Linguistics
characterizing structure of language
Psycholinguistics
- How humans acquire, use, comprehend & produce language
- merging of linguistics and psych
- Productivity and Regularity
- Competence and Performance
- Relationship between language and thought
Productivity
an infinite number of sentences are possible in any languages
Regularity across language
for all languages there is a systematic structure:
- rules of grammar= rules that account for sentence productivity and regularity
- 3 levels of analysis= phonology, syntax, semantics
Syntax
- rules for determining word ordering in phrases and sentences
- Subject, Verb, Object
- rules for forming past tense and plurals (infections)
Semantics
- rules for accessing/combining word meanings into a sensible meaningful whole
- ex) Little children sleep peacefully.
Competence
- knowledge of the “rules” which linguists identify
Performance
- applying knowledge when speaking and listening
- psycholinguists develop theories that account for mental application of rules (DVs= errors, reading times)
Relationship between language and thought (2 theories)
Linguistic Determinism: Language shapes the way we think and precieve
- Eskimos are native to snowy environments so thay have 15 differerent words for snow. English speaks have 1. Do english speakers precieve snow differently?
Aristotle: Thought shapes language
- Language arose as a tool for communicating thought
- similarities in structure across different languages
- language universals
Language Universals
Statistical and Absolute features
Statisitcal Features
features found in many but not all languages
- Subject precedes Object
Absolute Language Features
features found in ALL languages
- productivity, regularity, arbitrariness, flexibility, displacement, interchangability
Arbitrary Features
Arbitrary= no inherent connection between words and their meaning; we need to learn these connections
- Exception= onomonopeia
Flexibility Features
Flexibility= we assign names for everything, and we sometimes change meanings to keep up with the times
- Google, computer, “mouth bling”
Displacement Features
We can talk about things that happened inthe past and future
Interchangeability
- all humans, male or female, can produce an infinite number of words
