highly malleable sound production that requires extensive
auditory learning and practice includes human language sounds and same birdsong.
➔ 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
➔ Linguistic code: the system of symbols and combinatory rules that are conventionally
agreed upon by a community of language users as conveying specific intended
meaning, so that hearers must augment the linguistic code tig inferences based on the
context
➔ Sensitive period: a window of time during which a specific type of learning takes place
more easily than at any other time
➔ Williams Syndrome (WMS): a genetic syndrome of particular interest to language
researchers, in which language function appears to be relatively preserved despite more
serious impairments in other areas of cognitive function
➔ Mental age: a person overall level of cognitive functioning, related to the chronological
age of a person with typical development
➔ Specific Language Impairment (SLI): a disorder in which children fail to develop
language normally even though there are no apparent neurological damage or disorders,
no general cognitive impairment or daley, no hearing loss, and o abnormal hone
environment that would explain this failure
➔ Domain-Specific perspective: in regard to specific language impairment the view that the
linguistic deficit, strikes at mechanism that are particular to language, rather than
mechanisms that are shared with other cognitive abilities
➔ Domain-general perspective: in regard to specific language impairment, the view that the
linguistic deficit is only one effect of more general problems that also affect non-linguistic
processes
Lecture: Week 2:
1- Fundamentals of Psycholinguistic:
The Human Language:
➔ Language is a unicef phenomenon across humans
, ◆ All humans use language
➔ Languages differ in some basic ways
➔ But share manu important characteristic
◆ Surface differences but deep similarities
All Languages are the Same:
➔ O ushc thing as a “primitaive” language
➔ No “correct” or “vbest form” of a language
◆ Rural or urban dialects are just as complex as “The Queens English”
➔ High versions of language are a strictly social construct
➔ Nothing can be expressed in one language that cannot be expressed in another
Linguistic Knowledge:
➔ Key assumptions
◆ Every human has language
➔ But what do we mean by “language”
◆ Not the same as “language”
➔ What does it mean to “know language” ?
Theoretical Approaches to Psycholinguistics:
Behaviorism (1957)”
➔ BF Skinner
➔ Operant conditioning
➔ Language is learned based on reinforcement principles
Cognitivism (1965):
➔ Noam Chomsky
◆ What do we know when we know language?
➔ Universal grammar (1965)
◆ Empirical argument
➔ Language is structurally complex
➔ Poverty of the stimulus
Nativism vs. Imperialism:
➔ How much of language is learned?
➔ How much of language is innate?
➔ Nativists:
◆ Chomsky, Humboldt, Pincer
➔ Empiricists/and-nativists
◆ Skinner, Everett
The Structure of Language:
Language has structure:
and the Study of Psycholinguistics:
The Study of Psycholinguistics:
➔ Understanding speech, language, and communication
➔ What makes human language unique?
➔ How is language learned and used?
➔ Language and other aspects of cognition
➔ Language and the brain
➔ The social aspects of language (+ language and technology)
Language Components:
➔ Syntax
➔ semantics/lexicon
➔ Morphology
➔ Phonology
Mental Grammar:
➔ We all have a sophisticated knowledge of language
➔ tacit/implicit
◆ You don’t need to be a linguistic to know what is and is not grammatical
◆ *Sally take the train to New York
◆ Sally takes the train to New York
➔ A shared system
➔ Our mental grammar is complex
◆ Probably more complicated than you realized
➔ Yet even young children can:
◆ Learn a language
◆ Distinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical utterances
Language in Mind: Chapter 1:
Science, Language, and the Science of Language:
➔ Language science is a fairly unstable point in is brief history, and that seismic shifts in
ideas regularly reshape its intellectual landscape
, ➔ Sizeable amount of what we “know” about language stands a good chance of being
wrong
➔ Understanding language involves more than just recognizing the words
Week 2: The Origins of Human
Language:
Textbook: Chapter 2: Origins of Human Language:
➔ Only humans talk
➔ 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
➔ Language is universal among humans
➔ Human language critically relies on symbolic representation
➔ Hocket’s design features: a set of characteristics proposed by linguistic 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
➔ We’re born with the capacity to learn any language
➔ Environment matters
➔ Productivity: the ability to use known symbols or linguistic units in new combinations to
communicate ideas
➔ Evolutionary adaptations: 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 have many offspring
➔ Skills that support language fall into categories:
◆ 1) those that are necessary to get language off the ground but aren’t really
specific to language
◆ 2) traits that evolved particularly because they make language more powerful and
efficient
➔ Humans are inclined to share information with one another, whereas other primates
seem not to have discovered the vast benefits of doing so
➔ Our words are quite literally figments of human imagination, they have meaning only
because we all agree to use the same word for the same thing
➔ Joint attention: the awareness between two or more individuals that they are paying
attention to the same thing
➔ Making words from sounds
, ➔ 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
➔ Anyone learning a language has to be able to learn its underlying structural patterns
➔ Languages don’t allow sounds to be combine in just any sequence, there are contrants
➔ Children seem to know many things about language that they've never been taught
➔ Humans aren’t born wired for specific languages
➔ Universal grammar: an innately understood system of combining linguistic units that
constraints the structural patterns of all human languages
➔ Affective pathway: sound production (vocalization) arising from states of arousal
emotions and motivation. Affective sound production is innate, doesn’t require learning
and is generally inflexible
➔ Cognitive pathway: controlled, highly malleable sound production that requires extensive
auditory learning and practice includes human language sounds and same birdsong.
➔ 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
➔ Linguistic code: the system of symbols and combinatory rules that are conventionally
agreed upon by a community of language users as conveying specific intended
meaning, so that hearers must augment the linguistic code tig inferences based on the
context
➔ Sensitive period: a window of time during which a specific type of learning takes place
more easily than at any other time
➔ Williams Syndrome (WMS): a genetic syndrome of particular interest to language
researchers, in which language function appears to be relatively preserved despite more
serious impairments in other areas of cognitive function
➔ Mental age: a person overall level of cognitive functioning, related to the chronological
age of a person with typical development
➔ Specific Language Impairment (SLI): a disorder in which children fail to develop
language normally even though there are no apparent neurological damage or disorders,
no general cognitive impairment or daley, no hearing loss, and o abnormal hone
environment that would explain this failure
➔ Domain-Specific perspective: in regard to specific language impairment the view that the
linguistic deficit, strikes at mechanism that are particular to language, rather than
mechanisms that are shared with other cognitive abilities
➔ Domain-general perspective: in regard to specific language impairment, the view that the
linguistic deficit is only one effect of more general problems that also affect non-linguistic
processes
Lecture: Week 2:
1- Fundamentals of Psycholinguistic:
The Human Language:
➔ Language is a unicef phenomenon across humans
, ◆ All humans use language
➔ Languages differ in some basic ways
➔ But share manu important characteristic
◆ Surface differences but deep similarities
All Languages are the Same:
➔ O ushc thing as a “primitaive” language
➔ No “correct” or “vbest form” of a language
◆ Rural or urban dialects are just as complex as “The Queens English”
➔ High versions of language are a strictly social construct
➔ Nothing can be expressed in one language that cannot be expressed in another
Linguistic Knowledge:
➔ Key assumptions
◆ Every human has language
➔ But what do we mean by “language”
◆ Not the same as “language”
➔ What does it mean to “know language” ?
Theoretical Approaches to Psycholinguistics:
Behaviorism (1957)”
➔ BF Skinner
➔ Operant conditioning
➔ Language is learned based on reinforcement principles
Cognitivism (1965):
➔ Noam Chomsky
◆ What do we know when we know language?
➔ Universal grammar (1965)
◆ Empirical argument
➔ Language is structurally complex
➔ Poverty of the stimulus
Nativism vs. Imperialism:
➔ How much of language is learned?
➔ How much of language is innate?
➔ Nativists:
◆ Chomsky, Humboldt, Pincer
➔ Empiricists/and-nativists
◆ Skinner, Everett
The Structure of Language:
Language has structure:
