Language as a subject of

psycholinguistics
Language origin
Sound and meaning
• There is a section in the PL that deals with the study of how sound and
meaning correlate in linguistic consciousness, and the study of the
emotional content of the sounds of a language. This section is called
PHONOSEMANTICS. There are 2 points of view:
• 1) The sound itself has no meaning
• 2) Speech sounds are meaningful and have meaning - phonetic
meaning

• Onomatopoeia? – Onomatopoeic theory of the emergence of language

The word in the human mind
• In psycholinguistics, there are a number of different approaches to
the meaning of a word and its functioning in speech activity.
• 1) parametric
• 2) indicative
• 3) situational
• 4) prototype
• 5) associative
Parametric approach
• Attention is focused on the fact that for a native speaker the meaning
of a word is not monolithic, it can be decomposed into a number of
components, the degree of expression of which can be quantified.
This approach is related to Ch. Osgood's method of semantic
differential, which measures the connotative meaning of a word.
Feature Approach

• The focus is on how the individual uses meaning. Everything is

described through a certain set of attributes that characterize the
object, action, quality associated with the word. The study of the
features of a person's perception of the external world and the
subsequent processing of the perceived is carried out in order to
discover and explain the psychological structure of the meaning of the
word.
Situational approach
• Attention is focused on the fact that for the user of the language, the
meaning of the word is realized through its inclusion in some more
voluminous unit - a scene, a scenario, an event, meanings do not
function separately, but in certain connections, which, moreover, add
up to general associations: fields, networks. Associations, frames act
as nodes in networks.
Prototype approach
• It is based on the concept of the typicality of not only a certain combination
of features, but also the degree of significance of such features for referring
an object to a certain category. There are categories of the basic level of
generalization, based on the perception of surface characteristics of
objects. Human knowledge has a hierarchically organized structure.
• Basic level: gestalt, a holistic image for the presentation of the
phenomenon, the first ones come to mind when appealing to the
phenomenon
• Highest level (furniture) - no abstract mental images
• Lowest level: excessive specificity - differentiation within a category
Associative approach
• The focus is on associative meaning, communication and relationships
are formed in a person through speech and thinking.

• Individual memory is a repository of associations, and their

emergence and destruction underlies the learning process.
Psycholinguistic aspect of word formation
and grammar
• A new word is created by a person when he encounters an object
whose purpose and essence he knows, but has no idea or does not
remember the name.

• Children's speech creativity

• Folk etymology

• Pun
Grammatical forms
• Л. Петрушевская
Пуськи Бятые

Сяпала Калуша с калушатами по напушке. И увазила бутявку, и волит:

- Калушата! Калушаточки! Бутявка!
Калушата присяпали и бутявку стрямкали. И подудонились.
А Калуша волит:
- Оее! Оее! Бутявка-то некузявая!
Калушатa бутявку вычучили.
Бутявка вздребезнулась, сопритюкнулась и усяпала с напушки.
А Калуша волит калушатам:
- Не трямкайте бутявок, бутявки любые и зюмо-зюмо некузявые. От бутявок дудонятся.
А бутявка волит за напушкой:
- Калушата подудонились! Калушата подудонились! Зюмо некузявые! Пуськи бятые!
• Grammar is a system of rules for organizing coherent speech

• N. Chomsky claimed the existence of independent syntactic structures

in the human mind.

• Colorless green ideas furiously sleep.

• Nice-sounding text, nonsensically scientific

Non-verbal components of communication
• Facial expressions, gestures, phonation of interjections play a huge role in the process of
communication.
• Help to determine their place and the interlocutor - friend or foe
• Help to establish initial contact
• Can turn into a ritual
• Types of non-verbal communication:
• Prosody - accentuation-rhythmic design of speech - timbre, tempo, pitch and volume of the voice,
logical stress
• Mimicry - the reaction of the muscles of the face
• Haptics - the language of touch, tactile contacts
• Okulesika - the language of eyes, glances, visual contacts
• Chronemics - temporary behavior (punctuality)
• Gastika - the language of food (ritual dishes)
• Actonics - the language of actions, deeds
Paralinguistics
• Phonotic - tempo, timbre, volume, pauses
• Kinetic - posture, facial expressions, gestures
• Graphic - handwriting, additions to letters, signs
Extralinguistics
• Psychophysiological phenomena of a person - coughing, laughing,
crying

• Indicates the state of the communication participants

Sign Language
• 2 types of signs: sign language and finger speech
There is no difference in the
processes that provide the
brain with real events, their
consequences or memories of
them.
A gene that suffered significant changes - HARI- in which 118
differences were found between humans and chimpanzees. Between a
chimpanzee and a bird 2 differences
 neuroni specchio – mirror
neurons
• A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal
acts and when the animal observes the same action
performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the
behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself
acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in
human] and primate species,] and in birds.
• In humans, brain activity consistent with that of mirror
neurons has been found in the premotor cortex, the 
supplementary motor area, the 
primary somatosensory cortex, and the 
inferior parietal cortex.[7] The function of the mirror system in
humans is a subject of much speculation. Birds have been
shown to have imitative resonance behaviors and
neurological evidence suggests the presence of some form
of mirroring system.
• To date, no widely accepted neural or computational models
have been put forward to describe how mirror neuron
activity supports cognitive functions. The subject of mirror
neurons continues to generate intense debate. In 2014, 
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B published
a special issue entirely devoted to mirror neuron research
 Children language acquisition
Inner language Recorded language
N. Chomsky Other psychologists and biologists

Language is already in DNA. It only waits to be Child is a blank list and the language is recorded with
developed. experience.
• The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a claim from 
language acquisition research proposed by Noam Chomsky in
the 1960s.The LAD concept is a purported instinctive mental
capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce
language. It is a component of the nativist theory of language.
This theory asserts that humans are born with the instinct or
"innate facility" for acquiring language. The main argument
given in favor of the LAD was the argument from the 
poverty of the stimulus, which argues that unless children have
significant innate knowledge of grammar, they would not be
able to learn language as quickly as they do, given that they
never have access to negative evidence and rarely receive
direct instruction in their first language.
  LAD is tasked to select from an infinite number of grammars
the one which is correct for the language that is presented to an
individual, for example, a child