PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY ISLAMABAD

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
GROUP NO. 11

SUBMITTED TO:
MAM. QURAT UL AIN
SUBMITTED BY:
NIMRA RASHID 1485-FSS/BSPSY-F20
ARWA SHAFAQ 1450-FSS/BSPSY-F20
SAMIA BATOOL 1577-FSS/BSPSY-F20
AMNA HAQ 1491-FSS/BSPSY-F20
TUBA REHMAN 1425-FSS/BSPSY-F20

SECTION: A

DATE OF SUBMISSION:
April, 2024

Department of Psychology
Faculty of Social Sciences
International Islamic University Islamabad
 INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE

Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics is the psychology of our language as it interacts with the human mind. It
considers both production and comprehension of language. Four areas of study have contributed
greatly to an understanding of psycholinguistics:
 linguistics, the study of language structure and change
 neurolinguistics, the study of the relationships among the brain, cognition, and language
 sociolinguistics, the study of the relationship between social behavior and language
 computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, the study of language via computational
methods
What is Language?
Language is the use of an organized means of combining words in order to communicate with
those around us. It also makes it possible to think about things and processes we currently cannot
see, hear, feel, touch, or smell. These things include ideas that may not have any tangible form.
Properties of Language
Communicative: Language permits us to communicate with one or more people who share our
language.
Arbitrarily symbolic: Language creates an arbitrary relationship between a symbol and what it
represents: an idea, a thing, a process, a relationship, or a description.
Regularly structured: Language has a structure; only particularly patterned arrangements of
symbols have meaning, and different arrangements yield different meanings.
Structured at multiple levels: The structure of language can be analyzed at more than one level
(e.g., in sounds, meaning units, words, and phrases).
Generative, productive: Within the limits of a linguistic structure, language users can produce
novel utterances. The possibilities for creating new utterances are virtually limitless.
Dynamic: Languages constantly evolve.
Basic Components of Words
 Phoneme
Language can be broken down into many smaller units. It is much like the analysis of molecules
into basic elements by chemists. The smallest unit of speech sound is the phone, which is simply
a single vocal sound. A given phone may or may not be part of a particular language. A click of
your tongue, a pop of your cheek, or a gurgling sound are all phones. These sounds, however, are
not used to form distinctive words in North American English. A phoneme is the smallest unit of
speech sound that can be used to distinguish one utterance in a given language from another. In
English, phonemes are made up of vowel or consonant sounds, like a, i, s, and f. For example,
we can distinguish among “sit,” “sat,” “fat,” and “fit,” so the /s/ sound, the /f/ sound, the /i/
sound, and the /Æ/ sound are all phonemes in English (as is the /t/ sound). These sounds are
produced by alternating sequences of opening and closing the vocal tract. Different languages
use different numbers and combinations of phonemes.
 Morpheme
At the next level of the hierarchy after the phoneme is the morpheme—the smallest unit of
meaning within a particular language. The word recharge contains two morphemes, “re-” and
“charge,” where “re” indicates a repeated action. The word “cable” consists of only one
morpheme although it is made up of two syllables; but the syllables “ca” and “ble” do not have
any inherent meaning
English courses may have introduced you to two forms of morphemes—root words and affixes.
Root words are the portions of words that contain the majority of meaning. These roots cannot be
broken down into smaller meaningful units. Examples of roots are the words “fix” and “active.”
We add the second form of morphemes, affixes, to these root words. Affixes include prefixes,
which precede the root word, and suffixes, which follow the root word. Look at the word affixes.
It contains three morphemes: af-, -fix, -es. Af- is a prefix variant of the prefix ad-, meaning
“toward,” “to,” or “near.” In contrast, –fix is the root word. Finally, –es is a suffix that indicates
the plural of a noun. Similarly, the word proactive contains the prefix pro-, and the root word -
active. Linguists analyze the structure of morphemes and of words in general in a way that goes
beyond the analysis of roots and affixes. Content morphemes are the words that convey the bulk
of the meaning of a language. Function morphemes add detail and nuance to the meaning of the
content morphemes or help the content morphemes fit the grammatical context. Examples are the
suffix -ist, the prefix de-, the conjunction and, or the article the.
 Lexicon
The lexicon is the entire set of morphemes in a given language or in a given person’s linguistic
repertoire. The average adult speaker of English has a lexicon of about 80,000 morphemes.
Children in grade 1 in the United States have approximately 10,000 words in their vocabularies.
By grade 3, they have about 20,000. By grade 5, they have reached about 40,000, or half of their
eventual adult level of attainment. By combining morphemes, most adult English speakers have
a vocabulary of hundreds of thousands of words. For example, by attaching just a few
morphemes to the root content morpheme study, we have student, studious, studied, studying,
and studies. Vocabulary is built up slowly. It develops through many diverse exposures to words
and clues as to their meanings
Basic Concept of Sentences
 Syntax
Although we put together sentences so seemingly easy when we speak, a substantial framework
of rules hides behind our creation of these sentences. Syntax refers to the way in which we put
words together to form sentences. It plays a major role in our understanding of language. A
sentence comprises at least two parts. The first is a noun phrase, which contains at least one noun
(often the subject of the sentence) and includes all the relevant descriptors of the noun (like “big”
or “fast”). The second is a verb phrase (predicate), which contains at least one verb and whatever
the verb acts on, if anything. Linguists consider the study of syntax to be fundamental to
understanding the structure of language.
 Semantics
When we read and speak, it is important not only to comprehend words and sentences but also to
figure out the meaning of whole conversations or larger written pieces. Semantics is the study of
meaning in a language. A semanticist would be concerned with how words and sentences
express meaning. Discourse encompasses language use at the level beyond the sentence, such as
in conversation, paragraphs, stories, chapters, and entire works of literature.
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
 SIGN LANGUAGE
Definition:

Sign language is a system of communication used by deaf and severely hearing-impaired

viewers. It is a way in which a signer translated speech into sign for the benefit of deaf
individuals.

 Sign language is a true language due to following reasons:

1. Sign language system allows a signer to comprehend and produce an indefinitely
large number of grammatical sentences in signs. This feat can be accomplished with a
limited number of signs (vocabulary) and a system (syntax and semantics).
2. A signing person has a true language if that person can communicate by sign
whatever can be communicated by speech.
 Sign language can communicate in sign whatever is expressed in speech.

Language based on Speech as compared to language based on Signs:

The basic difference is about physical means of communication. Sign language involves light
and speech based language requires sound.
 Physical mode is not an essential aspect of language but it must depend on some physical
mode for its learning and usage which is not limited to sound. The mode can be:
1. Visual as in sign language
2. Touch as in language used by deaf-blind persons. For example, Helen Keller’s case.
 Sign language is capable of expressing of translating complex abstract sentences containing
semantic functions and relations, number of events and situation through signs.
 For example:
If the weather had been fine, then Mary’s uncle could have come and given her money
According to the sentence, the weather was not fine, Mary’s uncle did not come, and the
uncle did not give money to Mary. A person who could comprehend and produce
communications such as this, through sign rather than speech, surely can be said to have
language.

Complete and Incomplete Sign Language:

 Research on sign language started in 1960’s with the findings showing various sign
languages such as: American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language, French Sign
Language, etc.
 There are two types of Sign language:
1. Complete Sign language: Non-limited in terms and vocabulary. For example: ASL
(American Sign Language).
2. Incomplete Sign language: Limited in terms and vocabulary typically found in
developing countries. For example; In Japan, when the national government prohibited
the teaching and use of sign language, standardization and vocabulary were limited.
Speed of signing and speaking sentences is comparable:

Signer communicates at about the same speed as a speaker does. The speed at which signers
produce sentences (more precisely the ideas that underlie sentences) in a signed conversation
tends to be similar to that at which speakers produce sentences in a spoken conversation

Dialects and foreign accents:

Strong dialectic differences are found within a language from region to region within a country.
For example, signers from Paris have difficulty in understanding signers from Lyon, and vice
versa.

American Sign Language and British Sign Language are not mutually intelligible.
 As American Sign Language actually has more in common with French Sign Language
than with British Sign Language because ASL was derived from French Sign Language
early in the nineteenth century.
 British Sign Language had its beginnings before the seventeenth century, with the first deaf
schools opening in Britain in the late eighteenth century.

No Universal Sign Language:

 There is no universal sign language. There are some similarities among languages, but
not many. There is a multitude of sign languages, complete and incomplete.
 Like speech-based languages, a sign language is part of a culture. It may be useful to
learn a foreign (or second) language but to give up one’s native language, be that speech
or sign, is something that people are not eager to do.

LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION

Writing Systems and Speech:

Writing systems are designed to represent the spoken words of a language. It is through
individual words that other higher units of language, such as the phrase and sentence,
represented.
Writing systems of the world are mainly based on one of two principles: sound or meaning. The
inventory of visual symbols of writing systems is constructed on the basis of these principles.

Writing systems based on Speech sounds: Phonemes or Syllables

 In the sound-based system, each symbol represents a speech sound, either a phoneme or a
syllable. There are many different sound-based writing scripts in use throughout the world
today such as
  Devanagari in India
 Arabic in Egypt
 Hangul syllabary in South Korea
 The two Kana syllabaries in Japan
 The Cyrillic alphabet in Russia and Bulgaria
 The Roman alphabet in English-speaking countries and Western Europe.

 Sound-based orthographies correspond highly to their spoken forms to represent the

phonemes of their spoken languages such as:
 Finnish and Spanish which use the Roman alphabet
 Korean use Hangul
 Japanese use Kana, however, it also mixes Chinese-type characters into its writing
system even though those characters (kanji) can be written in the syllabic forms.

The unpredictability of English orthography:

Many works have been written on the inconsistencies of English spelling and the pain it has
inflicted on learners. This has been elaborated in the following poem:

Why Wonders Lead to Blunders

I take it you already know

of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble but not you
on hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through.
Well done. That sure was fun.
But, my friend, it’s not the end.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
that looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead
For goodness’ sake, don’t call it ‘deed’!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
which rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
A moth is not the moth in mother
nor is broth the broth in brother
And here is not a match for there
nor dear and fear for bear and pear
And then there’s dose and rose and lose
 Just look them up – and goose and choose
and cork and work and card and ward
and font and front and word and sword
and do and go and wart and cart
Yet, I’ve hardly touched the heart!
What kind of a spelling system is that, ask you?
Well, like me, you can master it by eighty-two!
T.S.W. (Only initials of author are known; modifications by D.D.S.)

Writing systems based on Meaning: The Morpheme

A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that contains meaning. It is the smallest meaningful
constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is
called morphology.
Example:
Chinese is essentially a system where symbols (characters) represent the morphemes of the
language although symbols may be added to assist pronunciation.

 In the Chinese system every character represents one or more morphemes as well as a
single syllable. For instance:
The Chinese word kowtow consists of two morphemes, kow meaning ‘knock’ and tow
meaning ‘head’. Kowtow thus literally means to kneel and touch the ground with one’s
forehead, thereby showing submission or respect to a superior.

The relationship between symbol and morpheme, therefore, is essentially conventional rather
than pictorial, just as is the case for the English alphabet, whose letters (the capitals) are
themselves rooted in ancient Semitic picture writing. We can still see the stylized outline of the
head of an ox in the letter A, especially when that letter is inverted.
ANIMAL AND LANGUAGE LEARNING