Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Psycholinguistics - A Study of Language and Brain in relation to psychology

Psycholinguistics - A Study of Language and Brain in relation to psychology

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.

          In short, Psycholinguistics deals with relationship between language and mind focusing mainly on how language is learnt, stored and occasionally lost. Mind and language have two functions: Acquisition and Performance and the two are linked. For empiricists, language learning is the result of conditioned behavior while Chomsky maintains that every human being has an innate capacity to learn his language. Language behavior is a very complex phenomenon.  Language behavior is subject to different social and psychological factors. There is strong evidence to prove that language learning is a biologically controlled process. Psycholinguistics seeks to study all these issues and more.

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