Psycholinguistics course 2021/22

Cours 1: 16/09/2021 Introduction

Barbara Hemforth
Paris GSL
Overview

• Presentation of the course

https://psycholinguistiquediderot.wordpress.com 

Password: Psycholinguistics21

• Course planning

• Details of grading

• Fully in person or hybrid?

• Introduction
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What’s in a hypothesis?
Hypothesis testing in linguistics (and elsewhere)

• In experimental linguistics, we want to test hypotheses about language

representation and processing. But what is a hypothesis?

• A hypothesis is an assumption about the relation between (at least) two variables.

• Any ideas of hypotheses you have in your daily life?

• Whenever I am in a cue, it will be the slowest one

• The co ee is always out when I go to the co ee machine

• Do masks prevent Covid-19?

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Fact checking a hypothesis

• How do we know a hypothesis is worth investigating

• Look at the literature
• Do an informal surve
• How costly is it to get a result
• How useful is the result?

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Hypotheses in Experimental Linguistics

• Typical hypotheses in Experimental Lingustics

• Object relative clauses are harder / less acceptable than subject relative clauses

• The boy that the girl saw ...

• The boy that saw the girl ...

• Frequent words are recognized faster than infrequent words.

• Livre (book)

• Spicilège (anthology)

• Quanti ers are interpreted in their linear order

• Every farmer beats a donkey.

• It is true for every farmer that he beats his donkey.

• The is a donkey that every farmer beats. 


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Hypotheses for theory testing

Hypotheses for theory testing

Context of
discovery è ScientificTheory

Interpretation of the
results with repect to
Theoretical hypothesis
the hypothesis and the
theory

Operationalizes
hypothesis
Statistical analysis of
• Dependent and independent
the results variables

Run the experiment

• Choose items and subjects

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Hypotheses for theory testing

This is also valid for linguistic theories

• Every theory you have heard of so far is a theory that needs to be tested for 

its validity! 


• The most interesting theories (from an experimental linguists viewpoint) are theories that make
empirically testable predictions, i.e. predictions that are compatible or incompatible with
empirical observations. 


• In Experimental Linguistics (as in natural sciences) only a theory that can be empirically tested
counts as a theory.

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Exploratory research questions usually don’t come with hypotheses

• Sometimes we don’t really know what is going on, we just want to know
• What is the favorite ice cream avor in France?

• Do young French speakers still use the subjunctive form?

• These are often pilot studies at the beginning of a research project

• In Experimental Linguistics, we often start looking at corpora when we have a more

exploratory question to nd our what a useful question could be for an experiment.

• Or do an informal survey with friends and family ...

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 The science crisis (examples from 2017)

• In late July, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology found nearly 486 researchers guilty of participating in a peer-review fraud scam involving the nomination of
ctitious or paid peer reviewers. 


• In August, the University of Tokyo determined that researcher Yoshinori Watanabe tampered with images in ve prominent publications. 


• That same month, Parkinson’s researcher Yoshihiro Sato of Mitate Hospital in Tagawa, Japan, requested that three of his published papers be withdrawn from the
literature, bringing his total retractions to 17. 


• In late September 2020, Yiheng Percival Zhang, a biofuels researcher at Virginia Tech, was arrested on charges of misusing federal grant funds totaling more than
$1 million, in conjunction with postdoc Chun You and former student Zhiguang Zhu. 


• In October 2020, the Expert Group on Scienti c Misconduct at Sweden’s Central Ethics Review Board (CEPN) weighed in on a case The Scientist has been covering
for years—that of surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, who has previously been found guilty of misconduct regarding the synthetic trachea transplantations he conducted that
led to the death of at least three patients. The CEPN’s investigation found evidence of misconduct in all six of Macchiarini’s publications it reviewed. 


• In November 19 editorial board members of Scienti c Reports resigned from the journal over a 2016 study that was allegedly plagiarized but that the journal refused
to retract. 


• https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/the-biggest-science-scandals-of-2017-29835 


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Sometimes bad science is less scandalous

• Bad experiments
• Overgeneralization of the results
• Biased questions

• I want to show that ...

• I want to know if...

• Experiments that are impossible to run in a given amount of time (PhD thesis,
Master’s thesis, or in this course)

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What kinds of hypotheses are we going to test?

• Simple research questions (only one precise research question) 


• If possible based on linguistic literature / previous expertise 


• Experiments with adult speakers of French or English (no children, no

participants that are dif cult to nd) 


• Experiments that can be run outside of the lab, internet-based experiments

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Example for an experiment we ran in a former course
RC-attachment to coordinated NPs

• Materials French

Short: Les assiettes et les fourchettes qui se trouvent sur l’étagère sont rayées.

Medium: Les assiettes ovales et les fourchettes qui se trouvent sur l’étagère sont rayées.
Long: Les assiettes à couscous ovales et les fourchettes qui se trouvent sur l’étagère sont
rayées.
• Materials Englis

Short: The plates and the forks that are on the shelf are scratched.

Medium: The oval plates and the forks that are on the shelf are scratched.

Long: The oval couscous plates and the forks that are on the shelf are scratched.

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Hypothesis

• A longer rst NP makes 


attachment to the second

NP more acceptable.

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Methods and results

• Participants had to judge paraphrases (the plates and the forks are scratches
or only the forks are scratched) on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 = not acceptable, 5=
fully acceptable)

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 Homework for next week

• Find an empirically testable linguistic hypothesis.

• Remember that this means a hypothesis on the relation of two (or three)
variables.

• Keep it simple
• Prepare one slide to present your idea

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