HISTORY OF PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
source: J.F.
Kess(1992)
Any or
every discipline has a history behind its development and the stages of
development actually entail the contributions of the grcat minds that have
shaped the discipline and in this regard Psycholinguistics or Neurolinguistics
is no exception.
The first such name that must be taken with
all duc rcspcct is that of Morris 1938).
He is the first to study the interrelationship between the signs and
symbols as well as language and thought.
What is
known as his logical positivistic division of the study of signs and symbols
can be listed as the following fields of activity :
·
Syntactic the relationship of
signs to signs
·
Semantic the relationship of
signs to their meanings
·
Pragmatic the relationship of
signs to the people who use them
Some
thirty years later, Miller(1964) also used this logico philosophical frame of
reference in order to explain a linguistic based approach to psycholinguistics.
He
opined that such a classification of the field into problems of structure, of comprehension of a collaboration of
relevant disciplines such as linguistics,
psychology and philosophy was very much needed in the present time.
1. Syntax or problems of structure:
at the lowest level, it is
necessary to understand the syntactic structure of a language.
2. Semantics or problems of comprehension after this level, it becomes possible to understand its
semantic content.
3. Pragmatics or problems of belief:
once both structural analysis and semantic comprehension are
achieved, an understanding of pragmatic
acceptance or rejection, and belief or
disbelief is possible.
Miller
thought that this division would correspond roughly to the order in which the
study of language has progressed.
This
seemed true at that time and it seems quite appealing even in modern times too
but not in the way Miller had envisioned it.
It
is, however, still true,
as he suggested, that syntactic
is the best known, semantics is next
best known and pragmatics is the least known activities with regard to the
processing of the language by the human mind.
It might
be true that Millcr's classification of the ways language is processed by the
mind does not meet the standard of modern research in the field, however,
at the time when he made this division,
the three fields could be allocated between the disciplines as follows:
1. Psychology was traditionally interested in pragmatics the
psychologists were trying to understand the ways in which human beings
acquire, understand and exploit the
linguistic system.
2. Semantics was traditionally interested in philosophy and later in
the anthropology.
3. Syntax was traditionally interested in linguistics, with its analysis of the formal relationship
of signs to one another.
Miller
was trying to attempt to demonstrate the importance of theoretical insights
that were derived from linguistics to psycholinguistics. He, therefore,
must be given the credit for his effort.
However, things have changed a lot in modern
times, as we do not seem to make
distinction between the theories of language and the theories of language
users.
Also we
do not see the fields neatly broken into linguistics and psychology, where linguists are just doing syntactic
analysis and psychologists describing how human acquire and use that system.
Changes
have also occurred in the very definitions of what syntax, semantics and pragmatics and these changes
have reflected in the interest of the researchers in these fields.
Psychologists
are more aware of problems of the structure and the meaning of the sentences in
their research plans and linguists are well alert about the users and acquirers
of language in constructing their theories of language.
However, Millcr's comments are best understood in the
context of the Linguistic Period of psycholinguistics.
His
comments arrested the attention of the psychologists that they must pay
attention to the structure of the language at the time of making the theories
of language users and they must answer the question as to how the users deal
with syntactic and semantic aspects of language, with the realities of structures and meaning
derived from the language itself.
Since
many researchers take these things for granted and new signposts have been
erected in the field giving directions to where we should go and why, it is important to hold on for a second to
see how we have come up to this stage and therefore we must examine the
historical development of the field first.
Periods of Development in Psycholinguistics
Names
that are again important:
Wilhelm
Wundt brought psycholinguistics out of Romanticist evaluation of language and
was keen to show that language could be explained on the basis of psychological
principles Leonard Bloomfield- known as prototypical structuralist attempted
in(1914) to pay careful homage to
Wundtian psychology.
Noam
Chomsky started the enterprise of"TG-Grammar' and proposed the'innatencss principlc' which helped the psycholinguists to achieve a
new dimension altogether.
Finally, updating Maclay's useful(1973) classification of developmental steps in
modern psycholinguistics, we can trace
the field's progression in four major periods:
1. Formative period
2. Linguistic Period
3. Cognitive Period
4. Cognitive Science Period or Psycholinguistics theory or
Psychological Reality
Formative
period: The formative period in
psycholinguistics is known for its amazing symmetrical relationship that it
started between linguistics and psycholinguistics.
This is
so because researchers in both the fields were committed to an operationalist
philosophy: this operationalist could be
understood with structuralism being the prevailing paradigm in linguistics and
behaviorism dominating psychology.
An
operationalist approach in philosophy of science requires the researchers to
construct any theoretical claim on the basis of observable data and by using a
set of verifiable operations which are highly explicit or self
explanatory.
This is
what structuralist in linguistics were doing and trying to define the
linguistic units like phoneme and morpheme in terms of operational procedures.
For
example, linguists used the concepts
like minimal pair or"complementary distribution' to define a given phoneme.
These
operational procedures were called'discovery procedures' and were used in interviewing language
consultants in field-work to discover the structure of an unknown or even
familiar language.
Similar
emphasis to the observable data was given by the behaviorists in
psychology.
It was
demanded that efforts should be put to make the theoretical claim valid by
ensuring the elaboration of operational methods.
As only
this could guarantee that the explanatory device adopted to analyze the data
was based on real world experience or situation.
Behaviorist
methodology thus started giving emphasis on rigorous experimental design and
statistical analysis of the data.
It must
be noted that the emphasis on good experimental design and statistical analysis
of the resultant data continued to be the hallmark of mainstream psychology
before any psychological investigation could be carried out.
And
method dominated the discipline regardless of the paradigm that was adopted for
the investigation or study.
There
was a third partner that is being reported to be the part of Formative period
and it is known as"Information theory.
This
theory was derived from communication engineering and it served largely as a
source of ideas and models.
For
example, Shannon and Weaver(1949) who
worked as communication engineers with Bell Telephone, defined a communication' unit as follows:
Source
Transmitter/encoder-> Channel-> Receiver/decoder
Destination
The channel might be subject to interference or'noise' and this was a prime concern for
communications engineers at that time.
So, the emphasis was put on decoder and encoder
on opposite ends of the channel.
It was
also ensured that attention must be put to the possible interference that
channel might be encountered with.
Information
theory and by extension,
psycholinguistics, made use of
this mechanical metaphor for language processing for a brief period of time in
the 1950s.
As an
example how psycholinguistics made use of this system of ‘communicating
units' for language where encoding and
comprehending/decoding messages took place can be understood from Osgood and
Scheok (1954) comment that states ‘..psycholinguistics
deals directly with the processes of encoding and decoding as they relate
states (stages) of messages to the
states (stages) of communicators'.
There
seems to be some disagreement amongst the scholars as to who did what in
psycholinguistics. However, it is very much evident that some kind of
division of labor did exist between the two interrelated fields.
The
linguists were quite busy in analyzing the states stages of message in their
area of research inquiry and the psychologists took interest in the states of
communicators.
The
process of encoding and decoding remained in the hands of Information theory
and the interest of communication engineers got into the realm of psychology
because of the natural affinity that it had with behaviorism.
Linguistic
Period: The advent of TG-Grammar in
linguistics has had its own effects in the theoretical domination in
psycholinguistics research during 1960 to 1970 (even later).
Chomsky's
criticism of behaviorism came to dictate the shape of psycholinguistic
research.
Chomsky
almost put to an end the two cornerstones of psycholinguistic research which
had served the formative period.
His main
argument was that an operational list philosophy can not provide adequate
explanation to the grammar of any natural language.
He
argued for a deductive approach in linguistic research and advocated for the
study of competence of the language than the performance.
He
emphasized that the competence of the user for languages should be the main
concern for a linguistic analysis.
Thus, the claim about the division of labor that
was the sole basis of ‘formative period'
was called into question and theoretical assumptions were rebuked.
In
linguistics, this period came to
indicate a shift in the 'paradigm' but
in psycholinguistics this was really the introduction of ONE where there was
NONE.
In this
changed scenario, a psycholinguistic
research, based on what the
generativists thought to be crucial was the study of competence than the study
of the performance.
So, the centrality of grammar was considered the
basic assumption, with the sentence
emerging as the prime unit in this quest to understand the processing of the
language.
Therefore, most of the psycholinguistic experiments
during this period gave emphasis on the analysis and use of the sentences as
they played such an important role in defining the data and dimensions of TG- grammar.
George
Miller was the initiator of this exercise.
Most of the researches in this period started embodying the centrality
of the grammar and thus many researches started coming up with titles such as “Some
Psychological Studies of Grammar (Miller 1962)" and ”Some Perceptual Consequences of Linguistic
Rules(Miller and Isard 1963)” etc.
Having
accepted the centrality of the grammar and its rules that played an important
role in the grammatical description of the language, the psycholinguistic researches wanted to
test whether such linguistic rules of grammar were involved in language
comprehension.
They
also wanted to test whether the number and complexity of mental operations
performed during language processing had to do anything with the number and
complexity of the formal rules prescribed in TG-grammar for the grammatical
derivation of the sentences.
Example
of number and complexity
This
notion came to be known as ”Derivational Theory of Complexity' in Psycholinguistics.
This
idea, of course, was not supported either by the originator
Chomsky or the practitioners of the TuG-grammar.
But much
of the information which experimental results demonstrated along the way was
even more informative, and showed that
there was much more to be learned from Psycholinguistic research than just
treating this as a weak hypothesis.
One of
the good things that happened in this period,
despite the clashes of interests between the researchers of the two
discipline, was the considerable
interest in language acquisition in psycholinguistics.
Smith
and Miller(1970) and McNell's(1966, 70)
writings in developmental psycholinguistics whole-heartedly accepted the
transformational approach.
They
opined that the child enters the process of language learning with an innate
predisposition for the general form of linguistic rules and possibly even
certain linguistic categories.
Lennen berg
(1967) being inspired by Chomsky's
theoretical position of innateness hypothesis and generative grammar, supported the claim and gave it a full
bloom.
The
basic argument is that the capacity for language acquisition is species-specific
and is a genetically determined-attribute of human and human alone.
This
gave the birth of a fully developed branch of psycholinguistics which is known as "Developmental Psycholinguistics”.
With the
insights being achieved from this endeavor of language acquisition, linguistic period paved the ways of a richer
and more interdisciplinary commitment in psycholinguistics which later came to
be known as 'Cognitive Period'.
One of
the reasons for the set back of linguist period was the rapid pace with which
the formalizations changed in linguistic theory, and this burdened even the committed
psychologists and even the linguists desperately kept trying to keep the pace
and the track, but the change was just
too fast to catch up in many applied areas of linguistics.
There
were of course the practical problems as well such as the role of performance
facts, the difficulties for the
inclusion of semantics in syntax and many other such problems with regard to
the acquisition of language and its stages.
These
problems might have given the way to the upcoming stage we just mentioned, however,
linguistic period did not end abruptly nor it stopped influencing the
research in psycholinguistics.
But a
mad marathon which has started in the period in terms of grammatical models and
methodologies from generative paradigm was certainly rejected on its face
value.
Cognitive
Period: Fodor(1966) and Lenneberg (1967) were the ones who started the movement.
The sole
basis to advocate for the cognitive approach to the language processing is the
dependence of language upon human cognition Researchers believed in the notion
that language is nothing but one of the several outcomes of more fundamental
cognitive processes.
Even
Chomsky(1968) had supported the fact by
calling the linguists as the cognitive psychologists.
However, Bever (1970)
and Slobin (1973) were more vocal
about the approach.
They
rejected the centrality and independence of the grammar and argued that the
cognitive capacity that is being described by the grammatical rules for the
purpose of competence is the only manifestation of human language.
And this
is in no way prior to or independent of other cognitive and behavioral systems
that arc involved in the processing of the language(either production or
acquisition).
They
opined that linguistic structures are not learned independent of semantic
concepts and discourse functions.
And the
acquisition of language was explained as a result of the interaction between
the linguistic and other behavioral Systems.
Some
researchers spoke to this extent that they claimed the TG-grammar itself just
as a theory about having linguistic intuitions.
The
implication was that this type of language behavior is no more closely related
to the ultimate nature of language than the other linguistic aspects of
learning, perceiving and speaking.
Thus, the role of the linguistic structure and that
of the grammatical rules were denied the priority over the other cognitive
processes.
This was
the dominant belief in 'cognitive period'
despite the fact that 'linguistic period' continued to play an important role in
psycholinguistic theory and practice.
Psycholinguistic
theory, Psychological reality, and Cognitive science
As has
been pointed out by Rieber and Voyat(1981),
Psycholinguistics is in a state of transition, and thus there is no one single school of
thought that prevails in the discipline.
If we
examine the statement carefully, we
would land up saying same thing about Psychology and Linguistics and many other
disciplines too.
What is
true in modern times, is the tremendous
amount of interdisciplinary activities everywhere.
As we
saw that once the centrality of the grammar was refuted by the researchers in
Psycholinguistics during Cognitive period,
the demand for the psychological reality' under scientific standards in
psycholinguistic theory was no longer a novel issue(Johnson Laird 1983).
In the
search for the psychological reality',
the grammatical rules were not treated any special but part of other
cognitive processes.
The
correctness of any grammatical theory was no longer the quest because every
grammatical theory was demanded to be intrinsically correct.
Rather, the quest in this period was for the
usefulness or compatibility of a system of grammatical description that can be
used in psycholinguistic research.
It was
claimed that psychological reality"
is a term that must be reserved for that grammar ONLY which have the
relevance to language processing.
This
set-standard, of course, created problems for linguists as many of
them did not wish psychological validity for their theory, many did it very explicitly and some were
trying very desperately, but in vain.
However, it was the call for the day and psychological
reality' served as an essential
requirement for any linguistic theory which truly demanded the explanatory
power about the nature of language beyond the linguistic system itself.
One such
attempt to integrate linguistic or psycholinguistic information into a single
theory of language is found in what is known as I FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR acronym-ed
as LFG(Bresnan 1981, Bresnan and Kaplan
1982, Kaplan and Bresnan 1982).
Bresnan(1978) made a claim that her grammatical postulates
are not only meant to be but are psychologically real.
LFG
simply stores grammatical information directly in the lexical entry, assuming that it is easier to retrieve
lexical information from the memory rather than grammatical permutation like TG
rules which can change the syntactic format of sentences.
It is
also sensitive to the well-established fact that we remember the semantic gist
of the sentences and discourse requirement for them rather than their mere
actual syntactic formats.
In one
line this theory of grammar either avoided or overcome the problems that TG
grammar could never solve.
At this
stage it is important to talk about the contribution of Winogrd(1983).
If one
accepts his clever portrayal of Paradigm shift'
in linguistics as a series of metaphors from the successful paradigms in
the HARD SCIENCE, it is easy to see how
this shift happened in psycholinguistics.
Paradigm
shift in Psycholinguistics:
In
past, Darwinian evolutionary theory
matched with linguistics as biology,
with much attention paid to language change and defining families of
languages.
In the
previous century, the taxonomic orientation
of structuralism wanted language or linguistics' to be similar to "chemistry where one
discovers the units of language structure such as phonemes, morphemes etc. as the scientists discovered the units of
atoms or other elements.
In the
fifties of the century, Chomsky's
generative grammar wanted to view language as mathematics'.
The mode
of inquiry was deductive, the goal was
to understand the competence, and thus a
highly abstract characterization of the knowledge of language on the basis of
the mathematical symbols was proposed.
But in
this century, the models and metaphors
come from elsewhere else. Linguistics as well as Psycholinguistics, having been influenced very much by the power
and usefulness of the mechanical devices in the field of language
processing, the fourth paradigm
demands"languagc to be compared with computers.
The
computational paradigm is after all the final basis to check the psychological
reality' of any grammatical theory'.
Language
is now seen as a symbolic representation and processing and enabling the making
of the decisions by the machine i e.
computers on the basis of the knowledge of grammar created for and by
Al.
In case of the human being, processing of this knowledge of language is
helped by the mind and in case of the computer it is the programmed' input knowledge that should help the computer
to parse the correct form of the symbolic representation of the natural
language artificial intelligence.
Now, we can understand the statement that the
discipline(Psycholinguistics) is in a
transition period of intellectual growth and reorientation toward issues in
Cognitive Science.
That's
all J
Rules
for Passive in English:
1. The first very rule in English to transform an Active to Passive is
that the verb must be a transitive one in the clause.
2. Change the positions of the subject and the object.
3. The verb the sentence,
having been changed to its V1 from first.
must be runs formed into V3.
4. We must introduce a BE verb after the changed place of the Obi as
the Subj of the passive.
5. This Be verb must be given the left over TENSE marker of the
original verb nf the clause and should agree with the charged obj that is the
subj of the passive sentence.
No comments:
Post a Comment