Language in Mind: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics

2022

Cognitive Linguistics is the most swiftly growing school in modern linguistics. Theorists and practitioners in this discipline of linguistics work collaboratively to create a scientific, objectively verifiable approach to the study of language, integrating the theories and applications of general linguistics, philosophy, neurosciences and computer sciences. The cognitive approach to the study of language were originally grounded in philosophical thinking about how the brain functions vis-à-vis language processing and language learning, but more recent work highlights the significance of accumulating evidence from a wide-ranging empirical and methodological data base. The Cognitive Linguistics Reader encompasses significant writings by eminent scholars in the fields of cognitive linguistics accumulated over the last four decades, including both the classic seminal works and contemporary reflections and additions of cognitive linguistics to the different fields of linguistics. The essays and articles-selected to characterize a full-fledged range, scope and diversity of the Cognitive Linguistics sciences and applications-are clustered by theme into sections with each section discretely presented. The book opens with a comprehensive summary of Cognitive Linguistics intended for the beginner readership and closes with thorough additional readings to guide the reader through the thriving literature of this field. The Cognitive Linguistics Reader is both a perfect overview introducing the full gamut of Cognitive Linguistics and a complete, integrated reference book, bringing together the most significant work in the different fields of linguistics and other related sub-fields such as language acquisition and language pedagogy.

Cognitive linguistics began as an approach to the study of language, but it now has implications and applications far beyond language in any traditional sense of the word. It has its origins in the 1980s as a conscious reaction to Chomskyan linguistics, with its emphasis on formalistic syntactic analysis and its underlying assumption that language is independent from other forms of cognition. Increasingly, evidence was beginning to show that language is learned and processed much in the same way as other types of information about the world, and that the same cognitive processes are involved in language as are involved in other forms of thinking. For example, in our everyday lives, we look at things from different angles, we get up close to them or further away and see them from different vantage points and with different levels of granularity; we assess the relative features of our environment and decide which are important and need to be attended to and which are less important and need to be backgrounded; we lump information together, perceive and create patterns in our environment, and look for these patterns in new environments when we encounter them. As we will see in this volume, all of these processes are at work in language too.

2006

This chapter addresses the dialectic relation between E (= external) language and I (= internal) language. On the one hand, E-language is the product of the I-language of individual speakers; at the same time, the I-language of individual speakers is the product of their exposure to E-language. Given this relation, it is argued that certain features of E-language need to be incorporated into, and form an essential part of Ilanguage: the frequency of occurrence of its various items, their collocations and co-occurrence patterns, their contextual situatedness, and the ubiquity of the idiomatic and the formulaic. I use the metaphor of the ‘mental corpus’ as a way of characterizing the nature of what it is that speakers of a language have learned and what they access in language performance. The approach is contrasted with what is perhaps the dominant view of I-language, which seeks to compartmentalize linguistic knowledge into the lexicon and a set of rules for combining items from the lexicon.

g For my mother, Mary M. Carroll, and in memory of my father, Patrick E. Carroll DAVID W. CARROLL received a B.A. in psychology and philosophy from the University of California at Davis (1972) and an M.A. (1973) and Ph.D. (1976) in experimental and developmental psychology from Michigan State University. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Superior since 1976. He is currently a Professor of Psychology and previously served as chair of the psychology program. Dr. Carroll teaches courses in introductory psychology, psychology of language, cognitive psychology, and child development, and he conducts research on discourse comprehension, critical thinking, and the teaching of psychology. He is a

Exploring Language and Linguistics

Exploring Language and Linguistics introduces the key concepts of linguistics and the application of these concepts to real-world settings. The first eight chapters cover the standard topics of introduction to linguistics courses, while subsequent chapters introduce students to applied topics such as media discourse, literary linguistics and psycholinguistics. Each chapter has been written by a subject expert and experienced teacher, ensuring that the text is both up-to-date and clearly presented. Numerous learning features provide extensive student support: exercises allow students to review their understanding of key topics; summaries encourage students to reflect on the main points of each chapter; figures, photos, tables and charts clarify complex topics; and annotated suggestions for further reading point students to resources for self-study. A companion website, with 170 self-test questions, suggested group exercises, audio files and links to additional web resources, completes the learning package.

Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching, 2023

JLLT Volume 14 (2023) Issue 1 https://www.journaloflinguisticsandlanguageteaching.com/published-issues/volume-14-2023-issue-1 edited by Thomas Tinnefeld I. Articles Gerald Delahunty (Fort Collins (CO), USA): Words, Pictures, and Arguments: A Relevance-Theoretic Synthesis Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching 14 (1), 11-22 Abstract: Whether visual representation can function in arguments is a controversial issue. Those who claim they cannot, claim that only propositions may function thus and that as visuals cannot represent propositions, they cannot function in arguments. The current paper, invoking recent developments in Relevance Theory, demonstrates that visuals, specifically photographs, can represent propositions and can therefore function as and in arguments. The paper demonstrates that visuals also communicate more than propositions in that they provide evidence for a range of ‘impressions’ that support a ‘credal attitude’ toward the document in which they occur. Liam D. Wilson (Hong Kong S.A.R.): Key Stage 3 ELT Coursebook Speech Acts Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching 14 (1), 35-57 Abstract: The area of pragmatics is an important aspect of the languages that we use in our everyday lives. Speech acts are central to this, and they are often initially presented to language learners in the coursebooks (or textbooks) they read and use during their schooling. This investigation analysed which speech acts were targeted for instruction in junior secondary 3 English language coursebooks used in Hong Kong as learners complete Key Stage 3. The pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic information presented in these coursebooks was also examined. It was found that certain speech acts (such as advice) were featured far more frequently than others (such as requests). There is also potential for improvement for future coursebooks when it comes to the pragmalinguistic (such as presenting speech acts as part of model dialogues) and sociopragmatic information (such as presenting speech acts being used in situations involving power distance or level of imposition). Therefore, this research contributes valuable findings regarding the speech acts in ELT coursebooks to the field of second language pragmatics. Esa M. Penttinen (Helsinki, Finland) & Heiner Böttger (Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany): Cross-Linguistic Influences of Learning German in Finnish and German Upper Secondary Schools Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching 14 (1), 59-77 Abstract: The aim of this study is to find out what importance upper secondary school learners of German attach to the cross-linguistic influence (CLI) regarding specific aspects of German language learning in Finland and Germany. Cross-linguistic learning gives learners additional skills to learn and understand structures and words in their mother tongue, a second language or a foreign language. The Finnish students (n=100) participating in our survey spoke Finnish as their mother tongue and studied German as a foreign language. German students spoke German either as their mother tongue (n=40) or as a second language (n=60), but they studied German as a native language. The survey data consisted of students' answers to one identical question that they were asked in the school years 2017-2020: 'How does the knowledge of the languages studied at school (Swedish, English, French, Spanish, Latin – cross-linguistic learning) affect their learning of German?' Our research methods were both quantitative and qualitative. The main results showed that the positive transfer on learning German was based on the perceived (objective) similarity of languages while the negative transfer was based on assumed (subjective) similarities which were in conflict with actual (objective) differences in German language learning processes and experiences of language learning. Skills in other languages contributed to learning German, but they also interacted positively and negatively with each other's learning. Learning to learn was found to be a unifying factor in language learning. Christine Ericsdotter Nordgren & Jorunn Nilsson (Stockholm, Sweden): Meeting each other or Meeting Learning Goals –Student and Teacher Values in an Intercultural Tandem Exchange Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching 14 (1), 79-105 Abstract: In this paper, the findings from a qualitative analysis of student and teacher interviews following an online Japanese-Swedish tandem exchange in 2020 will be discussed. The main aim was to explore what students and teachers had valued in the exchange and to connect these values to the theoretical principles of reciprocity and autonomy in the tandem learning model (Little & Brammerts 1996). The results show that students valued reciprocal aspects, focusing on personal peer-to-peer experiences and the opportunity for natural language use, while teachers valued linguistic development, and seemed to implicitly assume a high degree of autonomy to be in place from the start, rather than it being developed or expanded underway. The findings are viewed in the light of the students’ rather different cultural-educational frames and add to building a more global perspective on tandem exchange, which has hitherto been dominated by data from European and American contexts (Lewis & O’Dowd 2016). Philip Oghenesuowho Ekiugbo (Aba, Nigeria) & Cecilia Amaoge Eme (Awka, Nigeria): Urhobo-English Loanwords Coda Adaptation: A Constraint-Based Account Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching 14 (1), 107-120 (PDF) Abstract: This study examines how codas of Urhobo-English loanwords are adapted and shows that the strategies adopted in repairing loanword coda in Urhobo are driven by syllabification constraints and universal conventions. Syllabification conditions in languages that forbid filled coda will require that all the consonant sounds in a phonological word that are to be found in the phonetic string are parsed as onsets. Assuming this is true, it has implications for loanword adaptation. Urhobo exclusively permits the open syllable type. Implicitly, all the coda elements of loanwords are likely to be licensed as onsets, which may result in a possible ‘illicit’ onset cluster given the onset condition requirement of the language. Accordingly, this study examines the attested patterns of adaptation of English coda in Urhobo loanwords and their motivations as well as implications. The discussion is built around the theory of constraints and repair strategies. II. Book Review Bernd Klewitz (Osnabrück, Germany): Inez De Florio: From Assessment to Feedback. Applications in the Second / Foreign Language Classroom. New York et al.: Cambridge University Press, 2023 (X + 267 pages) (ISBN 978-1-109-21893-1) Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching 14 (1), 123-128