User:Cognition language and thought

Lecture 1

Psycholinguistics

• Psychology: scientific study of behaviour
• Linguistics: scientific study of language(s)
• Psycholinguistics: scientific study of the mental processes (behaviours (therefore a sub field of psychology not linguistics) involved in language
  • language comprehension
  • language production
  • language acquisition

Language seems effortless for unimpaired adult L1 speakers, and much of our knowledge is implicit.

• Need to study breakdown, limits (demanding, speeded tasks), & errors to understand cognitive processes & representations involved in language use
• Observe & measure natural language behaviour, use experimental tasks to control for factors not under investigation, stud impairment, L2 abilities, development

Areas of linguistics

• Phonetics
• Phoneme
• Morpheme
  • free morphemes
  • bound morphemes
• Word: sound or combination of sounds (or their written symbol, usually written with a space either side) conveying an idea/ideas, capable as serving as a member of, the whole of, or a substitute for, a sentence
• Lexical: to do with words (from lexicon = dictionary)
• Semantics
• Grammar: rules that describe the structure/regularities of a language
• Syntax: rules about word order, combining words
• Morphosyntax
• Lexicosemantics: word meanings
• Orthography: represents the sounds of language by written symbols
• Pragmatics: famous pragmatic conventions -- the Gricean maxims
• Discourse