Psycholinguistics
a recent branch of linguistics
Psycholinguistics is a recent branch of
linguistics developed in the sixties. It is the study of interrelationship of
psychological and linguistic behaviour. It uses linguistic concepts to describe
psychological processes connected with the acquisition and use of language. As
a distinct area of interest, psycholinguistics developed in the early sixties,
and in its early form covered acoustic phonology and language pathology.
But now-a-days it has been influenced
deeply by the development of generative theory, and its most important area of
investigation has been language acquisition. It has raised and has partly
answered questions such as how do children acquire their mother tongue? How do
they grow up linguistically and learn to handle the registral and stylistic
varieties of their mother tongue effectively? How much of the linguistic system
that they ultimately command, are they born with and how much do they discover
on the basis of their exposure to that system?
psychological
implications of language pathology.
In its early form, psycholinguistics
covered the psychological implications of an extremely broad area, from
acoustic phonetics to language pathology. Now-a-days, certain areas of language
and linguistic theory tend to be concentrated on by the psycholinguist. Much of
psycholinguistics has been influenced by generative theory and the so-called
mentalists. The most important area is the investigation of the acquisition of
language by children. In this respect there have been many studies of both a
theoretical and a descriptive kind. The need for descriptive study areises due
to the fact that until recently hardly anything was known about the actual
facts of language acquisition in children, in particular about the order in
which grammatical structures were acquired. Even elementary questions as to
when and how the child develops its ability to ask question syntactically, or
when it learn the inflectional system of its language, remained unanswered.
However, a great deal of work has been done recently on the methodological and
descriptive problems related to the obtaining and analyzing information of this
kind.
The theoretical questions have focused
on the issue of how we can account for the phenomenon of language development
in children at all. Normal children have mastered most of the structures of
their language by the age of five or six. The generative approach argued
against the earlier behaviorist assumptions that it was possible to explain
language development largely in terms of imitation and selectives
reinforcement. It asserted that it was impossible to explain the rapidity or
the complexity of language used by the people around them.
nature
and nurture influence the acquisition of language
Psycholinguistics therefore argue that imitation is
not enough; it is not merely by mechanical repetition that children acquire
language. They also acquire it by natural exposure. Both nature and nurture
influence the acquisition of language in children. Children learn first not
items but systems. Every normal child comes to develop this abstract knowledge
of his mother tongue, even of a foreign language, to some extent for himself;
and the generative approach argues that such a process is only explicable if
one postulates that certain features of this competence are present in the
brain of the child right from the beginning. ‘In other words, what is being
claimed is that the child’s brain contains certain innate characteristics which
‘pre-structure’ it in the direction of language learning. To enable these
innate features to develop into adult competence, the child must be exposed to
human language, i.e., it must be stimulated in proper to respond. But the basis
on which it develops its linguistic abilities is not describable in
behaviourist terms’.
psycholinguistics
and linguistics
The boundary between psycholinguistics and linguistics
is becoming increasingly blurred as the result of recent developments in
linguistics which aim at giving psychological reality to the description of
language. Chomsky regards linguistics as a subfield of psychology more
specially the cognitive psychology. His view of linguistics, as outlined for
instance, in his book Language and Mind, is that the most important
contribution linguistics can make, is to the study of the human mind. The bonds
between psychology and linguistics become more and more strong by the extent to
which language is influenced by and itself influences such things as memory,
motivation, attention, recall and perception.
Similarly psycholinguistics and
sociolinguistics are coming closer because of the realization that merely
grammatical competence is not enough; we have to aim at communicative
competence too. Whereas psycholinguistics is language and the mind,
sociolinguistics is language and community. In other words, psycholinguistics
can be said to deal with language and the individual, and sociolinguistics with
language and society.
Language
Acquisition
By the study of language acquisition is meant the
process whereby children achieve a fluent control of their native language. Few
people in the 1950s asked about the processes by which language was acquired.
It was assumed that children imitated the adults around them and their speech
gradually became more accurate as they grow up. There seemed to be some mystery
attached to this apparently straight-forward process. Psycholinguistics have
therefore attempted general theories of language acquisition and language use.
Some have argued that learning is entirely the product of experience and that
our environment affects all of us in the same way. Others have suggested that
everybody has an innate language learning mechanism which determines learning
or acquisitionof language identically for each of us. These two schools are
known as ‘empiricists’ (ehaviourists) and ‘rationalists’ (mentalists).
Language
Learning Theories
The Spectrum of language learning
theories was dominated by the behaviorists till fifties of the last century
when Chomsky appeared with the beam of ‘cognitive approach’ and Piaget with the
ray of ‘Genetic Epistemology‘. Ideas of both the scholars turned the mode of
language learning. Chomsky emphasized the importance of ‘innate cognitive
abilities’ for language learning which were being neglected by the
behaviorists. Whereas Piaget highlighted the importance of cognitive
development in the learning process. The work of both the psychologists
introduced new horizons to explore. Particularly, on one side, Piaget’s work
patched the way of the language learning theories of cognitive process such as
Paivio’s ‘Dual Code theory’ and Anderson’s ‘Act theory’. And on the other side,
many Constructivists like Bruner, Vydotsky and Seymour Papert, influenced by
Piaget’s cognitive approach, tried to synthesis the behaviorist ‘environmental
stimulus’ and the Mentalist cognitive process in their theories. Moreover,
Bloom’s Cognitive Domain and Gardner’s MI theory provided classroom teacher to
assess and analyze the levels and problems of his students. In the following
all these important theories will be discussed under these heads:
1. The Behaviorists
2. The Mentalists
3. Cognitive Process Theories
4. The Constructivists
5. Cognitive Domain
6. Multiple Intelligence Theory
Psycholinguistics
and Child Language Acquisition
Psycholinguistics merges the fields of
psychology and linguistics to study how people process language and how
language use is related to underlying mental processes. Studies of children’s
language acquisition and of second-language acquisition are psycholinguistic in
nature. Psycholinguists work to develop models for how language is processed
and understood, using evidence from studies of what happens when these
processes go awry.
They also study language disorders such
as aphasia - impairment of the ability to use or comprehend words and dyslexia
- impairment of the ability to make out written language. It is the study of interrelationship of
psychological and linguistic behaviour. Its most important area of
investigation has been language acquisition. It has raised and has partly
answered questions such as how do children acquire their mother tongue? How do
they grow up linguistically and learn to handle the registral and stylistic
varieties of their mother tongue effectively? How much of the linguistic system
that they ultimately command, are they born with and how much do they discover
on the basis of their exposure to that system? John D. Carroll states that this
branch uses:
“Some
aspects of psychology and some aspects of linguistics. It is confined to the
study of how people use a language system and how they learnt it”
By language acquisition is meant the
process whereby children achieve a fluent control of their native tongue. By
1950, people thought that children imitated their elders and got language but
now various theories have been presented. Some argue that it is the
environmental impact and product of our experience and others discuss the
innateness of language or Empiricist (Behaviorists) and Rationalists
(Mentalists). The theoretical questions have focused on the issue of how we can
account for the phenomenon of language development in children at all. Normal
children have mastered most of the structures of their language by the age of
five or six. The earlier behaviorist
assumptions were that it was possible to explain language development largely
in terms of imitation and reinforcement.
Psycholinguistics therefore argue that imitation is not enough; it is
not merely by mechanical repetition that children acquire language. They also
acquire it by natural exposure. Both nature and nurture influence the
acquisition of language in children. Both schools of thought have said
significant things but neither is perfect. Language Acquisition is a process of
analogy and application, nature and nurture. Experience and innateness.
Imitation is there but the child forms his own grammar of rules. Children learn
first not items but systems. In other
words, what is being claimed is that the child’s brain contains certain innate
characteristics which ‘pre-structure’ it in the direction of language learning.
To enable these innate features to develop into adult competence, the child
must be exposed to human language, i.e., it must be stimulated in proper to
respond but the basis. David Crystal asserts:
“On which it
develops its linguistic abilities is not describable in behaviourist terms”
Psycholinguistics has researched and
exposed that there is a critical period in first language acquisition. If the
child, in the first thirteen years, is not exposed to language, he loses his
critical period and then he can never master a language; even his native
tongue. Genie and Chelsea who lost their critical period, are the examples in
this proof. If he is exposed to language in his childhood, he goes certain
stages to learn his mother tongue. The
development of a child’s language starts from babbling; merely saying /b/, /p/ and
/m/ etc. and then he goes on to word level. His One-Word Stage is between the
ages of 12 months, children are able to produce one word utterances. And the
child can use one word to mean the whole thing as dada to mean I see daddy or
daddy is coming etc. or Juice to means give me juice etc. In Two-Word Stage:
such as baby chair meaning the baby is sitting in the chair or baby’s chair
etc. Hit Doggie meaning I hit the doggy etc. In Telegraphic Stage, children
begin to produce longer and complex sentences such are chair broken, Car make
noise, I good boy, man ride bus today etc. Language development from age 2 is
rapid and fast. The telegraphic stage is a very important period which is
characterized by the emergence of powerful grammatical devices.
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