IntroductiontoPsycholinguistics.docVIP

Introduction to Psycholinguistics 1. What is psycholinguistics? As the word “psycholinguistics” indicates by itself, psycholinguistics is a joint area of study of psychology and linguistics. Like most areas of study, psycholinguistics, can be defined by the question that it asks and by the mysteries that it is trying to solve. Typically psycholinguists ask three basic questions: (1) how language is acquired during development: The language acquisition is a natural process. It is so natural that we rarely pay any attention to it. However, once we set our thinking upon it, we will find that it is really a miracle for a child to learn his native language so well in such a short period of time. Normally a child can have a surprising mastery of his native language until 5 years old. Comparatively the same result may need a foreign language learner’s many many years’ effort. As a result it is very necessary, and also very interesting to study the process of language acquisition. (2) how people comprehend language: When two people are talking with each other, the listener can understand the speaker’s speech subconsciously. However, there must be a process and (3) how people produce language. The study of language comprehension and production forms one field ‘experimental psycholinguistics’, and the study of language acquisition forms a separate field ‘developmental psycholinguistics’. As the three questions indicate, psycholinguists are concerned primarily with the mental structures and operations that make communication possible, although many psycholinguists are also interested in the act of communication itself. Those who study mental structure and processes are called cognitive psychologists; psycholinguistics is, therefore, one branch of cognitive science. Experimental Psycholinguistics Developmental Psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics Neurolinguistics App