Psycholinguistics 02

Linguistic Principles Basic grammatical concepts Insights from sign language Transformational grammar Issues in grammatical theory

Basic Grammatical Concepts Duality of patterning Morphology Phrase structure Linguistic productivity

Duality of Patterning A small number of meaningless elements on one hand and a large number of meaningful elements on the other hand Phonology: phones, phonemes words Morphology: morphemes words Syntax: rules sentences

Morphology Forms of the meaning Free morphemes Bound morphemes

Linguistic Productivity Ability to create and comprehend novel utterances We produce new sentences always in terms of referents and often in terms of forms. We store rules for creating sentences instead of storing sentences.

Discussion Teachers often complain that students cannot remember the language points that appear in the texts they have learned. They believe that all this is due to the laziness on the part of the students. If students were more hard working as to learn the texts by heart, they would be familiar with these points. Commend on the justification of this complaint.

Sign Language Clip 1 Clip 2 Clip 3

Differences Between Signed and Spoken Languages Arbitrariness: language is an arbitrarily designed system. There is no intrinsic relationship between the set of sounds and the object to which the sounds refer. Iconicity: signs resembling the objects or activities to which they refer. Sign language possesses a high degree of iconicity. The degree of iconicity can decline over time. Simultaneous & sequential structure: spoken language is largely sequential in nature while sign language can be organized spatially more than temporally.

Similarities Between Signed and Spoken Languages Duality of patterning: hand configuration (19 values), place of articulation (12 values) and movement (24 values) see figure 2-4. Morphology: ASL has a rich morphological system. Linguistic productivity: sign embedding occurs in ASL. Phrase structure: ASL has SVO patterns

Significance of Sign Language Language production: ASL is independent of breathing. Comparison with the respiratory pause in speaking can be interesting. Language acquisition: the role of environment in deaf children’s language acquisition. Link between language and the brain: the left hemisphere is regarded as more verbal and the right as more skilled at spatial tasks.

Discussion The study of sign language gives some insight into the nature of language, and brings into focus some topics such as language production, language acquisition and the link between language and the brain. Do you know other researches in linguistics that have the similar function?

Criteria of Good Theory Observational adequacy: the grammar must specify what is and what is not an acceptable sequence in the language. Descriptive adequacy: the grammar must specify the relationships between various sequences in the language. Explanatory adequacy: the ability to explain the role of linguistic universals in language acquisition.

Deep and Surface Structure Sentences have more than one level of structure. Deep structure: the underlying structure of a sentence that conveys the meaning of a sentence. Surface structure: the superficial arrangement of constituents and is closer to how the sentence is actually pronounced. Transformational rules Sentences come from a two-part process: phrase structure rules to generate the underlying tree structure of the deep structure and a sequence of transformational rules to generate the surface structure.

Freud, Jung and Mind Sigmund Freud Carl Jung

The Freudian Model According to Freud, the mind is composed of three parts: the conscious mind, the preconscious mind, and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind contains all the thoughts and ideas that one is aware of. It is the awake, active mind.

The Freudian Model The unconscious mind contains a record of every piece of information that has been absorbed by the mind. As a person goes through life, the unconscious mind stores memories of all the events, lessons, and observations experienced by the individual. The unconscious is a vast warehouse of memories, knowledge, desires, and fears. The unconscious contains so much that we are not even aware of most of it.

The Freudian Model Between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind is the preconscious. The preconscious is a thin veil, like the surface of the water that divides the air above from the deep water below. This preconscious acts as a filter between the conscious and the unconscious. Sometimes the conscious mind needs to recall something, so the conscious mind reaches down through this veil and grabs whatever memory it's looking for and brings it into consciousness.

The Jungian Model Jung believes that there is a lot more to a person's psyche than dreams and repressed memories. He calls the whole iceberg the psyche. The psyche embodies everything about the person's mind, conscious and unconscious— including personality, likes and dislikes, intellect, etc.

The Jungian Model Within every person there is a complementary gender component: men have a feminine side and women a masculine side. He calls the feminine side of a man the anima and the masculine side of a woman the animus.

The Jungian Model He also proposes that everyone has a shadow side, an opposite personality. In other words, everyone has personality traits that are opposite to his or her dominant personality traits. For example, someone may generally be considered a very generous person, yet sometimes he or she may behave in a stingy manner.

The Jungian Model He finds that many cultures contain similar myths and legends, similar experiential threads in the various cultures, similar recurring images within a culture and some recurring images from culture to culture. He asserts that these recurring cultural images are part of a deeper collective unconscious that is imprinted in all humans, as if it is a genetic trait passed down from generation to generation starting with the first humans on the planet.

Psychological Reality of Grammar Derivational theory of complexity (DTC): the distance between surface and deep structure would be an accurate index of the psychological complexity of the sentence. (37) the sun is not shining. (38) the sun is shining. Counter-evidences were found in the sentences such as

Lexical Versus Structural Approaches Transformational grammar takes the grammatical constituent as the most basic unit of analysis. Lexical theories emphasize more on individual lexical items than structural theories. In most grammars, the lexical entry includes its meaning, spelling, pronunciation and syntactic characteristics (part of speech, pattern). In lexical-functional grammar (Bresnan:1978), lexical entries also includes the various forms of word and the different kinds of sentences into which each form would fit. e.g. (be) kiss: agent=object; patient=subject

Language Innateness Empiricists claim that children acquire language from linguistic experience. Nativists believe that children are born with some linguistic knowledge. Supporting evidence for innateness: deaf children invented a form of gestural language similar to ASL. Children acquire the mother tongue within 2-3 years.

Parameter-setting Theory Children are born with the parameters and with the values of the parameters. What they must learn from experience is which value is present in their native language.

Psychological Reality of Grammar (39) the boy was bitten. (40) the boy was bitten by the wolf. Trace theory: the moved constituent leaves a trace at its earlier location. (42) the nurse who was stationed on the seventh floor [trace] invited the chauffeur to go dancing this evening.

Phrase structure constituents of a sentence Parsing S NP+VP V NP NP Attributive clause (S)