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    Cours1 Psycholinguistique

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    saada bobo
    This document provides an overview of a psycholinguistics course for 2021/22. It discusses presenting the course plan and details, whether the course will be fully in-person or hybrid, and introducing hypotheses testing in linguistics. Some examples of hypotheses are provided, such as relative clauses being harder than subject relatives and frequent words being recognized faster than infrequent words. The document outlines how to evaluate hypotheses and discusses exploratory research questions versus hypotheses. It provides examples of experiments that could be conducted for this course, such as testing attachment in coordinated noun phrases. For next week, students are asked to identify a testable linguistic hypothesis.

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    Cours1 Psycholinguistique

    Uploaded by

    saada bobo
    40 views15 pages
    This document provides an overview of a psycholinguistics course for 2021/22. It discusses presenting the course plan and details, whether the course will be fully in-person or hybrid, and introducing hypotheses testing in linguistics. Some examples of hypotheses are provided, such as relative clauses being harder than subject relatives and frequent words being recognized faster than infrequent words. The document outlines how to evaluate hypotheses and discusses exploratory research questions versus hypotheses. It provides examples of experiments that could be conducted for this course, such as testing attachment in coordinated noun phrases. For next week, students are asked to identify a testable linguistic hypothesis.

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    cours1 Psycholinguistique

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    This document provides an overview of a psycholinguistics course for 2021/22. It discusses presenting the course plan and details, whether the course will be fully in-person or hybrid, and introducing hypotheses testing in linguistics. Some examples of hypotheses are provided, such as relative clauses being harder than subject relatives and frequent words being recognized faster than infrequent words. The document outlines how to evaluate hypotheses and discusses exploratory research questions versus hypotheses. It provides examples of experiments that could be conducted for this course, such as testing attachment in coordinated noun phrases. For next week, students are asked to identify a testable linguistic hypothesis.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    40 views15 pages

    Cours1 Psycholinguistique

    Uploaded by

    saada bobo
    This document provides an overview of a psycholinguistics course for 2021/22. It discusses presenting the course plan and details, whether the course will be fully in-person or hybrid, and introducing hypotheses testing in linguistics. Some examples of hypotheses are provided, such as relative clauses being harder than subject relatives and frequent words being recognized faster than infrequent words. The document outlines how to evaluate hypotheses and discusses exploratory research questions versus hypotheses. It provides examples of experiments that could be conducted for this course, such as testing attachment in coordinated noun phrases. For next week, students are asked to identify a testable linguistic hypothesis.

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    Psycholinguistics course 2021/22

    Cours 1: 16/09/2021 Introduction

    Barbara Hemforth
    Paris GSL
    Overview

    • Presentation of the course

    https://psycholinguistiquediderot.wordpress.com 

    Password: Psycholinguistics21

    • Course planning

    • Details of grading

    • Fully in person or hybrid?

    • Introduction
    Paris GSL
    What’s in a hypothesis?
    Hypothesis testing in linguistics (and elsewhere)

    • In experimental linguistics, we want to test hypotheses about language


    representation and processing. But what is a hypothesis?

    • A hypothesis is an assumption about the relation between (at least) two variables.

    • Any ideas of hypotheses you have in your daily life?

    • Whenever I am in a cue, it will be the slowest one

    • The co ee is always out when I go to the co ee machine


    • Do masks prevent Covid-19?

    Paris GSL
    ff
    Fact checking a hypothesis

    • How do we know a hypothesis is worth investigating


    • Look at the literature
    • Do an informal surve
    • How costly is it to get a result
    • How useful is the result?

    Paris GSL

    Hypotheses in Experimental Linguistics

    • Typical hypotheses in Experimental Lingustics

    • Object relative clauses are harder / less acceptable than subject relative clauses

    • The boy that the girl saw ...

    • The boy that saw the girl ...

    • Frequent words are recognized faster than infrequent words.

    • Livre (book)

    • Spicilège (anthology)

    • Quanti ers are interpreted in their linear order

    • Every farmer beats a donkey.

    • It is true for every farmer that he beats his donkey.

    • The is a donkey that every farmer beats. 


    Paris GSL
    fi
    Hypotheses for theory testing

    Hypotheses for theory testing

    Context of
    discovery è ScientificTheory

    Interpretation of the
    results with repect to
    Theoretical hypothesis
    the hypothesis and the
    theory

    Operationalizes
    hypothesis
    Statistical analysis of
    • Dependent and independent
    the results variables

    Run the experiment


    • Choose items and subjects

    Paris GSL
    Hypotheses for theory testing

    This is also valid for linguistic theories

    • Every theory you have heard of so far is a theory that needs to be tested for 

    its validity! 


    • The most interesting theories (from an experimental linguists viewpoint) are theories that make
    empirically testable predictions, i.e. predictions that are compatible or incompatible with
    empirical observations. 


    • In Experimental Linguistics (as in natural sciences) only a theory that can be empirically tested
    counts as a theory.

    Paris GSL

    Exploratory research questions usually don’t come with hypotheses

    • Sometimes we don’t really know what is going on, we just want to know
    • What is the favorite ice cream avor in France?

    • Do young French speakers still use the subjunctive form?

    • These are often pilot studies at the beginning of a research project

    • In Experimental Linguistics, we often start looking at corpora when we have a more


    exploratory question to nd our what a useful question could be for an experiment.

    • Or do an informal survey with friends and family ...


    Paris GSL
    fl
    fi
    The science crisis (examples from 2017)

    • In late July, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology found nearly 486 researchers guilty of participating in a peer-review fraud scam involving the nomination of
    ctitious or paid peer reviewers. 


    • In August, the University of Tokyo determined that researcher Yoshinori Watanabe tampered with images in ve prominent publications. 


    • That same month, Parkinson’s researcher Yoshihiro Sato of Mitate Hospital in Tagawa, Japan, requested that three of his published papers be withdrawn from the
    literature, bringing his total retractions to 17. 


    • In late September 2020, Yiheng Percival Zhang, a biofuels researcher at Virginia Tech, was arrested on charges of misusing federal grant funds totaling more than
    $1 million, in conjunction with postdoc Chun You and former student Zhiguang Zhu. 


    • In October 2020, the Expert Group on Scienti c Misconduct at Sweden’s Central Ethics Review Board (CEPN) weighed in on a case The Scientist has been covering
    for years—that of surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, who has previously been found guilty of misconduct regarding the synthetic trachea transplantations he conducted that
    led to the death of at least three patients. The CEPN’s investigation found evidence of misconduct in all six of Macchiarini’s publications it reviewed. 


    • In November 19 editorial board members of Scienti c Reports resigned from the journal over a 2016 study that was allegedly plagiarized but that the journal refused
    to retract. 


    • https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/the-biggest-science-scandals-of-2017-29835 


    Paris GSL
    fi
    fi
    fi
    Sometimes bad science is less scandalous

    • Bad experiments
    • Overgeneralization of the results
    • Biased questions

    • I want to show that ...

    • I want to know if...


    • Experiments that are impossible to run in a given amount of time (PhD thesis,
    Master’s thesis, or in this course)

    Paris GSL

    What kinds of hypotheses are we going to test?

    • Simple research questions (only one precise research question) 


    • If possible based on linguistic literature / previous expertise 


    • Experiments with adult speakers of French or English (no children, no


    participants that are dif cult to nd) 


    • Experiments that can be run outside of the lab, internet-based experiments

    Paris GSL
    fi
    fi
    Example for an experiment we ran in a former course
    RC-attachment to coordinated NPs

    • Materials French

    Short: Les assiettes et les fourchettes qui se trouvent sur l’étagère sont rayées.

    Medium: Les assiettes ovales et les fourchettes qui se trouvent sur l’étagère sont rayées.
    Long: Les assiettes à couscous ovales et les fourchettes qui se trouvent sur l’étagère sont
    rayées.
    • Materials Englis

    Short: The plates and the forks that are on the shelf are scratched.

    Medium: The oval plates and the forks that are on the shelf are scratched.

    Long: The oval couscous plates and the forks that are on the shelf are scratched.

    Paris GSL
    h

    Hypothesis

    • A longer rst NP makes 



    attachment to the second

    NP more acceptable.

    Paris GSL
    fi
    Methods and results

    • Participants had to judge paraphrases (the plates and the forks are scratches
    or only the forks are scratched) on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 = not acceptable, 5=
    fully acceptable)

    Paris GSL
    Homework for next week

    • Find an empirically testable linguistic hypothesis.


    • Remember that this means a hypothesis on the relation of two (or three)
    variables.

    • Keep it simple
    • Prepare one slide to present your idea

    Paris GSL

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