AN INTRODUCTION TO PSHYCOLINGUISTICS

Is language Species-Specific

One of the properties attributed to language is that it is a uniquely human behavior. Virtually, all human beings spontaneously acquire language without overt instruction can relatively quickly during childhood, unless they possess handicapping conditions. Researches have not yet isolated any natural form of animal communication that embodies all of the features of language we have discussed. They have probed the communicative systems of many animals, searching for the linguistic properties that define human language. Although bees, birds, whales, dolphins and non humans primates are capable of fairly sophisticated message exchanges (Akmajian, Demers, Farmer, & Harnish, 1995: Demers,1989), their capacities fall short of those of young children.

Animal communication is typically context is stimulus dependent: vocalization is likely to occur under narrowly specified condition. We have much learn from the study of animal language and from attempts to teach human language to primates: currently, the most promising work is being conductive with bonobos, or pygmy, chimpanzees, with display extraordinary communicative talent (Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin, 1994).

Distinguishing Between Language and Speech

Although language is man’s primary means of communication, it is not, as is commonly supposed man’s only means of communicating. Language is only one part of a large network of communication system which humans used to interact with each other. It is speech that facilitates communication among men. Speech is a complex network of three independent communication system; language, paralanguage and kinesics. Language is the central and apparently most highly develop of the three communication systems. The act of speech requires a speaker and hearer, both are members of society and participant in a culture. The communication interaction between them is very complex. They act according to the expectations of their social roles by blueprint provided by their culture. Speech is more than language; it is a complex network of interpenetrating communication systems.

What Speakers and Listeners Know: A Brief Survey of Linguistics

Linguistics is the study of language in its various aspects. Levels of language analysis are phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Linguists strive to develop descriptions of a language that capture its characteristics at each of this level.

• Phonology is A language’s sound system, a great number of speech sounds are available to the world’s language. Although substantial diversity exists among the world’s language. The distinctive sound used in a language art its phonemes.
• Sequences of Sounds : Phonotactics is the roles of phoneme system
• Lexicon ( words) is a more technical term for a dictionary
• Semantics is the study of word meanings and the ways in which words are related to one another in our mental lexicon
• Morphology is the study of word formation, suffixes are grammatical morphemes. In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest unit of a language that carries definable meaning or grammatical function.
• Syntax is meaningful combinations of words to form sentences and how words can be put together to produce the well form sentences of a language. Syntax theory in the 1960s is Transformational Grammars. Chomsky proposed to described abstract mental competence was known as Transformational Generative (TG)-grammar, or what has come to be known as Standard Theory
• Pragmatics determines our choice of wording and our interpretation of language in different situations. Also include awareness of how we modify conversation when addressing different types of listeners.
• Discourse defined as verbal or written situations longer than single utterances. The situational setting or context of spoken messages is often crucial to their successful interpretation.

Metalinguistic capacity : The Ability to Analyze Our Own Language

Metalinguistic means, literally, “language about language”. It is often difficult to explain our knowledge about language. Our talents for speaking well and understanding competently are aspect of our linguistic knowledge, whereas our ability to reflect upon our language, our understanding of how we do these things represents an aspect of our metalinguistic knowledge

Language Diversity and Language Universal

Languages differ markedly in their construction: Their sound system may vary widely, their word formation rules and lexical inventories differ, and rules for ordering elements within sentences may differ from English. When possible we will attempt to note how the processing strategies used by speakers of different languages tell us more about either universal tendencies in linguistic processing or specific strategies that may be limited to a particular language. Similar interest in what a psycholinguistic universal might look like has been pursued more intensely in the developmental domain than in study of adult language processing.

Oral and Signed Language

Oral languages are more numerous, but the many signed language in the world all differ crucially in their phonology, lexicon and syntax. of the signed languages, American Sign language (ASL) has been studied the most extensively in ASL design for cat is not at all like the Greek sign for cat. We can also ask whether the differing demands of gesture and oral language also require some different psycholinguistic strategies. Similarities between signed and spoken languages are an important area of inquiry for many psycholinguistic.

Written Language

All human cultures possess either spoken or manual language (or both). However, not all languages have an associated writing system, and it is evident that writing is a much more recent development in the history of humans than is speech. The minimal unit, or building block, of any written system is the grapheme. A sound-based writing system that uses individual symbols, or letters, to represent the phonemes of a language is considered alphabetic. Written English is primarily an alphabetic system, although it is not completely regular in its representations.

The Acquisition Of Language By Children

Some (often called nativists) side with nature and maintain that language is basically innate, that children are born with a special unique human talent that can extrapolate the grammar of a language without overt instruction of correction. Adults teach language to children by using special kinds of simplified language with them and providing them with feedback when they have used the language well of\r poorly. Skinner’s learning theory could not account for the rapid acquisition of an infinitely productive language faculty. Children were developing grammatical systems that were quite orderly but different in the early stages from adult grammar, evidence often used to support Chomsky’s views.

Chomsky also made two nativist claims that have spurred enduring controversy in the field of child language development. The first is what has become known as the degeneracy problem (Berwick and Weinberg, 1984). Children overhear that is degenerate in that it contains many incomplete and ungrammatical sentence and that they have limited exposure to the full range of structures used by the language. Thus, language principles must be innate because the environment does not provide sufficient evidence for the child to permit competent language development. The negative evidence problem argued that children do not receive overt instruction that some structures are not permissible ion the language, either from parental correction of their errors or from literal instruction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Gleason, Jean Berko and Nan Bernstein Ratner, 1998 psycholinguistic (second edition) New York: Harcourt Brace College publisher

2. Promkin Victoria and Rodman, Robert 1998, an introduction to linguists (sixth edition) New York: Harcourt Brace College publisher

3. Clark P. Virginia, language introduction, New York: St. Martin Press