Concise Summary of Language and Psycholinguistics

What is Language?

• Language is a social tool, learned by humans.
• Arbitrary relationship: no direct connection between sounds and meanings.
• Dual nature: combines basic sounds for communication.
• Involves rules and allows creativity.

What is Psycholinguistics?

• Study of mental processes related to language.
• Includes language comprehension, production, acquisition.

Language Development Stages

• 0-6 mos: Cooing
• 6-12 mos: Reduplicated babbling
• 12-24 mos: First words, two-word combinations
• 2-5 yrs: Multi-word utterances; complex sentence structures
• Critical Period Hypothesis: Language learning window closes around puberty.

Major Theories of Language Acquisition

1. Behaviorist (Skinner): Language as a complex S-R learning.
2. Social Learning (Bandura): Imitation in language learning.
3. Cognitivist (Chomsky): Universal inbuilt structures for language (Language Acquisition Device).
   • Children create own grammatical rules (e.g., “he runned”).
4. Vygotsky: Interdependence between thought and language.

Levels of Language Processing

• Syntax: Governs sentence structure and word order.
• Semantics: Meaning of words; affects lexical organization (e.g., word "run" has multiple meanings).
• Pragmatics: Contextual factors influencing language meaning; includes conversational rules.

Mental Lexicon

• Stores information about words, including:
  • Pronunciation, meaning, morphological properties, and syntactic properties.
• Semantic priming: Faster responses to related words (e.g., "dog" preceded by "cat").

Sentence Processing Models

1. Serial Processing: One structure processed at a time (Garden Path Model).
2. Parallel Processing: Multiple structures processed simultaneously (Constraint-Based Model).

Ambiguity in Language

• Global Ambiguity: Entire sentences with multiple interpretations.
• Local Ambiguity: Points in sentences where shifts in structure occur.

Discourse Processing

• Understanding sentences in context; connections with previous statements are vital.

Top-down vs Bottom-up Processing

• Bottom-Up: Details build up to form perception.
• Top-Down: Contextual knowledge influences interpretation.

Phonemic Restoration Effect

• Context helps fill in missing sounds; illustrated by studies showing context’s influence on comprehension.

References

• Eysenck & Keane, Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook.
• Parkin, Essential Cognitive Psychology.
• Pinker, The Language Instinct.