Psycholinguistic

Produced by

Giovanni Anggawijaya
20180600014

Fakultas Sosial Humaniora

Prodi Sastra Inggris
Universitas Buddhi Dharma

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Table of Contents
Study Background................................................................................................................................1
Psycholinguistic....................................................................................................................................2
Origin of the term.................................................................................................................................2
Psycholinguistics sub-disciplines....................................................................................................2
Theoretical psycholinguistics......................................................................................................2
Developmental Psycholinguistics...............................................................................................2
Psychosocial linguistic................................................................................................................3
Educational Psycholinguistics.....................................................................................................3
Neural Psycholinguistics.............................................................................................................3
Experimental linguistics..............................................................................................................3
Applied psycholinguistics...........................................................................................................3
The Nature of Language.......................................................................................................................3
Grammar..........................................................................................................................................3
Linguistic competence................................................................................................................4
Linguistic performance...............................................................................................................4
Function...........................................................................................................................................4
Structure...........................................................................................................................................4
Process.............................................................................................................................................4
Language processing........................................................................................................................4
Lexical storage and retrieval............................................................................................................5
Language acquisition.......................................................................................................................5
Special circumstances......................................................................................................................5
The brain and language....................................................................................................................5
Second language acquisition and use...............................................................................................5
The Scope of Psycholinguistic.............................................................................................................6
Comprehension.....................................................................................................................................6
Imitation...........................................................................................................................................6
Conditioning....................................................................................................................................7
Social cognition...............................................................................................................................7
Speech production.......................................................................................................................7
Language acquisition.......................................................................................................................7
The significance of psycholinguistics..............................................................................................7
Language Processes & Linguistics Knowledge:..................................................................................8
Tacit knowledge...............................................................................................................................8
Explicit knowledge..........................................................................................................................8
Semantics.........................................................................................................................................8
Syntax..............................................................................................................................................8
Phonology........................................................................................................................................8
Pragmatics........................................................................................................................................8
Garden path sentences.....................................................................................................................8
Historical Context...............................................................................................................................10
Neurolinguistics.............................................................................................................................10
Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................13
Bibliography.......................................................................................................................................14

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 Study Background

Psycholinguistics, also known as language psychology, is the study of the interactions

between linguistic and psychological influences. The area is associated with psychological and
neurobiological influences that aid in the acquisition, use, comprehension, and production of
language. The method is mostly associated with the pathways that interpret and reflect languages in
the brain. Biology, neuroscience, brain science, linguistics, and knowledge science are the
foundations of contemporary study. It investigates how the brain generates language, as well as
established mechanisms in social sciences, human growth, communication theory, and child
development, among other things.

A variety of methods are available for observing the neural processes of the brain. Due to
their position in departments other than applied sciences, the first forays into psycholinguistics were
located in metaphysical and educational fields. Education and theory may benefit from
psycholinguistics. Psycholinguistics is also useful for “cognitive processes” that produce
grammatical and substantive sentences from vocabulary and grammatical structures. It aids
comprehension of utterances, sentences, and text, among other things. Developmental
psycholinguistics research considers children's capacity to understand words.

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 Psycholinguistic

Psycholinguistics is the study of how individuals comprehend, produce, and acquire

language. Broadly, psycholinguistic is the study of language in relation of mind, the study looks at
how people comprehend, understand and produce as well as acquire language.
Psycholinguists are also interested in the social rules that basically govern the process of
language as well as the comprehension processes of language that affect its eventual production and
expression.
Psycholinguistics as a separate branch of study emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s as a
result of chomskyan revolution. Later on, Chomsky proposed this idea of innateness and that is how
the study psycholinguistics in relation study in relation with human mind emerged as a separate
discipline as a separate field from 1950s and 1960s onwards.

Origin of the term

The term Psycholinguistics was coined in 1936 by Jacob Robert Kantor in his book an
objective of psychology grammar frequently used in 1946 due to his students Nicholas Henry’s
Contribution in the article in the in the form of article named as Language and psycholinguistics,
our review.

Psycholinguistics sub-disciplines
 Theoretical psycholinguistics
It refers to language theories related to human mental processes in reducing language and
that takes into account phonological diction syntax discourse which is written or spoken
communication and intontation arragements, that is raising and lowering of your voice according to
what you are talking about what you’re speaking

 Developmental Psycholinguistics
this is the process of language acquisition both the first language as well as the second
language acquisition

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  Psychosocial linguistic
this refers to the social aspect of language that language is a string of thoughts and insights
that how the surroundings affect the production of a language and what are the social aspects and
factors that influence once language production

 Educational Psycholinguistics
refers to the role of a language in the teaching of reading or language proficiency,
Educational psycholinguistics looked at the language in the academia in terms of teaching or
reading and in terms of language proficiency

 Neural Psycholinguistics
the relation between language and brain and this is the most important of psycholinguistics.
This deals with what happens to language input and how output is programmed and formed inside
the brain

 Experimental linguistics
deals with the act and effect of using language, basically cause and effect.

 Applied psycholinguistics
deals with the application of all above subfields into other subjects, so applied
psycholinguistics has experimental aspect, neural aspect, educational aspect, social aspect,
developmental as well as the theoretical psycholinguistics aspect which are taken into consideration
as far as the applied psycholinguistics aspects is concerned

The Nature of Language

the nature of language has the following components : grammar, function, structure and process

 Grammar
it means the language that has a grammar and grammar which deals with phonology syntax
and semantics. Phonology refers to the sound system, Syntax deals with the sentence structure and

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semantics has everything to do with the meaning the language conveys. This takes us to competence
and performance, under that we have linguistic competence and linguistics performance,

◦ Linguistic competence
the mastery of linguistic rules, language rules, being able to know what rules convey
what

◦ Linguistic performance
the ability to communicate appropriately in a given context

 Function
a description of how sentences and utterances communicate, every utterance or every
sentence which is written or being spoken needs to convey a particular message so function is what
a particular function that utterance or sentence performs

 Structure
the complete grammar of a language which has a phonology, phonetics, syntax, semantics,
pragmatics.

 Process
the description of mental tools, materials and procedures people use in order to convey a
particular message so mental tools can be in the form of visual images, material can be books,
textbooks or any channel that people use for delivering or conveying a certain messsage.

Certain factors that psycholinguistics includes

 Language processing
refers to reading, writing, speaking, listening, and memory. For instance how “was” on paper
are turned into meaning in the mind.

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  Lexical storage and retrieval
the way words are stored in our minds and the way they are used, that is how we are able to
map words onto objects such as ball and actions such as kick so basically mapping of words onto
objects comes under lexical storage and retrieval

 Language acquisition
that is how language is first learned and used by children, for example : learning the rules of
grammar and how to communicate with other people

 Special circumstances
how internal and external factors can impact development, internally is something which is
within an individual and external factors are factors that are there in one’s surroundings, and they
can also be seen in the examples of twin language, for example two languages that are being
acquired, the influence of hearing and vision impairment on language acquisition and how damage
to the brain can affect certain aspects of language.

 The brain and language

it refers to basically the evolutionary explanation of why humans have the capacity to use
language and the parts of the brain concerned with different areas of language also considering
wheteher or not non-human, animals have the ability to use language too. So the brain and
language looks at these kinds of phenomena, what parts of the brain are concerned with the
language and not only the humans, in the situation of animals, do they have the ability to use
language to.

 Second language acquisition and use

this looks at the phenomena of bilingualism that is how individuals can learn a second
language and are able to differentiate between them, so monolingualism deals with one language, a
speaker who has the ability to speak only one language but bilingualism is something that looks at
how different individuals can learn a second language and how they can differentiate betwen the
two in terms of their using of the language, in terms of expressing themselves, how can they
differentiate between two different types of grammatical structure of two different languages

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 The Scope of Psycholinguistic
The scope of psycholinguistics is very broad, this particular field is a part of emerging field
of study which is called cognitive science. Cognitive Science is a interdisciplinary field in this
disciplinary area which takes into account number of other disciplines as philosophy, psychology,
lingusitics, neuroscience, artifical intelligence as well as intelligence.

Cognitive science primarily deals with the study of human mind and language. What
“broader terms” means is that the other areas in terms of philosophy, intelligence, neuro science,
psychology also play a very important role in the understanding or studying the different areas of
language and language production.

Psycholinguistics is interested in looking at different ways of storing lexical items and

syntactic rules in mind, what particular class of lexical items are stored easily or what particular
class of syntactic rules are stored in mind and how the processes enable individuals to use those
lexical items and syntactic rules in a given situation.

Psycholinguistics looks at the processes of memory involved in perception and interpretation

of a text. Perveption is something which is very subjective and indivuals tends to develop and
interpret text based on one’s own personal experiences, on personal reflection of their own
surroundings,and language plays an important role in terms of developing or shaping those
perceptions as well as facilitating the interpretation of the text

Psycholinguistics covers three main points : comprehension, speech production, language

acquisition. And these three points form the basis for a broader scope of psycholinguistics

 Comprehension
Takes into account how people understand spoken and written language, there are three
parameters that have been suggested : Imitation, conditioning, Social cognition.

 Imitation
In language acquisition occurs when children imitate language patterns and vocabulary of
those significant to them. Imitation is a very interesting phenomena, you can see and
observe this phenomena among children, they imitate language patterns and vocabulary of

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 those whom they find closer to them and those who have some kind of influence on them
especially the first exposure is to their parents so they learn whatever word they speak, they
try to imitate it, then try to imitate the way those words are spoken to them

 Conditioning
refers to BF Skinner’s idea of conditioning or habituation to the child speech, that is how
reinforcement the child gets by repeating one word over and over again and once that word is
reinforced in a positive manner, the child develops the habit of speaking or developing the
vocabulary through this process of reinforcement

 Social cognition
children gain an understanding of words semantics because he understood the purpose of
one’s cognition to produce a phoneme through a mechanism of joint attention

 Speech production
how people produce language, spoken words are selected to be produced, have their
phonetics formulated, and then finally are articulated by the motor system in the vocal apparatus, so
the production of speech consists of the selection and then the formulation of phonetics and finally
the articulation by the motor system

 Language acquisition
how people learn language, the process by which human acquire the capacity to perceve and
comprehend language as well as to produce and use words to communicate, so not only the process
of acquisition but also how the words are produced for the communication purposes.

 The significance of psycholinguistics

its significance in the language teaching and learning and it has a detailed study in terms of
the psychology of language so the significance of psycholinguistics is not only understanding these
three points but also in the area of language teaching and learning.

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 Language Processes & Linguistics Knowledge:

 Tacit knowledge
Tacit knowledge refers to the knowledge of how to perform various acts, We sometimes
know how to do something without knowing how we do it.

 Explicit knowledge
explicit knowledge refers to the knowledge of the processes or mechanisms used in these
acts.

 Semantics
Semantics deals with the meanings of sentences and words.

 Syntax
Syntax involves the grammatical arrangement of words within the sentence.

 Phonology
Phonology concerns the system of sounds in a language.

 Pragmatics
Pragmatics entails the social rules involved in language use.

Garden path sentences

Sentences whose wording leads one to expect one meaning, but it turns out to be another one. What
happens when we comprehend a sentence? We get a hint of what is involved when the process
breaks down. For example: The novice accepted the deal before he had a chance to check his
finances, which put him in a state of conflict when he realized he had a straight flush

 Indirect requests.
Consider now a sentence such as:
Can you open the door?
An indirect request is more polite than a direct command such as sentence:
Open the door!

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 We know this, as it is part of our pragmatic knowledge of our language. Some of us know it
better than others.

Indirect requests are an aspect of language that forces us to consider language in a social
context. The study of the relationships between language and social behavior is called
sociolinguistics. Sociolinguists remind us that language activities always take place in a social
world. Sociologists and anthropologists study how language varies with social groupings, how it
influences social interaction, and how it is used as an instrument of culture (as in the transmission of
cultural traditions). All of these aspects are well beyond those of the psychologist, who is
principally interested in the behavior of individuals. Yet even when studying individuals, it is
necessary to recognize the social dimension of language.

 Language in Aphasia
Language in aphasia. Although our primary focus is on language processes in normal
individuals, we can learn a great deal about language by studying individuals with impaired
language functioning. An aphasia is a language disorder due to brain damage. One type of
aphasia, called Wernicke's aphasia, involves a breakdown in semantics.

1. Wernicke’s Aphasia
Before I was in the one there, I was over in the other one. My sister had the department in
the other one ( Geschwind, 1972, p. 78)

2. Language in children
Language in children. An area of considerable concern to psycholinguists is language
acquisition. As difficult as it is to infer linguistic knowledge in adults, the problem is even
more intractable with children. An example may help here. Imagine a young child, about 1
year old, interacting with her mother. Typically, children around this age produce one word
at a time. When the mother leaves the room and then returns with the child's favorite doll,
the child says doll, not mother. Later, when the mother is helping her with lunch, the child
points at the milk and says more. Still later, when the child is struggling with her shoes and
the mother asks her what she is doing, the simple response is off. What can we conclude
from these observations?

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 For starters, the child might know, at least in a tacit manner, some of the rules of
language to use words appropriately. We could infer that she uses more not as an isolated
word or imitation but as a request that the mother bring the milk closer. Doll is less clear; the
child might be making a comment on her environment by labeling a thing she finds
interesting, or she may be requesting the doll. How do we determine what she is trying to
say? One way is to see what happens if the mother does nothing. If the word were meant as
a request, the child will probably become more insistent, perhaps by repeatedly pointing at
the doll and saying doll; whereas if it were meant as a comment, the child's behavior should
end with mother's mere acknowledgment of the object. Thus, the child may have learned
certain pragmatic rules to guide her choice of words.

You may complain that this is reading a good deal, perhaps too much, into a single
word. Granted, the inferences made about this stage of development are terribly difficult.
Yet, although there is disagreement over exactly how much knowledge to attribute to young
children, it appears that children know more than they say. Children somewhat older than
the one in the example commonly express themselves with two words at a time, as in baby
gone, by eliminating the closed-class or function words (prepositions, conjunctions, and so
on) in favor of open-class or content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives). This pattern suggests
that children have an intuitive understanding of these two grammatical classes, which is part
of their syntactic knowledge.

An analysis of children's comprehension and production abilities cannot be divorced

from the social context in which the child masters language. Parents may set up situations in
which one word is sufficient for communication. With the adult's query What are you doing
with your shoe? as the base, the child's simple, economical off is instantly comprehensible.
Parents do other things as well, such as simplifying their speech to children and teaching
specific words.

Historical Context
Neurolinguistics
An old term for psycholinguistics. In 18th century the relationship between language and
human brain was called Neurolinguistics. It was considered as the most suited term in 80 century
reason because of the relationship the huma mind has with the language, It was considered that

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when we are talking about human mind we are referring to all the nervous system and the
mechanism of brain and how they process in relation to language. Therefore, neurolinguistics was
considered as the best suited term for that.

Work on psycholinguistics starts as far as PLATO. It become prominent in 19 th century with

linguistics. Shift was seen from neurolinguistics to psycholinguistics, PLATO as philosopher
proposed the idea of or the very famous problem which is known as the PLATO’s problem which
states “how can we know so much given a little evidence?” that means that human mind is born
with the innate ability which the concept which was later on adopted by Chomsky and his was
primarily after PLATO has proposed the idea of how once can know so much with having little
information, little evidence given truth people around him or through the surroundisngs that he or
she has. Paul Broca, Charles Hockett and Willem Levelt are important people who did work on it.

Willem Levelt
Dutch Psycholinguists. He is an influential researcher of human language acquisition and
speech production. He developed a comprehensive theory of the cognitive processes involved in the
act of speaking, His theory basically deals with the cognitive processes that takes place in human
mind as far as the act of speaking is concerned including the significance of the “mental lexicon”
present in themind and how an individual processes that particular aspect like mental lexicon to
come up with the appropriate lexical items for the production of a particular or conveying a
particular message.

Paul Broca
French Physician, Surgeon, Anatomist, and Anthropologist. He is best known for his
research on Broca’s area, a region of the frontal love in brain.

Charles Hockett
In the 1960s, Linguistic Anthropologist Charles F. Hockett defined a set of features that
characterize human language and set it apart from animal communication. He proposed 13 features
of language which aimed to distinguish the animal communication from the huma ncommunication,
He called these characteristics the design features of language. Those 13 are : Vocal auditory
channel, rapid fading, specialization, arbitrariness, displacement, traditional transmission, duality of

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patterning, discreteness, semanticity, total feedback, interchangeability, boradcast transmission and
directional reception.

Overall, the historical context of psycholinguistics includes contribution of renowed scientists and
the distinguished theories and frameworks emerged from different school of thought.

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 Conclusion
Psycholinguistic encompasses different aspects of language, it takes into account syntax, semantics
aspect, as well as phonological aspect of the language not only that, this is the linguistics aspect but
how these linguistics aspects are required so acquisition aspect as well as how the understanding of
psycholinguistics enable us to develop our understanding of the human brain, the processess that
takes place in the human brain as far as the language is concerned

Psycholinguistics is an area which draws from linguistics ( the study of language ) and psychology (
the study of behaviour and mind) and focuses upon the comprehension and the production of
language, so it’s not only one area that is studies, it looks at the language as well as the human mind
an dhow incollaboration with each other a human mind as well as the language aspect an individual
produces understands and acquired a particular language.

Scope of psycholinguistics involves how language is acquired and produced by users, how brain
works on language and as well as comprehension, speech production and acquisition process

Psycholinguistics is part of an interdisciplinary field known as cognitive science. Two primary

psycholinguistic questions are What mental processes are involved in language use? and What
linguistic knowledge is involved in language use? These questions reemerge in different forms in
studies of adult language comprehension, the social use of language, language use in aphasia, and
language in children.

The historical context of psycholinguistics includes contribution of renowed scientists and the
distinguished theories and frameworks emerged from different school of thought.

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vu. (2018c, October 27). ENG511_Topic003. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

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