My Notes for Ch.3 Psychology of Language 5th edition David W. Carroll

My Notes

3 Psychological Mechanisms

Main Points 

• The act of comprehending and producing language are performed within the constraints of our information-processing system. This system consists of working memory and long-term memory. Long-term memory comprises episodic and semantic memory.
• A number of issues regarding language processing have been raised. These include whether we primarily use serial or parallel process, whether we tend to use top-down or bottom-up process, whether language processes are primarily automatic or controlled, and the extent to which language processing displays modularity.
• Children appear to process information very differently than adults, but studies of the development of the processing system suggest that most of the system is developmentally invariant.

Language processing is a joint product of linguistic principles and psychological mechanism.

The information-processing system

• The study of memory has a long history in psychology. The first systematic studies of memory were performed in the late 19th century(Ebbinghaus, 1885/1913).
  
  William James anticipated the contemporary distinction between working and long-term memory, which he called primary and secondary memory, in his landmark book, Principles of Psychology(James,1890/1950).
  
  Contemporary study of memory and information processing began in the late 1950s(Miller, 1956), and the fields of memory study and language study have exerted a synergistic effect on one another ever since.
  
  ✨   Working memory: the temporary storage of information that is being processed in any range of cognitive tasks(Baddeley, 1986, P. 34).
  
           e.g. think of trying to remember a phone number that is spoken to you as you dial it. We need to hold the digits somewhere for a short period of time, and that somewhere has been termed working memory.
  
  Working memory is measured in several ways. The most simple is a memory span test(or simple span test) in which participants are given a series of items(words, letters, numbers and so forth) and asked to recall the items in the order presented. Sometimes they are asked to recall them in backward order. A person's  memory span is the number of items that can be reliably recalled in the correct order.
  
  The Baddeley-Hitch Model: Baddeley and Hitch(1974) proposed a model of working memory, which has subsequently been revised a number of times. The model has three components, which are now called the central executive, the visuospatial sketchpad, and the phonological loop. The latter two systems are sometimes referred to as "slave system" to the central executive.
  
  The phonological loop: consists of the phonological store and the articulatory rehearsal system.
  
  The visuospatial sketchpad: maintains and manipulates visuospatial information.
  
  The central executive was initially conceived as a limited capacity pool of general processing resources.( the assumption is that we are limited in terms of the number of things we can do at once) It is assumed that the central executive exerts executive control--- that is, determines what activities the slave systems should be doing at any given time.
  
  ✨   Long-term memory: a memory structure that holds permanent knowledge.
• Tulving(1972) suggests that we should distinguish between two aspects of long-term memory: episodic memory(deal with personally experienced facts) and semantic memory(general facts).
  
  e.g. Semantic memory holds the information that horses have four legs and a tail, but the last time we went horseback riding is held in episodic memory.
  
  Semantic memory: our organized knowledge of words, concepts, symbols, and objects. It includes such broad classes of information as motor skills(typing, swimming, bicycling), and general knowledge(grammar, arithmetic), spatial knowledge(the typical layout of a house), and social skills.
  
  Episodic memory: retrieve information from a person's own perspective; retrieve personal facts from long-term memory.
  
  ✨   Relevance for language processing
  The processing function of working memory is used to organize the words into the constituents.
  
  Long-term memory plays several roles. Semantic memory contains information on the speech sounds and words that we retrieve during pattern recognition. And while this process is going on, we are also building up and episodic memory representation of the ongoing discourse. That is, once we complete the processing of a given sentence, we might extract the gist of it and store that in episodic memory.
  
  Summary:
• The general strategies by which the human mind encodes, stores and retrieves information can be described independently of language. Working memory provides a temporary repository of information that is relevant for ongoing cognitive tasks. It is divided into three components: the central executive, the phonological loop, and the visuospatial sketchpad. Long-term memory is divided into semantic memory and episodic memory. Semantic memory holds for general knowledge, whereas episodic memory stores our experience from our personal perspective.
  

Central issues in language processing 

✨    Serial and Parallel processing

• If a group of processes takes place one at a time(without overlapping), it is called serial processing. If two or more of the processes take place simultaneously, it is called parallel processing.

✨    Top-down (information at the higher levels may influence processing at the lower levels)and Bottom-up process(which proceeds from the lowest level to the highest level, all of the lower levels of processing operate without influence from the higher levels)

• The distinction between top-down and bottom-up processing is similar in some respects to the distinction between serial and parallel processes. In fact, a top-down process is often a parallel process, and a bottom-up process is usually serial.(not always)

✨   Automatic and controlled process

When discussing working memory, there is the notion that we may have a fixed processing capacity for handling information. This has been a central assumption of a variety of accounts of human cognitive functioning. It is an important concept when considering human performance on complex tasks, such as language processing. When the task is complex, one part of the task may draw substantial resources from this limited pool of resources,thereby leaving insufficient resources for other parts and resulting in overall impaired performance.

Tasks that draw substantially from this limited pool of resources are called controlled tasks, and the processes involved in these tasks are referred to as controlled process.(e.g. develop a phrase structure for a sentence)

Tasks that do not require substantial resources are called automatic tasks; process that do not require extensive capacity are referred to as automatic process.(e.g. recognize common words)

Bresnan(1978) reasons that the process of working our way through a syntactic structure places heavy burdens on working memory, which has a fixed capacity. By comparison, the process of lexical retrieval is far easier. Thus, if grammatical information was stored in the lexicon, it would simplify overall language processing.

✨   Modularity

Within cognitive psychology, the issue of modularity has two meanings.

First, it pertains to the degree of independence of the language-processing system;

Second, linguistic subsystems, such as semantics and syntax, operate independently rather than interactively.

The Development of The Processing System

All in all, children of 18 months or perhaps younger can recall information about specific events in their lives. Children acquire a great deal of language within the first few years of life, a time when each of these aspects of memory is developing.

Working memory appears to be closely related to the acquisition of new words.

Semantic memory develops within the first 2 years of life. Moreover, some rudimentary forms of object permanence develop much earlier, as young as 3 or 4 months.

Episodic memory is related to children's ability to understand language in a personal way. It is likely that the emergence of episodic memory is related to the child's acquisition of personal pronouns such as I, me, and mine. A strong episodic memory must be in place for children to develop the ability to tell personal stories.

Summary

It appears children make significant advances in working memory, semantic memory, and episodic memory during the preschool period. Semantic memory appears within the first 2 years. Episodic memory appears to take form between ages two to four. Working memory appears to be functional by age four.

All of these developments assist the acquisition of language, but these relationships are most clearly articulated for working memory. Children with better scores on working memory tasks have larger vocabularies.

My Notes for Ch. 2 Psychology of Language 5th edition David W. Carroll

My Notes

2 Linguistic Principles

Main Points

• Linguists have attempted to identify those grammatical features that appear in all languages. Four pervasive properties are duality of patterning, morphology, phrase structure, and linguistic productivity.
• American Sign Language shares these linguistic properties with spoken languages.  Sign language differs from spoken language in its iconicity and simultaneous structure.
• A language consists of an infinite set of sentences. A person who knows a language knows its grammar, which consists of a finite set of rules.
• Transformational grammar distinguishes between two levels of sentence structure: deep structures and surface structures.
• Several controversies exist within grammatical theory, including whether grammatical rules are psychologically real, the role of syntax in grammar, and whether knowledge of language is innate.

Basic Grammatical Concepts

Although languages differ in a number of ways, the differences are not random, and there are impressive underlying similarities.

✨  Duality of patterning: At one level, there is  a large number of meaningless elements that are combined to form the words. And another level at which there is a larger number of meaningful elements. All languages have a systematic set of rules for combining the former into the latter.

       some concepts to remember:

        phones---speech sounds, two sounds are different phones if they differ in a physically specifiable way.  e.g. aspirated and unaspirated [p]

        phonemes---differences in sound that make a contribution to meaning.

        distinctive features---a characteristic of a speech sound whose presence or absence distinguishes the sound from other sounds.

✨  Morphology: the way in which we use words is to use different forms of the same word to convey different shades of meaning.

        morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit in a language( free morphemes, bound morphemes)

✨   Phrase Structure: syntactic rules that specify the permissible sequences of constituents in a language. Each phrase- structure rule "rewrites" a constituent into one or more other constituents. By using a series of rules, we can derive a sentence from top to bottom(that is, from the largest to the smallest constituent).

Phrase- structure rules provide a good account of one type of sentence ambiguity called phrase- structure ambiguity.

✨   Linguistic Productivity: our ability to create and comprehend novel utterances (Linguistic Creativity).

          Recursion is closely related to language production for there is no limit to the number of times we can embed one sentence into another.

          Linguistic productivity distinguishes human language from animal communication systems, which consist of a small number of discrete signals.

Summary

Words are composed of phonemes, which, in turn, have distinctive features. In each instance, the smaller units are combined in a rule- governed manner to produce the larger units. Words consist of one or more units of meaning, or morphemes. The system of grammatical morphemes in a language provides speakers with a way of signaling subtle differences in meaning. Phrase- structure rules codify our intuitions about the groupings of words in a sentence. Some sentences are ambiguous and  may be grouped in more than one way. Linguistic productivity refers to the fact that there is no limit to the number of sentences in a language.(recursion)

Insights From Sign Language (has its own set of grammatical rules and is a language that is independent of English)

✨    Differences between signed and spoken language
       
           Arbitrariness-- no intrinsic relationship exist between the set of sounds and the object to which the sounds refer(spoken language)

          High degree of Iconicity--many of the signs resemble the objects or activities to which they refer(sign language)-----part iconic  part arbitrary

✨     Similarities between signed and spoken language

     

           Duality of Patterning/ Morphology/ Reciprocity/ Linguistic Productivity/ Phrase Structure

✨     Significance of Sign Language

          Researches that has benefited from the study of sign language:  Language production/ Language acquisition/ the link between language and the brain

Transformational Grammar( an influential theory of grammar formulated by Chomsky in the late 1950s--- inspired a considerable amount of psycholinguistic work in the 1960s and early 1970s)

✨      Language and Grammar

               From a linguistic perspective, a grammar is a description of a person's linguistic knowledge.

               Within linguistic theory, a language can be defined as an infinite set of 

well-formed sentences. A grammar is a formal device with a finite set of rules that generates the sentences in the languages.

               Evaluation of Grammars: Chomsky suggested three criteria( observational adequacy--- the grammar must specify what is and what is not an acceptable sequence in the language; descriptive adequacy--- the grammar must specify the relationships between various sequences in the language; explanatory adequacy---the ability to explain the role of linguistic universals in language acquisition.)

               Chomsky(1957) initially developed transformational grammar because of the descriptive inadequacy of a grammar based on phrase structure rules.

✨       Deep and Surface Structure(Transformational Grammar)    

         

                Deep structure is the underlying structure of a sentence that conveys the meaning of a sentence.

                Surface structure refers to the superficial arrangement of constituents and reflects the order in which the words are pronounced.

To fully capture these grammatical relationships, we need to posit a second level of structure, which in turn brings into play a new set of rules called transformational rules.

✨         Transformational Rules

                 Within transformational grammar, the entire derivation of a sentence is a two-part process. First, phrase- structure rules are used to generate the underlying tree structure we have referred to as the deep structure. Second, a sequence of transformational rules is applied to the deep structure and the intermediate structures( those between the deep and surface structure), ultimately generating the surface structure of sentence.


Summary

Transformational grammar assumes that sentences have a deep structure and a surface structure. The deep structure is derived by a series of phrase-structure rules, and the surface structure is derived from the deep structure by a series of transformational rules. Transformational grammar can explain certain aspects of language, such as deep-structure ambiguity, that cannot be accounted for entirely by phrase- structure rules.

Issues in Grammatical Theory

✨           Psychological Reality of Grammar(whether linguistic principles have psychological reality)

✨           The Centrality of Syntax(whether our grammatical knowledge is better described in structural or lexical terms)
✨           Is Language Innate?(whether our linguistic knowledge may be innate)

My Notes for Ch.1 Psychology of Language 5th edition David W. Carroll

My Notes

Part 1(General Issues) contains three chapters. 

Chapter 1 describes the scope of psycholinguistics along with a short history of the field.

Chapter 2 discusses basic grammatical concepts such as phonemes,distinctive features, and morphology. The chapter also includes the grammatical features of American Sign Language.

Chapter 3 focuses on basic concepts of information processing and how they may apply to language.

1 Introduction: Themes of Psycholinguistics

Becoming self-consciously aware of what is known unself-consciously carries a special brand of excitement.        -------- George A. Miller (1991, p. 2)

Main Points

• Psycholinguistics is the study of how individuals comprehend, produce, and acquire language.
• The study of psycholinguistics is part of the field of cognitive science. Cognitive science reflects the insights of psychology, linguistics, and, to a lesser extent, fields such as artificial intelligence, neurolinguistics, and philosophy.
• Psycholinguistics stresses the knowledge of language and the cognitive processes involved in ordinary language use.
• Psycholinguistics are also interested in the social rules involved in language use and the brain mechanism associated with language.
• Contemporary interest in psycholinguistics began in the 1950s, although important precursors existed in the 20th century.

An important consideration is that although language is intrinsically a social phenomenon, psychology is principally the study of individuals. 

The psychology of language deals with the mental processes that are involved in language use. Three sets of processes are of primary interest: language comprehension, language production, and language acquisition.

1⃣️   The Scope of Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics is part of the emerging field of study called cognitive science. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary venture that draws upon the insights of psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, neuroscientists, and philosophers to study the mind and mental process( Stillings et al. , 1995).

• Language processes and linguistic knowledge
  
  Psycholinguistic work consists of two questions:
  
  What knowledge of language is needed for us to use language? Tacit knowledge: the knowledge of how to perform various acts.
  Explicit knowledge: the knowledge of the processes or mechanisms used in these acts.
  
  What cognitive processes are involved in the ordinary use of language?

• Four Language Examples
  
  Garden Path Sentences: What happens when we comprehend a sentence? We get a hint of what is involved when the process breaks down. ( In the course of comprehending language we are making decisions---we are doing mental work.)
  
  Indirect Requests( It is necessary to recognize the social dimension of language.)
  
  Language in Aphasia( Although our primary focus is on language processes in normal individuals, we can learn a great deal about language by studying individuals with impaired language functioning.)
  
  Language in Children( language acquisition)
  

Summary
Psycholinguistics is part of an interdisciplinary field known as cognitive science. Two primary psycholinguistic questions are, What mental processes are involved in language use? and What linguistic knowledge is involved in language use? These questions reemerge in different forms in studied of adult language comprehension and production, the social use of language, language use in aphasia, and language in children.

2⃣️   The Historical Context

Blumenthal( 1987) has observed that the interdisciplinary field of psycholinguistics flourished twice: once around the turn of the last century, principally in Europe, and once in the middle of the 20th century, principally in the United States.  

In the early decades of the 20th century, linguists turned to psychologists for insights into how human beings use language. In the later period, psychologists turned to linguistics for insights into the nature of language. In between these two periods, behaviorism dominated both fields.

• Early Psycholinguistics
  
  From the development of the first psychological laboratory(1897)---the early 1900s
  
  major figure: Wilhelm Wundt (He believed that it was possible to investigate mental events such as sensations, feelings, and images by using procedures as rigorous as those used in the natural sciences. He also believed that the study of language provide important insights into the nature of the mind.
  
  One of Wundt's contributions to the psychology of language was developing a theory of language production. He regarded the sentence, not the word, as the primary unit of language and saw the production of speech as the transformation of a complete thought process into sequentially organized speech segments.
  
  Blumenthal(1970) refers to Wundt as the master psycholinguist.
  
  Some significant developments were also being made in measuring various language process.
  Huey----examined reading from the perspective of human perceptual abilities.(the eye-voice span; the tachistoscope)
• Behaviorism and Verbal Behavior
  
  In the first decades of the 20th century in the United States, there was mounting opposition to the focus on mental life as a goal for psychology.
  
  By the 1920s, behaviorism took over the mainstream of experimental psychology. Behaviorists favored the study of objective behavior, often in laboratory animals, as opposed to the study of mental processes.( the role of experience in shaping behavior, emphasis on the role of environmental contingencies)
  
  From the 1920s to the 1950s, psychologists expressed relatively little interest in language.( B. F. Skinner )
  
  Similar developments were occurring within linguistics. Linguistics of this period tended to emphasize behavioristic treatments of language, in which reference to mental states or processes was meticulously avoided.( Despite the inherent interconnections between the fields, psychology and linguistics "divorced" for a period of several decades.
  

3⃣️     Later Psycholinguistics
By the early 1950s, psychologists and linguists became interested in talking to one another.

The second period of interdisciplinary psycholinguistics really took hold in the late 1950s, beginning with the emergence of the linguistic Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is generally regarded as the most influential figure in 20th-century linguistics, and he also played a powerful role in how psychologists perceived language because he argued that the behaviorists' accounts of language were inadequate.( Chomsky, 1957, 1959).

The revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s emphasized the role of linguistic theory in psycholinguistic research and the role of innate mechanisms in language acquisition. These themes continue to be influential, but there are indications that psychological interest in linguistic theory has waned.

Reber(1987) points out the growing realization that the two fields were quite distinct in their methodologies.

• Rationalism: emphasize the role of innate factors in human behavior(emphasize the use of argument)----linguists
• Empiricism: stress the role of experience in behavior(favor the collection of data as a mean for evaluating hypotheses. -----psycholinguist

4⃣️      Current Directions

• early psycholinguistics primarily focused on syntax
  more recently   on phonology semantics pragmatics
• early            on language comprehension
  recently      on language production
  
• considerable interest in the brain mechanisms associated with language
• application of psycholinguistic principles that are useful to society
  

Summary

The history of psycholinguistics can be divided into two periods of interdisciplinary activity separated by several decades of behaviorism.

The first period was dominated by Wundt, who presented a cognitive view of language. The behaviorist position later held that verbal behavior can be explained in terms of environmental contingencies of reinforcement and punishment. This view was criticized by Chomsky, leading to a second wave of psycholinguistic activity. This period was characterized by an effort to incorporate linguistic theory in psychological research as well as by the view that innate linguistic mechanism are necessary to explain child language acquisition.

笔记 新编心理语言学 第二章 桂诗春

随笔记 第二章 语言的生物和生理基础

1 语言进化论

• 达尔文的《物种起源》（1859）发表不久，比较语言学家Schleicher就写了《达尔文学说与语言学》（1863），企图将进化论的学说应用到研究语言的起源和发展。但更有指导意义的是恩格斯的《劳动在猿到人转变过程中的作用》（1876）。在这篇文献中，恩格斯运用辩证唯物主义和历史唯物主义的基本原理来考察人类起源问题，而且提出一个超出达尔文进化论的命题：“劳动创造人本身。”（语言是从劳动中并和劳动一起产生出来的）
• 神经生理学家Smith（1985）认为语言和意识在人类进化史上一起产生，意识可以理解为一个按规则操纵以符合码为形式的信息的心理能力的发展。根据其推断，语言是在Mousterian文化的后期（约10万年前）开始产生。
  
  1.1 人类发音器官的专门化
  
• 人类的发音器官和其它动物的发音器官有不少相同之处，功能也大体一样。但人类的发音器官的主要特点是恩格斯所说的：“发出一个个清晰的音节。”这些有限的音节可以搭配成无数的声音组合，使语言成为人类独有的符号系统。（人类的发音器官是长期进化的结果，和劳动与直立分不开）
  
  1.2 人类语言能力的发展
  
• 成为人类的物种属性而被遗传下来的不单是发音器官，而且还有语言能力。关于语言能力是否为人类独有需从以下两个方面考虑：第一，看看儿童在没有任何语言输入的情况下，是否能够依靠本身天生的能力创造某种语言系统？第二，能否教一些大脑缺乏语言专门化功能的物种（如猿类）学会人类的语言？
  

2 语言能力的遗传性

• 环境决定论：语言能力完全是后天的，是环境作用的结果。（解释不了为什么和人类生活在同一世界的其它动物不能习得语言）
• 天生论：语言能力完全是天生的（解释不了为什么离开人群的儿童学不到语言）
• 相互作用论：小孩子生下来不一定具有某种语法／语音／语义的范畴和规则，但是他却具有某种组织经验的潜在能力，以发现、了解和产生符号，并用于交际。这种潜在能力是天生的，但只有在和环境的相互作用中才能得到发挥。
  

3 大脑和语言

• 美国人Edwin Smith在1862年曾经获得了一份古埃及人的文稿，上面提到大脑损伤的后果，这份纸卷的有些部分是关于公元前3000年的。它提到48个个案，其中一个个案说言语能力的丧失可能和头部外伤有关。这很可能是历史上第一次提到失语症。
• 古希腊Hippocratic学派的学者注意到脑部损伤会引起对侧瘫痪。
• 18c 差不多所有语言紊乱的现象都被人注意到了。
• 真正从临床解剖学的角度观察的是19c的法国人Broca。1863年的巴黎人类学会的第一次会议上宣布他的发现：一个大脑第3左额回受到损害的病人丧生了说话能力，因此大脑的这个区域（后成为布罗卡区，而这种病呗称为布罗卡失语症）应该就是“言语中枢”。（神经生理学和解剖学的发展证实了Broca的说法，而且揭示了更多的事实）
• 1874年，德国人Wernicke又发现了大脑后第3颞上回如果受到损害，得病的人不容易理解口语和一些书面语。这个区域也就叫做韦尼克区。
  
  从此失语症的研究吸引了许多医生、心理学家和生理学家的注意。但大家的出发点往往不一样，研究方面也不一样。靠观察失语症来研究言语的神经学很容易忽略心理功能和生理功能的关系，因此有科学家主张建立独立的言语神经心理学，简称神经心理学。
  
  神经语言学是脑科学、行为科学、临床科学的综合。现代的科学技术使得更准确的了解大脑的语言区: EEG, CAT, PET, MRI。CAT和MRI扫描可以提供大脑解剖的精细图像，PET扫描没那么细致，但可以显示人们在做各种作业时大脑的那些最活跃的部分。
  
  e.g.  1997年纽约的一家癌症研究中心的神经科学教授Joy Hirsch博士使用功能磁共振成相术fMRI来观察12个流利的双语使用者，6个是从小就学双语，而另六个是青少年时才学第二语言。每个受试都在fMRI扫描仪前使用第二语言无声地独白前一天发生的事情。实验者不让受试发出声音，因为一发音头部就会轻微活动，使图像模糊。图像显示两类受试不会因为习得年龄不同而在韦尼克区里呈现差异；但对布罗卡区的扫描却呈现另一种图景，青少年才学第二语言的受试的母语和第二语言在布罗卡内处于不同的位置。（即当他么用母语和用第二语言思维时牵动的是不同的区域。）
  
  Hirsch认为，这说明幼儿学话时使用了各种能力（包括听、视、接触和运动），而且这些能力都输入到像布罗卡区那样的硬件线路里。当布罗卡区里的细胞调节到适合一种或两种语言后，便稳定下来。所以幼儿同时学习两种语言时，这两种语言都交错地受制于同一区域。但到中学才开始学习另一种语言的青少年却必须在布罗卡区已经调节到适应母语的情况下去习得另一种语言的复杂的语音系统，所以就困难多了。但是管辖简单语义关系的韦尼克区却可以重叠。
  
  3.1 运动皮质
  
• 覆盖在大脑表面的是一层灰质，它是以数以百万计的、可接受和传送电脉冲的神经细胞组成。在这些大脑皮质中，有的皮质是人生下来以后就专司某种功能的，像运动皮质。运动皮质通过肌肉控制人体各部分的运动。器官越大就意味着控制该器官的运动皮质的比例越大。
  
  3.2 大脑的结构：左半球
  
• 动物的神经系统一般是两半相对称，但是人类的神经系统（包括其结构和功能）却出现两半不对称的现象。
• 大脑的左半球后部的布罗卡区和邻近的45区通常被人称为言语中枢。（因为对于使用右手和大部分使用左手的人来说，左半球都是专司语言功能的）。
  传统看法：布罗卡失语症导致言语产生的缺陷，而韦尼克失语症导致言语理解的缺陷。
  
  3.3 大脑的结构：右半球
  
• 大脑两半球是由一种叫做胼胝体的神经纤维束连结起来的。 
• 正常情况下，人们在了解和产生语言时是大脑左右两个半球互相协调。虽然左半球专管语言，但右半球也不是全无作用，只是程度上有所不同。
  
  3.4 两个半球间的功能定位
  略
  
  3.5 语言习得的临界期
  
• 根据Penfield和Milner等人的调查，青春期以前的儿童似乎有一种“转换机制”，如果他们左半球言语中枢受到损害，言语中枢就会转换到右半球，不过要从头再学话。（临界期）
• 对临界期的假设提出异议：Dennis和Whitaker（1978）回顾1968年至1977年有关早期头颅损伤导致失语症的临床报告，得出这样的结论：左半球是专司语言功能的，失语症患者的年龄越大，恢复语言能力就越感困难，这确实是事实。但是这不足以证明青春期就是语言习得的临界期，或是有什么“转换机制”。（4.5岁的儿童，如果他们的左半球受到损害，也会出现语言障碍。）
• Seliger提出一种所谓多种临界期的假说：各种语言能力各自有本身的临界期，它可以连接或重叠。
  
  关于大脑和语言的关系研究还在深入。用Slobin的话来归纳：人类的语言能力具有专门的神经基础；人类的语言能力在某种程度上说是一种遗传的潜能；人类的语言能力是按照某种生物发展的时间表趋向成熟的。

4 语言和智力

• 对待语言和智力的关系上，有几种相反观点：
  
  语言能力无非是智力的反映。智力的不断提高为语言发展铺平道路；
  
  人类智力是语言发展的结果。语言能力比近代人类的智力发展过程还要古老；
  
  以Lenneberg为代表的神经语言学家则提出另外观点：语言能力是相对独立于智力以外的一种生物发展。（理据：儿童习得语言时其智力尚不发达，而且习得语言的能力和智力商数之间没有明显的相互关系；缺乏语言能力不一定意味着智力低下；身体和大脑的重量比率问题）

5 大脑和认知

          5.1 认知的发展

• 人类                    符号性（不对称、新皮质）－－－－ 个体发育
  
  新哺乳动物         代表性（新皮质）－－－－－－－－
  旧哺乳动物         表征性（边缘系统）－－－－－－－ 系统发育
  爬虫                     感觉－肌动（次皮质）－－－－－－
  
  5.2 神经系统
  
  根据Sejnowski和Churchland(1989)的描述，从结构上看，人类大脑的神经系统由几个部分组成－－－分子、突触、神经元、网络、层面、拓扑图、系统。
  
  5.3 信息的神经表征
  
  神经元之间的联系是通过提高别的神经元的激活水平（兴奋）或降低其激活水平（抑制）进行的。神经元之间的交往可以同时进行，这种平行主义的概念导致了连接主义模型的诞生。
  
  5.4 连接主义模型
  
  心理语言学研究中的连接主义模型正是根据信息的神经表征特点而提出的。在分布式的连接主义模型里，基本处理单元和一个抽象的神经元相似。Rumelhart（1989）认为一个连接主义模型应包括7个部分：
• 一套处理单元；
• 激活状态；
  单元的输出；
• 连接的形式；
• 激活规则；
• 把连接形式作为经验函数而修改；
• 环境的表征。

My notes for Semantics second edition John I. Saeed

Notes taken From page 1-30 and 53-63

Ch. 1 Semantics in Linguistics

Semantics and Semiotics:

Semiotics:

• The process of creating and interpreting symbols, sometimes called signification, is far wider than language. Scholars like Ferdinand de Saussure(1974) have stressed that the study of linguistic meaning is a part of this general study of the use of sign systems, and this general study is called Semiotics.
• Semioticians investigate the types of relationship that may hold between a sign and the object it represents, or, in de Saussure's terminology, between a signifier and its signified.
• One basic distinction, due to C. S. Pierce, is between icon, index and symbols.
  
  Icon: similarity between a sign and the object it represents, as for example between a portrait and its real-life subject & a diagram of an engine and the real engine.
  Index: the sign is closely associated with its signified, often in a causal relationship; smoke is an index of fire.
  Symbol: a conventional link between the sign and its signified.(black clothes mourning)

Semantics: concentrate on linguistic meaning(language represents man's most sophisticated use of signs).

Three challenges in doing Semantics:

• circularity; 
• how to make sure that our definitions of a word's meaning are exact(the question of whether linguistic knowledge is different from general knowledge) ;
  linguistic knowledge: about the meaning of words
  general knowledge: about the way the world is
• what particular utterances mean in context.
  
  cope with the problem of circularity, one solution is to design a semantic metalanguage with which to describe the semantic units and rules of all languages. We use metalanguage here with its usual meaning in linguistics: the tool of description. An ideal metalanguage would be neutral with respect to any natural languages, i.e. would not  be unconsciously biased towards English, French, etc. Moreover it should satisfy scientific criteria of clarity, economy, consistency, etc.
  
  To set up a metalanguage might help too with the problem of relating semantic and encyclopaedic knowledge.
  
  In tackling the third problem, one traditional solution has been to assume a split in an expression's meaning between the local contextual effects and a context-free element of meaning, which we call conventional or literal meaning.
• Each of these strategies will be investigated in later chapters of this book: the creation of semantic metalanguage, the modelling of conceptual knowledge, the theory of literal language, and factoring out context into pragmatics.

Semantics in a Model of Grammar:

For many linguistics the aim of doing semantics is to set up a component of the grammar which will parallel other components like syntax or phonology.

What kind of module is semantics?

The answer varies from theory to theory. The real problem is that units at all linguistic levels serve as part of the general enterprise: to communicate meaning. This means that in at least one sense, meaning is a product of all linguistic levels. Changing one phoneme for another, one verb ending for another, or one word order for another will produce differences of meaning. This view leads some writers to believe that meaning cannot be identified as a separate level, autonomous from the study of other levels of grammar. A strong version of this view is associated with the theory known as cognitive grammar, advocated by linguistics such as Ronald Langacker.

Word meaning and sentence meaning:

We call the mental store of these words a lexicon, making an overt parallel with the list of words and meanings published as dictionaries. (lexicon: not static, continually learning and forgetting words)

Phrases and sentences also have meaning, but an important difference between word meaning and phrase and sentence meaning-----productivity.

CHOMSKY generative grammar  --- recursive in syntax

This insight has implications for semantic description. If a speaker can make up novel sentences and these sentences are understood, then they obey the semantic rules of the language. So the meanings of sentences cannot be listed in a lexicon like the meaning of words: they must be created by rules of combination too. Semanticists often describe this by saying that sentence meaning is compostitional. This term means that the meaning of an expression is determined by the meaning of its component parts and the way in which they are combined.

We see that meaning is in two places, so to speak, in a model of grammar: a more stable body of word meanings in the lexicon, and the limitless composed meanings of sentences.

Some important assumptions

Reference and sense:  One important point made by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure(1974), whose ideas have been so influential in the development of modern linguistics, is that the meaning of linguistic expressions derives from two sources: the language they are part of and the world they describe.

• The relationship by which language hooks onto the world is usually called reference.
• The semantic links between elements within the vocabulary system are an aspect of their sense, or meaning.

Each oval is a word, having its own capacity for reference, but each is also linked to other words in the same language, like a cell in a network. The meaning of a word derives both from what it can be used to refer to and from the way its semantic scope is defined by related words.

(to be continued...)

Utterance, sentences and propositions

The most concrete is utterance; an utterance is created by speaking(or writing) a piece of language.

Sentences are abstract grammatical elements obtained from utterances.

Proposition: a description of an event or situation which might be shared element in different sentences.

To sum up, utterances are real pieces of speech. By filtering out certain types of(especially phonetic) information we can get to abstract grammatical elements, sentences. By going on to filter out certain types of grammatical information, we get to propositions, which are descriptions of states of affairs and which some writers see as a basic element of sentence meaning.

Literal and non-literal meaning 

The basic distinction: distinguishing between instances where the speaker speaks in a neutral, factually accurate way, and instances where the speaker deliberately describes something in untrue or impossible terms in order to achieve special effects.

Non-literal uses of language are called figurative and are described by a host of rhetorical terms including metaphor, irony, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole and litotes.

Semantics and pragmatics

Morris:

syntax: the formal relation of signs to each other;
semantics: the relations of signs to which they denotes;
pragmatics: the relations of signs to their users and interpreters.

Carnap:

meaning described in relation to speakers and hearers  =  pragmatics
meaning abstracted away from users                                 =  semantics


Some semanticists would claim that there is some element of meaning common to all of these uses and that this common, non-situation-specific meaning is what semantics is concerned with. On the other hand, the range of uses a sentence can be put to, depending on context, would be the object of study for pragmatics.

One way of talking about this is to distinguish between sentence meaning(semantics) and speaker meaning(pragmatics).




Ch. 2 Meaning, Thought and Reality

In semantics the action of picking out or identifying with words is often called referring or denoting. The entity referred to is usually called the referent. For some writers, denote is used for the relationship between a linguistic expression and the world, while refer is used for the action of a speaker in picking out entities in the world.

e.g. If a say A sparrow flew into the  room, I am using the two noun phrases a sparrow and the room to refer to things in the world, while the nouns sparrow and room denote certain classes of items.

 In other words, referring is what speakers do,while denoting is a property of words.
Another difference which follows from these definitions is that denotation is a stable relationship in a language which is not dependent on any use of a word. Reference, on the other hand, is a moment-by-moment relationship: what entity somebody refers to by using the word sparrow depends on the context.

Two approaches in semantics:

Referential approach: when their basic premise is that we can give the meaning of words and sentences by showing how they relate to situations.

Representational approach: when their emphasis is on the way that our reports about reality are influenced by the conceptual structures conventionalized in our language.

Two approaches are focusing on different aspects of the same process: talking about the world. In referential theories, meaning derives from language being attached to, or grounded in, reality. In representational approaches meaning derives from language being a reflection of our conceptual structures.

Types of Reference

Referring and non-referring expressions: There are linguistic expressions which can never be used to refer, e.g. if, not. These words do of course contribute meaning to the sentences they occur in and thus help sentences denote, but they do not themselves identify entities in the world. We will say these are intrinsically non-referring items. By contrast, nouns is a referring expression since it is being used to identify an entity. So nouns are potentially referring expressions. The second use of the distinction referring/non-referring concerns potentially referring elements like nouns: it distinguishes between instances when speakers use them to refer and instances when they do not.

Constant versus variable reference: One difference among referring expressions becomes clear when we look at how they are used across a range of different utterances. Some expressions will have the same referent across a range of utterances(constant ~), others have their reference totally dependent on context(variable ~).

Referents and extensions: We use the term referent of an expression for the thing picked out by uttering the expression in a particular context. The term extension of an expression is the set of things which could possibly the referent of that expression. So the extension of the word toad is the set of all toads.

Names

Names are definite in that they carry the speaker's assumption that her audience can identify the referent.

Description theory: a name is taken as a label or shorthand for knowledge about the referent, or in the terminology of philosophers, for one or more definite descriptions. In this theory understanding a name and identifying the referent are both dependent on associating the name with the right description.

Causal theory: names are socially inherited, or borrowed. At some original point, or points, a name is given, let us say to a person, perhaps in a formal ceremony. The great advantage of this causal theory is that it recognizes that speakers may use names with very little knowledge of the referent.

The causal theory stresses the role of social knowledge in the use of names, the description theory emphasizes the role of identifying knowledge.

Nouns and noun phrases

Nouns and noun phrases can be used to refer: indefinite and definite NPs can operate like names to pick out an individual.

Reference as a theory of meaning

...to be continued....


Ch. 3 Word meaning

P. 53-71

In this chapter we turn to the study of word meaning, or lexical semantics.

The traditional descriptive aims of the study of word meaning, or lexical semantics:

to represent the meaning of each word in the language;

to show how the meanings of words in a language are interrelated.

Words and Grammatical Categories

It is clear that grammatical categories like noun, preposition etc., though defined in modern linguistics at the level of syntax and morphology, do reflect semantic differences: different categories of words must be given different semantic description. It seems that semantic links will tend to hold between members of the same group rather than across groups.

Words and lexical items

Words can be identified at the level of writing, where we are familiar with them being separated by white space, where we can call them orthographic words.

They can also be defined at the levels of phonology, where they are strings of sounds which may show internal structuring, which does not occur outside the word, and syntax, where the same semantic word can be represented by several grammatically distinct variants.

Bloomfield's definition about "word" : A word, then, is a free form which does not consist entirely of (two or more) lesser free forms; in brief, a word is a minimum free form.

Lyons(1968) 's idea for how to define words grammatically: the attachments between elements within a word will be firmer than the attachments between words themselves.

more details: https://prezi.com/u5xcbizr9x6i/definition-of-the-word-and-lexeme-and-its-relation-lexical/


Lexical Relations:

Homonymy: Homonoyms are unrelated senses of the same phonological word. Some authors distinguish between homographs, senses of the same written word, and homophones, senses of the same spoken word.

Polysemy: There is a traditional distinction made in lexicology between homonymy and polysemy. Both deal with multiple senses of the same phonological word, but polysemy is invoked if the senses are judged to be related.

• Polysemous senses are listed under the same lexical entry, while homonymous senses are given separate entries.

Synonymy: are different phonological words which have the same or very similar meanings.

Opposites(antonymy): are words which are opposite in meaning.

• complementary pairs(binary pairs): the negative of one implies the positive of the other.(dead, alive)
• gradable antonyms: where the positive of one term does not necessarily imply the negative of the other.(hot, cold)
• Reverses: where one term describes movement in one direction, and the other the same movement in the opposite direction(push/pull)
• Converses: a relation between two entities from alternative viewpoints, as in the pairs(employer/ employee)
• Taxonomic sisters: words which are at the same level in a taxonomy.(red, orange, yellow, green, blue)

Hyponymy: a relation of inclusion. A hyponym includes the meaning of a more general word. The more general term is called the superordinate or hypernym.

Meronymy: a part- whole relationship between lexical items.

Member-collection: the word for a unit and the usual word for a collection of the units.(tree/forest; book/library)

Portion-mass: the relation between a mass noun and the usual unit of measurement or division.(drop of liquid/ grain of sand)

My notes about Understanding Semantics(ch. 1) second edition Sebastian Löbner

Ch. 1 Meaning and semantics
Linguistic semantics is exclusively concerned with the meanings of linguistic expressions such as words, phrases, grammatical forms and sentences, but not with the meanings of actions or phenomena.

1.1 levels of meaning

Even if we restrict the study of meaning to words and sentences, the notion of meaning has to be further broken down into different levels at which we interpret words and sentences.

• Expression meaning: the meaning of words, phrases and sentences, taken out of any particular context constitute the level of meaning.
  
  *Expression is just a cover term for words, phrases and sentences. The term expression meaning covers in particular word meaning and sentence meaning. The determination of expression meaning requires an abstractionfrom the use of the expressions in concrete contexts.
  
  We may exactly know how to get from one place to another, yet be unable to tell the way to some else. We may be able to sing a song by heart, but unable to describe its melody. We are able to recognize tens of thousands of words when we hear them. But the knowledge that  enables us to do is unconscious. Uncovering the knowledge of the meanings of words and sentences and revealing its nature is the central objective of semantics.
  
  *The technical term for using an expression for something is reference.
  *The entity referred to by an expression is called its referent.
• Utterance meaning: It comes about when a sentence with its expression meaning is actually used in a concrete context and all references get fixed. When this happens, another central notion comes into play, the notion of truth. 
  *CoU(context of utterance) comprises the following aspects of the situation in which an utterance is produced:
  1⃣️ the speaker (or producer) of utterance
  2⃣️ the addressee(s)  (or recipient(s)) of the utterance
  3⃣️ the time at which the utterance is produced and/or received
  4⃣️ the place where the utterance is produced and/or received
  5⃣️ the facts given when the utterance is produced/or received
  
  Utterance meaning can be defined as the meaning that results from an expression being used and interpreted in a given CoU. Utterance meaning derives from expression meaning on the basis of the particulars provided by the CoU.
• Communicative meaning:
  
  *Neither the level of expression meaning nor that of utterance meaning is the final and crucial level of interpretation. In an actual exchange, our main concern inevitably is this : what does the speaker intend- in particular, what does the speaker want from me?
  
  *A theory that addresses this level of interpretation is Speech Act Theory, introduced in the 1950s by the philosopher John L. Austin and developed further by others, in particular John R. Searle. The central idea of speech act theory is that whenever we make an utterance in a verbal exchange we act on several levels.
  Locutionary act(defined as the act of saying an expression with a certain utterance meaning in the given CoU.
  Illocutionary act(a certain type of speech act: a statement, a question, a request, a promise, an offer, a refusal, a confirmation, a warming, etc.)
  The speech act level of interpretation will be referred to as communicative meaning.
• Three levels of meaning
  expression meaning: the meaning of a simple or complex expression taken in isolation.
  utterance meaning: the meaning of an expression when used in a given context of utterance resulting from fixing reference.
  communicative meaning: the meaning of an utterance as a communicative act in a given social setting.

1.2 Sentence Meaning and Compositionality

• Lexical meaning: In our mind, we host a huge lexicon where all words we know and their meaning are stored and at our disposition. Stored meanings are therefore called lexical meanings. Lexical meaning is also to be taken to subsume the meanings of complex words, whether semantically regular or irregular. This is in line with the dynamic view of the lexicon which sees it not just as a store of entries, but also as comprising components for the formation of new words and their meaning. The meaning of different word forms are not all stored in our lexicon. Rather the lexicon contains the meaning(or meanings) of only one form of the word. For a verb, this is a tenseless and aspectless active meaning, for a noun it is its singular meaning and for an adjective its positive meaning. The meanings of particular word forms are derived from the basic lexical meanings by general rules.
• Compositional meaning: We are usually able to understand the expression meaning of a sentence without any conscious effort. Nevertheless, this ability is based on complex cognitive process by which take place in our minds automatically and unconsciously. The process by which we calculate the meaning of a sentence is called composition, and the resulting meaning is known as compositional meaning. ( e.g. The early bird catches the worm.)
  
  *Words can also be used to create new words. This is called word formation, and its products complex words.
• The products of word formation need not all be stored in the lexicon and yet they can be as easily and straightforwardly understood as sentences. But some other complex words that carry irregular or special meanings have to  be stored in the lexicon in order to receive their proper interpretation.
• Grammatical meaning: the meaning of grammatical forms.
  
  *The meaning of a word in a particular form is the combination of its basic lexical meaning and the grammatical meaning of its form.
• 
  
  
  The meaning of complex expression is determined by semantic composition. This mechanism draws on three sources:
  
  the lexical meanings of the basic expressions(expressions with a lexical meaning)
  the grammatical forms of the basic expressions
  the syntactic structure of the complex expression
  
  semantic composition-----bottom-up process; it proceeds from the basic units to the complex ones. The lexical meanings of the smallest units serve as input for the rules of grammatical meaning, whose output is the input for the compositional rules.
• That complex expressions receive their meaning by the process of composition is the central idea underlying semantics. This is called the Principle of Compositionality. (Gottlob Frege)
• 
  
• *The meaning of a complex expression is determined by the lexical meanings of its components, their grammatical meanings and the syntactic structure of the whole.(The principle implies that the meaning of complex expressions are fully determined by the three resources mentioned, by the linguistic input alone. Therefor, this principle does not apply to utterance meaning and communicative meaning because at these levels non-linguistic context knowledge comes into play.)

1.3 Semantics: its scope and limits

One way of explaining what semantics is about is to say that it describes this part of our linguistic knowledge: the cognitive equipment that enables us to interpret regular linguistic expressions out of context, simply as linguistic forms.

• The scope of semantics
  
  A: explaining sentence meaning
  (lexical semantics, semantics of regular word formation, ------lexical semantics,
  semantics of grammatical forms, compositional sentence semantics------sentence semantics)
  
  B: Interface of expression meaning with other levels of interpretation
  It also concerns the links of sentence meaning to utterance meaning and communicative meaning.
  
  more precise definition about Semantics: the study of the meanings of linguistic expressions, either simple or complex, taken in isolation. It further accounts for the interfaces of expression meaning with utterance meaning and communicative meaning.
• Beyond Semantics
  Semantics ends where contextual knowledge comes in. Thus, utterance meaning and communicative meaning are beyond semantics; they fall into domain of pragmatics.
  People vary greatly in how much knowledge they have about certain things. Therefore, word meaning needs to be distinguished from general world knowledge.

9.10 新编心理语言学 桂诗春 2000 绪论 笔记

绪论随笔记

实验心理语言学（Experimental Psycholinguistics）---研究人们怎样理解和产生语言。

发展心理语言学（Developmental Psycholinguistics）---研究儿童怎样习得母语。

应用心理语言学（Applied Psycholinguistics）---研究心理语言学研究成果怎样应用于其它领域。

计算心理语言学（Computational Psycholinguistics）---研究怎样建立心理语言学的计算机模型。（通过计算机手段模拟语言的心理过程）

从心理语言学分化出的独立交叉学科---神经语言学（Neurolinguistics）---研究语言的生理和神经基础。

心理语言学强调观察语言使用的心理过程。（较多采用实验方法）

心理语言学的特点：

它是研究语言的习得和使用的心理过程。

这个过程是以认知为基础的。

它主要采用实验方法（包括心理测量的方法和统计方法）来进行研究；在一些领域（如语言习得）还需要采用自然观察法和语料库方法。

心理语言学研究语言运用的过程。（Chomsky提出的语言能力linguistic competence“人的大脑中形成的一种能够按照本族语的规则把声音和意义联系起来的能力”和语言运用linguistic performance“这种语言能力的实际应用”受心理等因素影响）

Miller（1973）指出，语言使用牵涉到五方面的知识。

与语言结构有关：语音、句法和词汇的知识；

另外两种知识与心理相关：概念知识（conceptual knowledge）即说话人必须对他所生活和谈论的世界有所了解；信念系统（systems of beliefs）说话人用以评估他所听到的东西。

语言使用所牵涉的知识并非在交际过程中临时产生，而是早储存于人的大脑里，供处理信息之用。（无时间性，隐含的）

言语行为（有时间性的，明示的）

语言处理的分层模型

Winograd（1983）所提供的关于人们在使用语言时怎样依赖知识的分层处理的模型。

语言输入的各个层面上的结构，首先是声音。语音的处理过程到所储存的知识里提取语言规则来处理语音，然后产生音素层面，等等，一直到最后产生表征结构。所“存储的知识”放在长时记忆里，而“过程”即短时记忆，即人的中央处理器。语言处理与人的记忆分不开；人的记忆里储存各种各样的知识，主要是陈述性知识和程序性知识两大类。研究语言使用的心理过程实际上时研究语言、记忆和认知三者的关系。

心理语言学的历史根源

• 哲学根源
  古希腊哲学家对语言的起源、词语和意义的关系、逻辑和语言的关系感兴趣，这些问题与哲学中的根本问题－－－知识的来源密切相关。
  
  以柏拉图为首的天生主义者认为语言是自然赋予的（与生俱来），和人类的规约无关，因此词语的声音和意义是完全对应的。
  
  和他们对立的是以亚里士多德为代表的经验主义者，他们认为词语的意义和声音之间并没有完全对应的关系，（举出同义词、同音词、语言随时间而变化来说明时间并非天衣无缝）。亚里士多德认为只有人类才有语言，而语言的意义是人为的。婴儿不能像成人说话，只有经过训练才能控制舌头，学会说话。（知识源于经验，并非天生）
  
  在罗马教会的控制下，中世纪的哲学家思想禁锢，占统治地位的看法是语言是上帝赐予的，凡人不能改变。这些语言随着时间推移发生变化，所以最简单的语言就是最古老的语言。
  
  欧洲文艺复兴后，人们思想又活跃起来。哲学两大阵营纷争重新登场；在语言和心理的关系问题上的争论在理性主义（rationalism）和心理实证主义（empiricism）之间展开。
  

• 心理学根源
  1879年德国心理学家Wundt在Leipzig大学建立世界上第一个心理学实验室，其基本出发点是像感觉、情感、意象那样的心理现象是可以用自然科学的研究方法来观察。他受经验主义影响至深，认为我们的知识来自感性的经验。一个人生下来一无所知，通过零星的感性经验，逐步建立联想，才积累起知识。（Wundt的实验心理学基本上以认知作为考察的对象。）在Wundt的年代，最流行的研究方法是内省的方法，它让被观察的对象系统地描写自己的经验。
  
  从1920-1950年，心理学对认知过程的研究基本是销声匿迹了，取而代之的是行为主义心理学。原因：内省心理学所使用的实验方法有较大的主观性，批评者越来越多；Wundt1920年去世后就没人出来捍卫它了；随着俄国Pavlov和美国的Thorndike对动物条件反射的研究，行为主义者认为言语行为和其它的行为一样，无非是对环境中的刺激做出的反应，只能靠外部观察来研究，内省方法是不可靠的。
  
  当行为主义在美洲大行其道时，在欧洲却兴起来一股对认知科学产生很大影响的思潮－－－即Wertheimer提出的格式塔（Gestalt）心理学。有人将其认为是心理语言学的始祖。
  
• 语言学根源
  受达尔文对于人类语言区别于其它低等动物的影响，生物学教授Schleicher把进化论的思想引入语言学，而后对历史比较语言学的兴起产生影响。
  
  Humboldt认为语言和思维不可分割，语言是心灵的全部，它是按照精神的规律发展，其学说对“新语法学派”的出生起了催化作用。
  
  新语法学派对Schleicher的天然主义和Humboldt的心理主义都不太满意，主张对语言作出精密的描写，考虑哲学、形式逻辑和语言的关系。但是他们也觉得语言的心理因素不容忽视，从新语法学派中脱颖而出的Saussure是现代语言学的开山鼻祖。
  
• 神经生理学根源
  从18世纪开始，语言和大脑的关系就成为哲学家和心理学家关注的问题。
  
  Broca通过临床病例证实大脑有一个管辖语言的区域。
  
  与神经生理学研究有密切关系的是对天生聋孩的观察。
  
  心理语言学历史发展
  
  早期研究
  
• 1787年 德国生物学家Tiedemann首次尝试记录一个儿童的语言发展
• 1877年 达尔文发表他对自己小孩学话和发育情况的观察，开创了进化论研究心理学的先河，促使发展心理学从心理学中分化出来（但达尔文感兴趣的是人类和其它动物的差异）
• 1882年 Preyer 首个把个体发展作为发展心理学研究中心的学者 
• 1907年 德国心理学家 C. Stern和W. Stern发表他们三个小孩学话的详尽实录。他们的《早期儿童心理学》是第一本关于儿童心理学的手册。
• 1939-1949 Leopold对说英、德两种语言的女孩的语言发展作详细的观察和记录。
• 1951年 我国著名语言学家赵元任发表自己对孙女（28个月）的学话过程的观察和研究。
  早期研究局限于观察儿童学话和智力发展的关系。（通过观察儿童学话了解其智力发展）这些研究受机械主义影响，把语言发展阶段看成不可逾越的鸿沟，因而忽略发展阶段内的变化以及发展阶段之间的衔接关系。
  
  初步发展
  心理语言学的建立有赖于语言学和心理学的结合。
• 20年代初期人类学家Boas曾展望过此前景；
• 30年代、40年代便陆续有人提出“心理的语言学”（Psychological linguistics）、“心理语言学”(psycholinguistics)、“语言心理学”（Psychology of language)；
• 50年代以后 “心理语言学”被广泛使用；
• 50年代以后，三股致力于心理语言学建设的力量：
  以学习理论为代表的心理学；
  以Bloomfield和Harris的分布主义研究方法为代表的结构主义语言学；
  Shannon和Weaver的信息论。
  
  重要的进展---1960-1970
  
• Chomsky师承Harris，但敢于另立旗帜。在语言学中批评Markov过程的模式；心理学中批评了行为主义。
• （50年代心理学家认为懂得心理学就知道语言是怎么回事。60年代的心理学家则相反，认为必须通过观察语言现象来了解人们的心理活动。）此时的心理学家认为刺激－反应论是缺乏心理学基础的，是一种机械主义的观点。
• Chomsky提出心灵主义的主张：
  语言理论应该解释人们对自己语言的隐含的知识，即语言能力，而不是去说明一些记录下来的话语语料的规则。
  语言知识并非“学到的”，而是遗传的；儿童的大脑里有一种天生的“语言习得机制”，靠这个机制而并非靠刺激和反应，来掌握语言结构的规则。
  语言模块论。
  转换生成语法塑造论心理语言学第一个10年的研究。（深层结构和表层结构对心理语言学实验的设计起了启迪作用）
  语言研究中引入形式主义的分析方法。
  
  70年代以后的心理语言学
  
• 随着实验心理语言学的开展，人们认识到转换生成语法的模型难以解释听话人和说话人在语言使用中的规则或表达式。于是有人主张用实验去探索符合实际的“心理模型”。
  70年代初期 交互作用模型
  70年代后期 非交互作用模型
  80年代 连接主义模型
• Piaget 主要研究儿童的思维和智力的发展 现代认知心理学的奠基人
• Vygotsky代表作《思维与语言》 在研究儿童智力和语言发展的基础上，提出了“内部言语”说，不但大大丰富了认知心理学，而且创建了前苏联心理语言学派。
  
  心理语言学的研究方法
  自然观察和实验方法
  
  自然观察：如日记方式的纪录；特点：不干预性、强调食物的型式性、直观性、旷日持久。
  自然观察和实验方法相辅相成，将两个的结果加以对比，就能由表及里，深入事物的本质，发现内部规律。
  纵向研究法：对一个对象或一组对象的发展进行追踪研究，每隔一段时期都进行观察和测量
  横向研究法：在同一时间内按类型把对象分组进行观察其某一方面的发展水平。