Chapter 6 Language Processing in Mind 1. Introduction 2. Language comprehension 3. Discourse/text interpretation 4 Language production 5. Task.

Chapter 6 Language Processing in Mind

1. Introduction 2. Language comprehension 3. Discourse/text interpretation4 Language production5. Task

6.1 Introduction

Psycholinguistics is primarily concerned with investigating the psychological reality of linguistic structures.

Other definitions of Psycholinguistics: a. Psycholinguistics is the study of the relationsh

ip of “language and mind”. b. Psycholinguistics “proper” can perhaps be glo

ssed as the storage, comprehension, and production and acquisition of language in any medium (spoken or written)

cf: a. Psychology of language deals with more general topics such as the extent to which language shapes thought. b. Psychology of communication includes non- verbal communication such as gestures and facial expressions. c. Cognitive psychologists are concerned with making inferences about the content of the human mind. d. Experimental psychologists is somewhat more concerned with empirical matters, such as speed response to a particular word.

◆Evidence a. Psycholinguistics attracts supporters from both li

nguistics and psychology, though both of them have somewhat different approaches , esp. in methodology.

Linguists are inclined to favor descriptions of spontaneous speech as their main source of evidence

Psychologists more prefer experimental studies. b. Subjects of Psycholinguistic investigation are no

rmal adults, children and aphasics patients ------people with speech disorders.

Current issues a. It is generally agreed that human languag

e system is likely to be a “modular”, in the sense of being constituted out of a number of separate but interacting components. However, the point led to a major controversy concerning the integration of the modules.

b. Another problem is the relationship between STRUCTURE and PROCESS, which can not reach agreement.

c. Three major aspects of psycholinguistic research:

COMPREHENSION Language: how do people use their knowledge of language, and how do they understand what they hear or understand?

PRODUCTION language: how do they produce messages that others can understand in turn?

ACQUISITION language: how language is represented in the mind and how language is acquired?

6.2. Language comprehension

Word recognition: Word recognition is the initial step in understanding any message.

Factors affecting word recognition: a. Cohort theory hypothesizes that auditory word recognition begins with the formation of a group of words at

the perception of the initial sound and proceeds sound by sound with the cohort of words decreasing as more sounds are perceived.

b. Frequency effect, one of the most important factors affecting word recognition, studies how frequently the word is used in a given discourse or context

C. Recency effect, one of the factors affecting word recognition, describes the additional ease with which a word is accessed due to its repeated occurrence in the discourse or context.

D.Context is another factor affecting word recognition. People recognize a word more readily when the preceding words provide an appropriate context for it.

Syntactic processing factors affecting the process of determining the structure o

f a sentencea. the ambiguity of individual words and the different possib

le ways that words can be fit into phrases. e.g.: The mother beat the his daughter with a play gun. ( pr

epositional phrase with a play gun used to modify daughter ; prepositional phrase with a play gun being the complement of the verb beat )

b. the ambiguous category of some of the words in the sentence

e.g.: the desert trains ( in different contexts, desert can serve as the subject of the verb trains or the modifier of the verb )

C.garden path sentence, another factor affecting the process of determining a sentence structure, are sentences that are initially interpreted with a different structure than they actually have. For example, reduced relative clauses often cause such feeling of having been garden-pathed.

e.g.: The horse raced past the barn fell ( the horse that was raced past the barn fell )

MINIMAL attachment theory, a way used when interpreting the structure of sentences, is the idea that people initially construct the simplest ( or least complex ) syntactic structure.

Basic processes in readinga.Perceptual span is the range of letters from which

useful information is extracted, which varies depending on factors such as the size of the print, the complexity of the text, etc. and encompasses about three or four letters to the left of fixation and some fifteen letters to the right of fixation.

b. Immediacy assumption means that the reader is supposed to carry out the processes required to understand each word and its relationship to previous words in the sentence as soon as that word is encountered.

6.3.Discourse/text interpretation

Discourse serves as a context, affect sentence and word-level interpretation, tipping the interpretation of what would otherwise be ambiguous words or phrases in a certain direction.

General context effects means that our general knowledge about the world influences language comprehension, which occurs all the time, because a crucial aspect of language comprehension involves making use of any relevant general knowledge that we possess..

Specific context effects involve information obtained from earlier parts of a discourse

Schemata and inference drawing The origin of schemata The concept of schema theory was put forward by

Barlett in his writings. Barlett believed that our memory for discourse was not based on straight reproduction, but was constructive. The constructive process uses information frome experience related to the discourse at hand, to build a mental representation. He argued that , that past experience can not be an accumation of successive individuated events and experiences, it must be organized and manageable. (cited in Discourse Analysis written by Gillian Brown &George Yule )

The definitions of Schema:a.Schemata are ‘high-level complex ( and even conv

entional or habitual ) knowledge structures’ (van Dijk, 1981:141) which functions as ‘ideational scaffolding’ (Andersion, 1977 ) in the organization and interpretation of experience. In the strong view, schemata are considered to be deterministic, to predispose the experiencer to interpret his experience in a fixed way. (cited in Discourse Analysis written by Gillian Brown &George Yule )

b. Schemata can be seen as the organized background knowledge which leads us to expect or predict aspects in our interpretation of discourse. (cited in Discourse Analysis written by Gillian Brown &George Yule )

The characteristics of schemata:a. Schemata can vary considerably in the informati

on they contain, from the very simple to the very complex.

b. Schemata are frequently organized hierarchically. e.g.:

worsening environment/ecological deterioration

↓

desertification

↓

sand storms / Yellow dust

↓

deforestation /vegetation

c. Schemata operate in a top-down or conceptually driven way to facilitate interpretation on environmental stimuli.

how to use schemata:

a. the activation of schemata

b. the reconstruction of schemata specific use of schemata: research on the use of

schemata are found in reading comprehension and listening comprehension and listening comprehension. Now research on the use of schemata begins in writing.

Story structure

Van Dijk and Kintsch (1983 ) argued that, in understanding of the gist of MACROSTRUCTURE of a story, readers and listeners make extensive use of their general knowledge to work out the major theme of a story, which leads to the production of MACROPROPOSITIONS which are general propositions used to form an overall macrostructure of the story.

6.4 Language production

Language production is definitely a goal-directed activity, in the sense that people speak and write in order to make friends, influence people, convey information and so on.

Speech production Garrett put forward five different levels of represent

ation involved in speaking a sentence: a. the message-level representation b. the functional-level representation c. the positional-level representation

d. the phonetic-level representatione. the articulatory-level representation comment on the theory: the complex theory of sp

eech production has not as yet been tested thoroughly. However, there is support for some of its major assumptions.

some concepts related to the theory:a. Spoonerism ( Slip if the tongue ) refers to the initi

al letters or letters of two words are transposed. For example, sounds or words from the end of a sentence intrude into the early part of a sentence, then this provides evidence for the notion of forward planning.

b. Anticipation error, errors demonstrating the existence of forward planning, means that a word is spoken earlier than it should be.

e.g.: ＊ The school is at school. ( at the school)c. Exchange error, errors, two items within a senten

ce are swapped. e.g.: ＊ This is the happiest life of my day. (This is the happiest day of my life.)d. Morpheme-exchange errors, refers to the pheno

menon that the roots of basic forms of two words are switched leaving the grammatical structure unchanged.

b. Anticipation error, errors demonstrating the existence of forward planning, means that a word is spoken earlier than it should be.

e.g.: ＊ The school is at school. ( at the school)c. Exchange error, errors, two items within a senten

ce are swapped. e.g.: ＊ This is the happiest life of my day. (This is the happiest day of my life.)d. Morpheme-exchange errors, refers to the pheno

menon that the roots of basic forms of two words are switched leaving the grammatical structure unchanged.

e.g. ＊ He has already trunked two packs.

(He has already packed two trunks. )Written language

Writing process proposed by Hayers ans Flowers (1986 ):

First, the planning process, which involves producing ideas and arranging them into a writing plan appropriate to the writing.

Second, the sentence generation process, which translates the writing plan into actual sentences that can be written down.

Lastly, the revision process, which involves an evaluation of what has been written for so far.

Strategic knowledge, less obvious factors determining the quality of the writing plan, is knowledge used in constructing a writing plan in order to make it coherent and well-organized.

6.5 Task: Work in groups and discuss the following questions:① Give a definition of Psycholinguistics in your own words?② Please explain how to figure our the correct structure of garden path

sentences with four or more sentences ?③ Could you explain how to use schemata in listening, speaking, readi

ng and reading with examples?④ Please explain the basic process in reading with a short passage or

short paragraph?⑤ Distinguish the following definitions with at least one examples: slip

of the tongue, anticipation error, exchange error and morpheme-exchange errors?

⑥ Think about the acquisition of second language acquisition or first language acquisition from the perspective of psycholinguistics?