Language: Nature and

Acquisition
Tristan Astrid A. del Rosario, RPm
Psycholinguistics
• The study of acquisition, storage,
comprehension, and production of
language
Language
• Organized way to combine words to
communicate
• Language is unique to humans
• A communication system that is
learned instead of biologically inherited
 Four Areas in Psycholinguistics
• Linguistics
• Emphasis on universals of language
• Neurolinguistics
• Emphasis on brain changes during language use
• Sociolinguistics
• Emphasis on relationship between language and
society
• Computational linguistics
• Emphasis on computer models of natural language
Properties of Language
• Communicative
• Arbitrarily symbolic
• Regularly structured
• Structured at multiple levels
• Generative
• Dynamic
Communicative Property
• Language is used to communicate
• Communication has meaning
• Individuals can send and receive information
 Arbitrarily Symbolic
• Language creates an arbitrary relationship
between a symbol and what it represents: an
idea, a thing, a process, a relationship, or a
description.
Generative Property of Language
• Using rules of language can create an
unlimited number of new utterances
• Within the limits of a linguistic structure,
language users can produce novel utterances.
The possibilities for creating new utterances are
virtually limitless
Dynamic Nature of Language
• Allows for new developments with the
creation of new words and ideas
• Blog
• Online diary meant to be read by others
• Spam has a new meaning
• Weird meat in a can
• Unwanted email
• Shut Up! Has new meaning
• One meaning is to quit talking
• YouthSpeak for “Really?”
Structure of Language
• Phonology
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Pragmatics
 Phonology
• Phoneme
• Smallest unit of speech
• Sounds of language
• /s/ /f/ /t/ /l/ /ae/ represent the sounds
common in English
• Different languages use different sets of
phonemes
• An example of phonology is the study of the movements the
body goes through in order to create sounds - such as the
pronunciation of the letter "t" in "bet," where the vocal chords
stop vibrating causing the "t" sound to be a result of the
placement of the tongue behind the teeth and the flow of air.
 Morphology
• Study of word structure
• Morpheme
• The smallest unit that denotes meaning

Root words Prefixes Suffixes

Cake Chair Boy Pre- Non- Un- -ly -ist -ness

Morphology
• Content Morphemes
• Word that conveys the core of the meaning (e.g., attractive,
happy)
• Function Morphemes
• Add nuances to core meaning (e.g., unattractive, happiness)
• Lexicon
• Entire set of morphemes for a language
• An example of a free morpheme is "bad", and an example of a
bound morpheme is "ly." It is bound because although it has
meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be attached to another
morpheme to produce a word.
Free morpheme: bad
Bound morpheme: -ly
Word: badly
Syntax
• Rules used to put words together for a sentence
• Sentence = Noun Phrase + Verb Phrase
• Incorrect: Happy about her upcoming promotion,
the trip home was full of singing.
• Correct: Happy about her upcoming promotion,
Sammie sang all the way home.
The incorrect example, the sentence is stating that
the "the trip home" (subject) was "happy about her
upcoming promotion," which doesn't make sense.
Instead, it is "Sammie" who is the happy individual
with a promotion, as stated in the correct sentence.
Semantics
• The study of meaning in a language
• To best understand semantics, read the following
sentences:
The honest umbrella is in the garage.
The salty craftsman appreciate the quality of the product.
Cindy slept badly due to the sniffing dream.
• Knowing that the sentences do not make sense is
your knowledge of semantics
• For example, in everyday use, a child might make use of semantics to
understand a mom’s directive to “do your chores” as, “do your chores
whenever you feel like it.” However, the mother was probably saying,
“do your chores right now.”
Language Comprehension

•Three primary approaches

• Speech perception
• Grammatical structure approach
• Discourse macro-level analysis
Speech Perception
• We hear sounds
• Put sounds together to form words
• Comprehend the phrases of another’s sentences
• Understand the ideas being conveyed
Speech Perception
• Coarticulation: Pronouncing more than one sound at the
same time. One or more phonemes begin while other
phonemes still are being produced.
• For example, say the words “palace” and “pool.” They both
begin with a p sound. But can you notice a difference in the
shape of your lips when you say the p of “pool” as compared
to the p of “palace”? You are already preparing for the
following vowel as you pronounce the p sound, and this
impacts the sound you produce. Not only do phonemes within
a word overlap, but the boundaries between words in
continuous speech also tend to overlap.
 Categorical Perception
• Voice onset time (VOT)
• The time between the beginning of the
pronunciation of the word and the onset of the
vibration of the vocal chords
• "ba" your vocal chords vibrate right from the start
• "pa" your vocal chords do not vibrate until after a short
delay
Categorical Perception
• The sounds "ba" and "pa" differ on the continuous
dimension of VOT
• Listeners can differentiate between /p/ and /b/;
however, performance in distinguishing between
different types of /p/ sounds is difficult
• Gives support for idea that specialized processes
are being used
McGurk Effect
• Lip movements to one sound “ba”
• Soundtrack indicates “da”
• What do you hear?
• McGurk & MacDonald (1976) found that people make
a comprised sound “tha”
• Demonstrates powerfully how we integrate what we hear with what
we see. It involves the synchrony of visual and auditory perception:
when watching a movie, an auditory syllable is perceived differently
depending on whether you see the speaker make the sound that
matches the pronunciation of the syllable or make another sound
that does not match the syllable spoken.
Semantics
• Denotation
• Definition of the word
• Connotation
• Additional nuances of word meaning (emotional, social,
cultural)
• Consider these examples
• Bachelor, Spinster
• Hungry, Starving
Syntax
• The grammatical arrangement of words into
a sentence or phrase
• Descriptive grammar
• Describe the structures, functions, and
relationships of words in language
• Prescriptive grammar
• The “Correct” way to structure sentences
Syntactical Priming
• Spontaneously tend to use syntactical
structures and read faster sentences that
parallel the structures of sentences we have
just heard.
• For example, supposing that the target is the
word “nurse,” the prime can be a related word
(e.g., “doctor”), an unrelated word (e.g., “bread”),
or a neutral stimulus (e.g., a row of X's). Under
these conditions, the semantic priming or
relatedness effect emerges.
Grammar
• Study of language in terms of noticing regular
patterns. These patterns relate to the functions and
relationships of words in a sentence. They extend
as broadly to the level of discourse and narrowly to
the pronunciation and meaning of individual words.
Reading
• A complex process that involves, at minimum, perception,
language, memory, thinking, and intelligence. You have to
recognize the letters on this page, put them together to form
words that have meaning, keep their meaning in memory until
you have finished reading the sentence or even paragraph, and
think about what message the writer tried to communicate to
you.
• Discourse. Involves units of language larger than individual
sentences—in conversations, lectures, stories, essays, and even
textbooks. Just as grammatical sentences are structured
according to systematic syntactical rules, passages of discourse
are structured systematically.
• Semantic encoding. The process by which we translate sensory
information (that is, the written words we see) into a meaningful
representation. This representation is based on our
understanding of the meanings of words.
Dyslexia
• Difficulty in deciphering, reading, and
comprehending text-can suffer greatly in a society
that puts a high premium on fluent reading.
Problems in phonological processing, and thus in
word identification, pose “the major stumbling
block in learning to read”. Several different
processes may be impaired in dyslexia:
• Phonological awareness. Refers to awareness of the sound
structure of spoken language (recognizing the different sounds that
make up a word).
• Phonological reading. Entails reading words in isolation. Individuals
with dyslexia often have more trouble recognizing the words in
isolation than in context.
• Phonological coding. Working in memory. When people have
difficulty storing phonemes in working memory and tend to confuse
them more often, reading becomes increasingly difficult.
• Lexical access. Which entails one’s ability to retrieve phonemes
from long-term memory. For example, how fast can a reader
recognize the word and when he sees it?
 Language in Context
• Linguistic relativity. Linguistic relativity refers to the assertion
that speakers of different languages have differing cognitive
systems and that these different cognitive systems influence the
ways in which people think about the world.
• Linguistic Universals. Characteristic patterns across all
languages of various cultures—and relativity.
• Monolinguals. People who can speak only one language
• Bilinguals. People who can speak two languages.
• Single-system hypothesis. Suggests that two languages are
represented in just one system or brain region.
• Dual-system hypothesis. Suggests that two languages are
represented somehow in separate systems of the mind. Ways in
which people think about the world.
Dialect
• A regional variety of a language distinguished by
features such as vocabulary, syntax, and
pronunciation. The most well-known example is the
word choice for a soft drink. Depending on the
dialect you use, you may order a “soda,” “pop,” or a
“Coke”
 Slips of the Tongue
• In such cases, what we think and what we mean to say do not correspond to what we
actually do say. Freudian psychoanalysts have suggested that in Freudian slips, the
verbal slips reflect some kind of unconscious processing that has psychological
significance. The slips are alleged often to indicate repressed emotions. For example,
a business competitor may say, “I’m glad to beat you,” when what was overtly
intended was, “I’m glad to meet you.” People tend to make various kinds of slips in
their conversations in:
• Anticipation. The speaker uses a language element before it is appropriate in the
sentence because it corresponds to an element that will be needed later in the
utterance. For example, instead of saying, “an inspiring expression,” a speaker might
say, “an expiring expression.”
• Perseveration. The speaker uses a language element that was appropriate earlier in
the sentence but that is not appropriate later on. For example, a speaker might say,
“We sat down to a bounteous beast” instead of a “bounteous feast.”
• Substitution. The speaker substitutes one language element for another. For
example, you may have warned someone to do something “after it is too late,”
when you meant “before it is too late.”
• Reversal (also called “transposition”). The speaker switches the
positions of two language elements. An example is the reversal that
reportedly led “flutterby” to become “butterfly.” This reversal
captivated language users so much that it is now the preferred form.
Sometimes, reversals can be fortuitously opportune.
• Spoonerisms. The initial sounds of two words are reversed and make
two entirely different words. The term is named after the Reverend
William Spooner, who was famous for them. Some of his choicest slips
include, “You have hissed all my mystery lectures,” [missed all my
history lectures] and “Easier for a camel to go through the knee of an
idol” [the eye of a needle].
• Malapropism. One word is replaced by another that is similar in sound
but different in meaning (e.g., furniture dealers selling “naughty pine”
instead of “knotty pine”).
• Additionally, slips may occur because of insertions of sounds. e.g.,
“mischievious” instead of “mischievous” or “drownded” instead of
“drowned”) or other linguistic elements. The opposite kind of slip
involves deletions (e.g., sound deletions such as “prossing” instead of
“processing”). Such deletions often involve blends (e.g., “blounds” for
“blended sounds”).
 Aphasia
• An impairment of language functioning caused by
damage to the brain. There are several types of
aphasias:
• Wernicke’s aphasia. Caused by damage to Wernicke’s area of the brain. It is
characterized by notable impairment in the understanding of spoken words and
sentences. It also typically involves the production of sentences that have the basic
structure of the language spoken but that make no sense. They are sentences that are
empty of meaning. Two examples are “Yeah, that was the pumpkin furthest from my
thoughts” and “the scroolish prastimer ate my spanstakes”.
• Broca’s Aphasia. Caused by damage to Broca’s area of the brain. It is characterized by
the production of agrammatical speech at the same time that verbal comprehension
ability is largely preserved. It thus differs from Wernicke’s aphasia in two key respects.
First is that speech is agrammatical rather than grammatical (as in Wernicke’s). Second
is that verbal comprehension is largely preserved. An example of a production by a
patient with Broca’s aphasia is “Stroke … Sunday … arm, talking— bad”.
• Global aphasia. Combination of highly impaired
comprehension and production of speech. It is caused by
lesions to both Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas. Aphasia
following a stroke frequently involves damage to both
Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas. In one study, researchers
found 32% of aphasias immediately following a stroke
involved both Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas.
• Anomic aphasia. Involves difficulties in naming objects or
in retrieving words. The patient may look at an object and
simply be unable to retrieve the word that corresponds to
the object. Sometimes, specific categories of things cannot
be recalled, such as names of living things.