Language Processing - Unit 2
Applied linguistics
Language processing is the abstract processing that goes on in our mind before we
speak. It’s not language in the brain.
1. Psycholinguistics: “the use of language and speech as a window to the nature
and structure of the human mind” (Scovel, 1998: 4).
In psycholinguistics they give importance to speech errors because these provide
evidence of how words are organized in our brain so they help investigate how are
brain processes language.
Some subfields:
Language acquisition
Language production
Language attrition/loss
Language comprehension
1.1 The production of language demands the synthetic talents of an imaginary mental
chef, who selects the appropiate ingredients, weighs them carefully, and then stirs them
together into a creative new dish.
1.2 The comprehension of language, on the other hand, requires the analytic skills of
a cognitive chemist, who takes whatever is served up and meticulously breaks it down
into its individual compounds and elements in order to understand it completely.
1.3 Classification of speech errors:
Selection errors
Semantic errors
Do you hae any artichokes? I’m sorry, I mean aubergines.
Malapropisms
...pine-apple of politeness.
Blends
It didn’t bother me in the sleast.
Assemblage errors
Transpositions
Don’t buy a car with its tail in the engine.
Anticipations
...of Peester Ustinov.
Repetitions
Chomsky and Challe.
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2. Oral production process (Speech production)
1. Conceptualization
2. Formulation: you access the mental lexicon.
3. Articulation:
4. Comprehension: after you hear it.
5. Monitoring: checking (if there’s something wrong, you would change it).
Mental lexicon are the words stored in our brain. The mental lexicon specifies how a
word is spelled, how it is pronounced, its part of speech, and what it means.
Lexical access is the process you go through when you access the target word and at
the same time there are other activated words.
Word recognition: a selection of one particular word. Example: you try to access
“microwave”, and in the process, other words get activated like “dishwasher, washing
machine”. Inhibition would be when you eliminate those other words activated and you
find the target form.
3. Mental Lexicon and how we store words
Storing words
Vocabulary size: the number of words someone knows. We know through a test.
Word associations: the connections established between words. Connection
because of meaning or form or experience, etc.
Content and function words: content words provide semantic value and function
word provide meaning depending on the context.
An adult may have an active vocabulary of approximately 20.000 words.
An adult’s passive vocabulary may contain between 50.000 and 150.000 words.
The chimpanzees Washoe and Nim, and the gorilla Koko learned 200 and 400 signs,
respectively.
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A child may learn his/her first 50 words (in production) and 200 (in comprehension)
before the age of 20 months.
During the third-year active vocabulary rockets over 3.000 words.
Before the age of 6, a child has a passive vocabulary of some 14.000 words.
Multi-word items: words that frequently co-occur together. (In front of, inside out, the
day after tomorrow...).
Collocation: a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be
expected by chance.
We can have lexical access through meaning and form. It could be from meaning to
form or the other way around. Form would be spelling, pronunciation and
morphological information. Lemma would be meaning, word class and syntactic
information. For example, the word “afraid”:
Form:
-Spelling: F-O-R-M
-Pronunciation; (written in phonetics)
-Morphological information: adjective.
Lemma:
-Meaning: to be scared.
-Word class: adjective.
-Syntactic information: (subject + verb + afraid + of + object)
4. Levelt’s Model (Levelt, 1989; 1999)
Five principal components:
1. Conceptualizer. In your mind. Discourse model, situation knowledge,
encyclopedia (being polite...), also if it is a request, congratulating someone, etc.
The argument structure, passive, active...
-Open the window (order).
-Could you open the window? (question).
-It’s very warm in here (statement).
2. Formulator. Internal speech. Where access to the mental lexicon takes place.
3. Articulator. All the speech organs start working.
4. Acoustic-phonetic processor (audition)
5. Parser (speech comprehension system)
We are constantly monitoring our performance.
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Three knowledge stores:
1. Discourse models and situational and encyclopedic knowledge.
2. Lexicon.
3. Syllabary (containing gestural scores or automatized movements to produce
syllables).
Possible organizations of the lexicon ADD PPT SCREENSHOT
Compound: same concept, different lexical words. For bilingual people.
Coordinate: one concept for each lexical word.
Subordinate: same concept, one word in one language and then the other word.
For the people that have a dominant language.
Lexical representation in bilinguals
Cognate status
Word frequency
Amount of practice
L2 learning context
Different methods within class also make a difference
Language proficiency
Individual variation
Lexical processing in bilinguals
- Selective access: when bilinguals are speaking Language A, they only access words in
Catalan. (Input processed by the appropiate language system). Evidence:
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Few interlingual errors
Higher reaction times when there are language switches
“Language-switching device”
Under this model, bilinguals have:
1. Two separate language subsystems
2. These systems are accessed/activated “selectively”, or serially and not
simultaneously.
- Non-selective-access: they’re speaking Language A, but accessing words in the other
languages they know. (Both language systems are accessed in production and
comprehension). Evidence:
Homophone/homograph effect,
Control on the access: the two languages are kept separate but they have different
degrees of activation. Resources are necessary to control the activation levels
(beginners have fewer resources and more interference occurs).
Monitoring L2
We not only communicate with other, but also with ourselves. We monitor our
production also in our L2.
What is the difference between native speakers and non-proficient language learners in
terms of monitoring?
Sources of errors for L2 speakers:
- Lack of knowledge.
- Lack of attention resources (focusing on meaning and not forms)
- Focusing on fluency rather than accuracy.
Access can be selected or not.
Homophones and homographs.
Cognates.
Lack of fluency can be shown in the repetition of words, use of refillers...
Monitoring L1 in monolinguals: it happens after conceptualizing the message.
Monitoring L2: it’s more challenging. Why? Sources of errors: check ppt.
What are L2 declarative rules?
How to use the language.
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Native languages happen automatically.
2. Conceptualization: what language we choose to speak in.
3. How does lexical encoding works?
First, we have the language, but lemmas from both L1 and L2 are activated and
complete.
4. Why is syntactic encoding lexically driven?
Because in the words we know there is already syntactic information.
Monitoring L1: the process is more automatic.
Monitoring L2: we need more resources.
Code-switching happens when there’s lack of knowledge or we select the wrong form.
9. Sometimes you’re so fluent you forget the declarative rules...
