Chapter 6 language and Cognition (新版)

Chapter Six Language and Cognition

6.1 What is Cognition? 什么是认知？

Mental processes of an individual, information processingMental process or faculty of knowing, including awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.2

Three approaches to the study of language and cognition: The formal approach: addresses the structural patterns, including the study of morphological, syntactic, and lexical structure. The psychological approach: looks at language from the perspective of general cognitive systems ranging from perception, memory, attention to reasoning. PSYCHOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS 心 理语言学 The conceptual approach: addresses how language structures (processes & patterns) conceptual content. COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS 认知语言 学3

6.2 What Is Psycholinguistics?

Psychological aspects of language Psychological states and mental activity with the use of language Language acquisition, language production & comprehension The relationship between language and thought

Related fields

Structural linguistics Cognitive psychology Anthropology Neurosciences

Six subjects of research

Language acquisition (L1 / L2)

Language comprehensionLanguage production

Language disordersLanguage and Thought Neurocognition

6.2.1 Language AcquisitionLanguage acquisition: one of the central topics in psycholinguistics All normal humans speak, no nonhuman animal does. Children’s acquisition of language has received much attention. Scholars kept diaries of children’s speech for their research data. 7

Holophrastic stage (from two months to a year)

Language’s sound patterns Phonetic distinctions in parents’ language. One-word stage: objects, actions, motions, routines.

Two-word stage: around 18 monthsChild utterance Mature speakerWant cookie More milk Joe see I want a cookie I want some more milk I (Joe) see you

PurposeRequest Request Informing

My cupMommy chair

This is my cupThis chair belongs to M

WarningWarning

Big boyRed car That car

I am a big boyThat car is red That is a car

BraggingNaming Naming9

Child utterance Mature speakerNo sleep Not tired Where doll? Truck table I don’t want to go to sleep I am not tired Where is the doll? The truck is on the table

PurposeRefusal Refusal Question Informing

Daddy runJoe push

Daddy is runningI (Joe) pushed (the cat)

InformingInforming

Push catGive candy

I pushed the carGive me the candy

InformingRequest10

Three-word-utterance stage

Give doggie paper. Put truck window. Tractor go floor.

Fluent grammatical conversation stage

Embed one constituent inside another:

Give doggie paper. Give big doggie paper.

Use more function words: missing function words and inflection in the beginning but good use (90%) by the age of 3, with a full range of sentence types. All parts of a langua

ge are acquired before the child turns four.12

6.2.2 Language comprehension

Mental lexicon: information about the properties of words, retrievable when understanding language

For example, we may use morphological rules to decompose a complex word like rewritable the first few times we encounter it and after several exposures we may store and access it as a unit or word. It means that frequency of exposure determines our ability to recall stored instances.13

Connectionism: readers use the same system of links between spelling units and sound units to generate the pronunciations of written words like tove and to access the pronunciations of familiar words like stove, or words that are exceptions to these patterns, like love. Similarity and frequency play important roles in processing and comprehending language, with the novel items being processed based on their similarity to the known ones.14

Word recognition

An initial step in understanding any message How do we go about recognizing words ? As soon as people hear speech, they start narrowing down the possible words that they may be hearing. A word is identified as soon as there is only one possibility left. speak

Cohort theory:

Marslen-Wilson & Welsh (1978) The first few phonemes of a spoken word activate a set of word candidates that are consistent with the input.

This account is referred to as the COHORT THEORY(集群理论) and hypothesizes that auditory word recognition begins with the formation of a group of words at the perception of the initial sound and proceeds sound by sound with the cohort of words decreasing as more sounds are perceived.