A PERSPECTIVE ON PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY ENGLISH DEPARTMENT PEKANBARU 2012 Miranti Eka Putri., S.Pd., M.Ed

DEFINITION
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Traditionally as the study of human language-language comprehension, language production, and language acquisition. The two disciplines that make up its name, psychology and linguistics.

Psychology

Gleitman (1986): It is a field of inquiry that is sometimes defined as the science of mind, sometimes as the science of behavior. It concerns itself with how and why organism do what they do.

Linguistics

Aitchison (1987): Linguistics can be defined as the systematic study of language a discipline which describes in all its aspects and formulates theories as to how it works

Psycholinguistics

(a) Aitchison (1987): Psycholinguistics is often defined as the study of language and the mind. It explores what goes on in the human minds as an individual acquires, comprehends, produces and stores language

(b) Garnham (1985): Psycholinguistics is the study of the mental mechanisms that make it possible for people to use language. It is a scientific discipline whose goal is a coherent theory of the way in which language is produced and understood

HOW CHILDREN LEARN LANGUAGE

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY ENGLISH DEPARTMENT PEKANBARU 2012 MIRANTI EKA PUTRI., S.Pd.,M.Ed

Language Learning in Psychological Process

Speech Production y Speech Understanding y Parentese and Baby Talk y Imitation and Correction
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The Development of Speech Production

Vocalization y The One-Word Utterance y Two- and Three- Word Utterance y Function Words and Inflections y Developing Complex Sentences
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Speech Understanding and Its Importance

Speech Understanding, the Basis of Speech Production. y Learning Abstract Words y Memory and Language Acquisition
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Parentese and Baby Talk

Parentese y Baby Talk
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Imitation and Correction

The Role of Imitation y The Role of Correction
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The Development of Speech Production

VOCALIZATION Babies few months old do not speak y They do make sounds through their mouths. y They cry, coo like pigeon, gurgle, suck, blow, spit, etc. y Babbling is a type of vocalization where the child uses speech sounds, mainly vowels and consonant-vowel Syllables, e.g. a ; u ; ma ; gi ; pa .
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Around 6 months of age, children start to sound somewhat (Japanese, America, Indonesia). By 10 or 11 months children will often babble in using question and exclamatory intonation patterns The babies should first acquire the intonation patterns of their language, even before producing any word, is not surprising. We don t know how to cut the flow of a sentence into words, and does the child. We become familiar with the melody, so to speak, before we get to the words. It is this melody, this intonation pattern, that the infant learns first to recognize and then to imitate.

THE ONE-WORD UTTERANCE

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First words have been reported as appearing in normal children from as young as 4 months to as old as 18 months, or even older. On the average, it would seem that children utter their first word around the age of 10 months. This variability has to do with physical development, such as the musculature of the mouth and throat, articulation of sounds. Brain development is involved since the creation of speech sounds must come under that control of speech areas in the cerebral cortex. A single word for many purposes. E.g, name, request, emphasize action, express complex situation. Nana---- banana (request) Mama ---- I want my mother (request)

TWO- AND THREE- WORD UTTERANCES

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At 18 months ---- children start to produce two- and three- word utterances. The child uses combinations of content words with the expectation that the listener will understand the relations between items. E.g: banana table (banana is on the table). Child does to use function words properly, e.g. to, with. Grammatical characteristic of the child s utterances is the lack of inflections, inflections being changes in the forms of words. Later the child will learn to add inflections but this refinement must wait until basic words are learned first.

FUNCTION WORDS AND INFLECTIONS Plural and possessive before third person. E.g. /s/, /z/, and /iz/. y Present before past. y Past irregular before past regular. e.g. come/ came, fall/ fell, go/ went. y Auxiliary be: regular before contracted. E.g. like, at, to, with.
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DEVELOPING COMPLEX SENTENCE

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Children start to make negatives, questions, relative clauses and other complex structures. E.g. Negative: No money; no teddy bear, I don t want it, I no want envelope, I didn t did it. The children begin the negative productions of the first period: 1.5 2.5 years. 4 or 5 years of age ---- wide differences in speech production. 9 or 10 years of age ---- all of the structures of the language have been acquired.

Speech Understanding and Its Importance

SPEECH UNDERSTANDING, THE BASIS OF SPEECH PRODUCTION Children will not learn speech, if they are exposed only to speech sounds. E.g. dog. y While the ability to utter speech sounds, such as dog in appropriate situations (when a dog is present or is barking), is a good indicator that the child knows the word. y The children learn the meaning of the spoken form of a word, the child must first hear that word spoken by others.
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LEARNING ABSTRACT WORDS Words expressing feeling ---- hunger, pain, joy, etc. The child cry ---- mother might and say, are you hungry?; child point the banana ---- mother say, do you want a banana? y It is up to the child to remember what words were spoken and to relate them to particular feelings that the child has experienced in the mind. y Recall that he has told and then assign the concept to the sound form and he will test when hears the word again (Lie). y Lie & guess ---- have environmental situations and mental states for the child to bring together (pure ideas).
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MEMORY AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Identify the words of the language, devising rules for their use, and relating speech to the environment and mind, the child utilizes a phenomenal memory capacity. y The child must remember a multitude of particular words, phrases and sentences, along with the contexts (physical and mental) in which they occurred. y Without a good memory, language learning would not be possible. y Objects, music, part events.
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Parentese and Baby Talk

PARENTESE Refer to the sort of speech that children receive when they are young. E.g. the dog which has been running a lot wants to drink some water ---- the dog wants water. y The sentences are ungrammatical in nature. y 2 or 4 years olds ---- produced parentese. y The characteristics of parentese evidently are ones which serve to make the acquisition of language understanding and production easier for a learner.
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If the parents did not use parentese, children would not learn language (fault). y Given the obvious facilitating of nature of parentese and they way it naturally arises, it may well be that children who receive such language input learn to understand speech faster that children who do not.
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Imitation and Correction

THE ROLE OF IMITATION
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The theories that children acquire language entirely through imitation is undoubtedly true that children do imitate a great deal of what they hear. They do imitate the intonation patterns and sounds of their language. They tend to approximate the proper order of words in a sentence. Imitation involves the reproduction of speech, cannot explain how speech is understood, the knowledge of which is the basis of speech production. E.g: papa, run, happy, etc.

THE ROLE OF CORRECTION

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Correction is not an important factor in the process. While it used to be thought that correcting children s speech is essential for improvement. Parents --- pay attention to respond rather than grammatical correction. The child is really given no direct clue as to exactly what is wrong with the utterance that he or she has produced. Children naturally correct their own mistakes over time, without the intervention of others. E.g. Son ---- nobody do not like me. mother --- nobody likes me.

ANIMAL & LANGUAGE

Teacher Training and Education Faculty English Department Pekanbaru 2012

TOPIC 1.1 Teaching Language (Chimpanzee; Gorilla; Dolphin) 1.2 Animal Communication in the Wild 1.3 Animal Communication and Human Language 1.4 Pygmy Chimp Reheats Debate 1.5 Conclusion Regarding Animals and Language

Chimpanzee
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Vicki: the Speaking Chimp ---- 1940s, Cathy & Keith Hayes ---- baby female chimp (Vicki) & their son (Donald) ---- V : learn speech as Donald would : she ate meals at the table : Played games at home : 3 years mama, papa, up and cup ---- D : Donald had become fluent in the language

Washoe: the Signing Chimp ---- In 1966, Allen & Beatrice Gardner, attempted to teach sign language to a bay chimp. ---- ASL, a language used by the hearing impaired in the US. ---- ASL is not based on finger spelling, which is a letter by letter system, nor is its grammar very similar to English grammar. ---- Open (a throwing out of the arms). ---- 4 years = 2 years children 130 signs Go sweet; Open food drink ---- 1.5 2 years old (Washoe).

Son of Washoe and a chimp signing community ---- Washoe was moved to a facility in the state of Washington ---- in looking at how language may or may not develop in the social context of that community. ---- acquiring signs not only from Washoe but from the other chimps. ---- three-way chimp conversations ---- language in the chimpanzee can advance without intervention of humans.

Lana: the computer chimp ---- a simple artificial language called Yerkish ---- consisted seven collours and nine geometrical shapes which represented mainly objects and actions. ---- Please machine give milk Please Tim give ball ---- apes have but a limited language acquisition ability. ---- perhaps the media raised hopes too high for animal language research

---- the fact the human children learn language without being taught, simply through being exposed to meaningful speech. Sarah: the magnetic token chimp ---- Colors, fruits, actions, question. ---- intelligent creatures. ---- syntax ---- Give banan

Koko: the Signing Gorilla

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ASL, koko, could be productive in her sign language, making new words to describe now objects by combining previously known ones. eye-hat ---- mask; white-tiger ---- zebra 4-4.5 years --- koko learned 132 words. 10 ---- 500 words. Syntax --- still not good Videotape ---- smoking (advertisement about ciggarete)

Dolphin: Teaching Through Sight and Sound

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1964, lily, tried to teach dolphin to force air through its blow hole in such a way that it would allow the dolphin to imitate human speech sounds.

Animal communication in the Wild

Animal is communicative in nature y To get food, to warn and threaten others y Animals use sound signal & other modalities (smell) y Monkey ---- alarm calls seem to be predator birds ---- announce honey ---- presence of food in the vicinity
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Animal Communication & Human language

---- human language vs comunicative signs of animals ---- HL --- creativity(more complex sentence) ---- AC ---- hunger, anger (complex structures) ---- A: can make understand only simple combinations : focus on the understanding of language as on its production ---- C: comprehension and not production is primary.

Pygmy Chimp Reheats Debate

1990 kanzi had learned words ands learned to use grammatical use. y 5 years old, learned 5 months to use grammar = 2 years Children y Gestures & symbol on computer keyboard y 250 vocabulary y Bite mulika ---- mulika bite y Chomsky ---- a chimpanzee usingf grammar is not a logical impossibility
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Conclusion Regarding animals & Language

Animals have language ability, whether in the wild/ through training. y Animals vs humans in the acquisition language y Piaget, putnam ---- animal lack certain aspects of general intelligence which are needed for learning complex language. y Chomsky ----the effect is due to animals being born without a special language ability, an ability that is little related to intelligence.
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