Linguistics and Language Essay

1. The underlying assumptions, theories, and methods used by psychologiest, linguists, and researchers are believed to strongly affect the way each defines psycholinguistics. Please discuss some different conceptions of psycholinguistics in its relation to other branches of linguistics. Then, define yours. One of your reference should be â€Å"fundamentals of Pyscholinguistics by Fernandez and Cairns (2010)†. OPsycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field of study in which the goals are to understand how people acquire language, how people use language to speak and understand one another, and how language is represented and processed in the brain. Psycholinguistics is primarily a sub-discipline of psychology and linguistics, but it is also related to developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, neurolinguistics, and speech science (Fernandez: 2011). OPsycholinguistics examines the psychology of language; psycholinguistics is the name given to the study of the psychological processes involved in language. Psycholinguists study understanding, producing, and remembering language, and hence are concerned with listening, reading, speaking, writing, and memory for language. (Harley, Trevor A. 2001. The Psychology of Language. ) O†Psycholinguistic studies have revealed that many of the concepts employed in the analysis of sound structure, word structure, and sentence structure also play a role in language processing. However, an account of language processing also requires that we understand how these linguistic concepts interact with other aspects of human processing to enable language production and comprehension. â€Å"( William O’Grady, et al. , Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001 O†Psycholinguistics, there is a constant exchange of information between psycholinguists and those working in neurolinguistics, who study how language is represented in the brain. There are also close links with studies in artificial intelligence. Indeed, much of the early interest in language processing derived from the AI goals of designing computer programs that can turn speech into writing and programs that can recognize the human voice. â€Å"(John Field, Psycholinguistics: A Resource Book for Students. Routledge, 2003) OPsycholinguistics refers to the efforts of both linguists and psychologists to explain whether certain hypotheses about language acquisition and language competence as proposed by contemporary linguistic theories (e. g. : transformational generative grammar) have a real basis in terms of : perception, memory, intelligence, motivation, etc. (Hartmann and stork: 1973) Oâ€Å"†¦.. psycholinguists are interested in the underlying knowledge and abilities which people must have in order to use language in childhood. I say â€Å"underlying knowledge and abilities† because language, like all systems of human knowledge, can only be inferred from the careful study of overt behavior. † (Dan Isaac Slobin: 1979) OBased on my reading, Psycholinguistics is study about language acquisition, language used one another, and study how language is represented and processed in the brain. Psycholinguistics is primarily a sub-discipline of psychology and linguistics, but it is also related to developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, neurolinguistics, and speech science. 2. Linguistic analysis might use similar language data or language corpuses as the object of analysis. Please give an example of language use which can be analyzed from different point of view, particularly from semantics, pragmatics, socialinguistics, discourse analysis, and psycholinguistics. Support your answer in term of their focuses of analysis. How are they similar, different, and how are they related one other. Linguistics study about human language as communication. In other hand, linguistics as fild of study that the object is language.  ·Semantics is one of study that hand-in-hand with pragmatics. specializing in semantics studies, languageis study about the meaning of words, that is influenced by the context in which the words are presented. Semantics study how words are given meaning by their structure, tone, and the situation in which they are used.  ·Pragmatics is concerned with the role of context in the interpretation of meaning.  ·Pragmatics and semantics is different parts but the same general study. Both semantics and pragmatics are concerned with people’s ability to use language meaningfully. While semantics is concerned with a speaker’s competence to use the language system in producing meaningful utterances and processing (comprehending).  ·Sociolinguistics a close neighbour of psycholinguistics, can be defined as the linguistic study dealing with the functioning of language in society. Sociolinguitics has to do with the study of language from the viewpoint of how social, regional, individual and historical aspects influence the language and its use in society which is specifically called speech community. OPsycholinguistics is the study of language acquisition and linguistic behavior. Psycholinguistics refers to the efforts of both linguists and psychologists to explain whether certain hypotheses about language acquisition and language competence as proposed by contemporary linguistic theories (e. g. : transformational generative grammar) have a real basis in terms of : perception, memory, intelligence, motivation, etc. (Hartmann and stork: 1973)  ·Discourse Analysis is approaches to analyzing written, vocal, or sign language use. discourse analysis is, like descriptive linguistics, a way of studying language. It may be regarded as a set of techniques, rather than a theoretically predetermined system for the writing of linguistic ‘rules’. (Yule, George. 1983. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). ‘Doing discourse analysis certainly involves doing syntax and semantic, but it primarily consists of doing pragmatics. In discourse analysis, as in pragmatics, we are concerned with what people using language are doing, and accounting for the linguistic features in the discourse as the means employed in what they are doing. 3. The objects of psycholinguistic studeis are addressed to language production, acquisition, and comprehension. Could you explain how are the processes of the three language uses in term of psycholinguistics analysis.  ·Language production based on Levelt, speech production divided into four stage; I. Conceptualization and formulation Primitive linguistic concept about first conceptualized in human mind by David Mcneill stated that linguistic concepts are formed as two current and parallel modes of taught. These are syntactic thinking and imagistic thinking. Then syntactic thinking and imagistic thinking ellaborate to conceptualize conversation in which speech utterance and gestures to be tied together in time. But this concept has gone record. Formulation as the output of the process language production. Lashely stated that production and comprehension of speech is linear process. Based on tradition od examining speech production, sleep tangue as a window of the formulation process. II. slips of the tongue Slip of the tongue is normal mistake, it happen to catch the goof ourselve. Then we can immediately correct. Slip the tongue as the production process . but this concept has gone record too. III. Articulation In this stage we consider about what happens when all of he information go from our brain to articulation. IV. Self-Monitoring Self – monitoring seems that as final stage. It is not only produce speech and listen one to another, but also to keep one ear open on what they themselve saying.  ·Language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words[->0] and sentences[->1] to communicate. Language acquisition began the same with the cognitive science at 1950’s. Chomsky argued that language acquisition falsified these beliefs in a single stroke: children learn languages that are governed by highly subtle and abstract principles, and they do so without explicit instruction or any other environmental clues to the nature of such principles. While Hence stated language acquisition depends on an innate, species-specific module that is distinct from general intelligence. Chomsky believes that every child has a ‘language acquisition device’ or LAD which encodes the major principles of a language and its grammatical structures into the child’s brain. In other point of view There are five stages in language acquisition stated by Chumbow and Adegbija (1984) such as babbling stage, the holophrastic stage, the two-word utterances, the telegraphic stage and recursive stage.  ·Language comprehension Clark and Clark argue that language comprehension is mental process by listeners take in the sounds uttered by speaker and use them to construct an interpretation of what they think the speaker intended to convey. (Clark and Clark: 1977)In sum up, language comprehension is building the meaning from sounds. While Language comprehension is generally viewed in cognitive theory as con-sisting of active and complex processes in which individuals construct meaning from aural or written information (Anderson 1985; Byrnes 1984; Call 1985; Howard 1985; Pearson 1985; Richards, 1983). An-derson (1983, 1985) proposes that the mental processes necessary for comprehending aural and written texts are sufficiently similar that comprehension of both can generally be discussed as a common phe-nomenon. 4. Following Clark and Clark (1977), comprehension involves two processes-construction and utilization processes. The first is concerned with the way listeners construct an interpretation of a sentence from the speakers’ words. The second deals with how listeners utilize this interpretation for further purposes for registering new infromation, answering questions, following orders, and registering promises. What really happens in our cognitive domains (memory) for both processes? Examplify your answer that the first happens earlier than the second OClark and Clark (1977) say that short-term memory is roughly related to the working memory in the construction process; long term memory is dealt with the process of utilization. In other word In short, short-term just focus on the surface of the utterance (how the sentence is constructed) while the long one concern on the meaning more (how the sentence is properly utilized). Outilization, consists of relating a mental represen-tation of the text meaning to declarative knowledge in long-term mem-ory. This process is referred to as elaboration in other descriptions of the reading process. Utilization is the key to comprehension and the basic determinant that facilitates it. In any mes-sage, there may be an interplay between information we already know and information that is entirely new. 5. Production of a speech requires speakers to plan what to say before its execution. Theoritically, the plan begins firstly with discourse plan followed by sentence plan and, at last, constituent plan. What should be the underlying concepts of this order? In the execution of a speech plan, several mental activities happen, what are they? Explain your answer OSpeech production is the process by which spoken[->2] words are selected to be produced, have their phonetics[->3] formulated and then finally are articulated by the motor system[->4] in thevocal apparatus[->5]. Speech production can be spontaneous such as when a person creates the words of a conversation[->6], reaction such as when they name a picture or read[->7] aloud a written word[->8], or a vocal imitation such as in speech repetition[->9]. Speech production is not the same as language production since language[->10] can also be produced manually by signs[->11]. The production of spoken language[->12] involves three major levels of processing. The first is the processes of conceptualization[->13] in which the intention[->14] to create speech links a desired concept to a particular spoken word to be expressed. The second stage is formulation in which the linguistic[->15] form required for that word’s expression is created. This process involves such processes as the generation of a syntactic[->16] frame, and phonological[->17] encoding which specifies the phonetic[->18] form of the intended utterance, the third stage is articulation[->19] which involves the retrieval of the particular motor phonetics[->20] of a word and the motor coordination[->21] of appropriate phonation[->22] and articulation by the lungs, glottis, larynx, tongue[->23], lips[->24], jaw[->25], and  other parts. (Levelt, WJ (1999). â€Å"Models of word production. â€Å"[->26]. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 3 (6): 223–232) 6. Children acquire language faster than adults’. Please give your arguments to agree or disagree to this statement. How do children use their utterance compared to adult. You should refer to, at least, four references. OChomsky points out that a child could not possibly learn a language through imitation alone because the language spoken around them is highly irregular – adult’s speech is often broken up and even sometimes ungrammatical. In ways understanding and establish meaning in words, children and adults are different. Children tend to focus more on the superficial physical characteristics of an object when defining the prototype for an object and when comparing a stimulus to that prototype. Thus, children will gradually their understanding of an object. Steinberg at all (2001) conclude the progress started from vocalization to babbling, babbling to speech, naming and using holophrastic for one word utterances, and using telegraphic speech for two and three words utterances. Another expert Mc Neill in Steinberg at all (2001:36) gives another opinion that the child who is learning language can compare the language that they have in their mind with what they hear from his parents. Children give priority to collocational links between words. For example, a child might respond with the word ‘night’ when told the word ‘dark’, whereas an adult more likely to respond with the word ‘light’ when presented with the same word ‘dark. Children may take time to discover the criteria by adult classify item as co-ordinates. 7.  Language structure and language function can be seen differently by different scholars from the side of the meaning of an utterance. Please discuss your opinion about the function approach to meaning (the procedures and uses) Outterances has different meaning in context (including the situation, condition, location and the time in which the utterances are produced). For example : †Masak begitu saja jadi gila sih? † this utterance May be in giving support or motivate somebody who just got disappointed or depressed. 8. Please quote a mass demonstrant’s discourse (at least consisting of ten sentences). Please analyze psycholinguisticly the discourse of the demonstrant by considering his/her mass psychology. ODemo guru bantu : ‘angkat kami jadi PNS. Kami telah lama mengabdi untuk negri ini. Kalau kami tidak diangkat jadi PNS, gaji kami tidak cukup untuk memenuhi kebutuhan primer kami. Yaitu kebutuhan hidup keluarga dan kebutuhan pendidikan anak-anak kami. Guru bantu perlu diperhatikan kesejahteraan hidupnya. Dari demo guru di atas terlihat semua individu memiliki kepentingan menjadi satu yaitu meminta kenaikan Gaji yang tidak sesuai standar untuk memenuhi kebutuhan utama. Dari kalimat demo di atas, setiap idividu guru lebih memiliki power yang lebih besar untuk meminta kenaikan gaji dikarekan mereka bersatu menjadi satu. OMass psychology is a branch of social psychology[->27]. Mass psychology is concerned with the behaviour and thought processes of individual mass members and the mass as a whole. The main idea of Sigmund Freud[->28]’s crowd behavior theory is that people who are in a crowd act differently towards people from those who are thinking individually. The minds of the group would merge to form a way of thinking. Each member’s enthusiasm would be increased as a result, and one becomes less aware of the true nature of one’s actions. Other major thinkers of crowd psychology include Rene Girard[->29], Gustave Le Bon[->30], Wilfred Trotter[->31], Gabriel Tarde[->32],Sigmund Freud[->33], Elias Canetti[->34], Steve Reicher[->35] and Julia Constintine. 9. How do you agree (support) or disagree to the following ideas: a. language need not be taught, nor can it be suppressed. OI agree that language need to be taught nor can be suppressed, Fernandez stated that language acquisition in the child is a naturally unfolding process, Every normal human acquires alinguistic system, and failure to do so is evidence for some sort of pathology. that children need to experience social, interactive language in order to acquire language. In fact, people acquire language at about the same speed during about the same age span, no matter what kind of cultural and social situation they grow up in. b.  children everywhere acquire language on a similar developmental schedule OI agree that children everywhere acquire language on a similar developmental schedule. Based on (Fernandez: 2011) state that babies coo in the first half of their first year and begin to babble in the second half. The first word comes in the first half of the second year for just about everyone. In all societies, babies go through a one-word stage, followed by a period of early sentences of increasing length; finally, complex sentences begin. By the age of 5 the basic structures of the language are in place, although fine-tuning goes on until late child-hood. Children all over the world are sensitive to the same kinds of language properties, such as word order and inflection. They make remarkably few errors, but their errors are of a similar type. While there is much individual variation in the age at which children acquire aspects of language, that variation is conditioned by individual char-acteristics of the child rather than by the language being acquired or the culture in which the language is used. c. language is universal in human being OI agree with that statement about there are close to 7,000 languages spoken in the world today and, on the surface, they differ greatly. However, there are profound similarities among the languages of the world – so many similarities, in fact, that human language can be thought of as a single entity. Language universals result from the way the human brain organizes and processes linguistic information: language universals are a product of human neurology. Thus, a person’s ability to acquire and use language is natural These universals do not derive from social, cultural, or general intellectual characteristics of humans. Instead, List of references: Clark, H. H. and E. V.  Clark (1977): Psychology and Language, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Fernandez, Eva M. (2011). Fundamental of psycholinguistics. Oxford. Wiley-Blackwell Steinberg, at all (2001): Psycholinguistic: Language, Mind, and World. Malaysia, Pearson Education. Scovel, T (2001): Psycholinguistics. Hong Kong, Oxford University Press. Yasin, Anas. (2010). Tindak Tutur: sebuah model gamatika komunikatif. Padang: Sukabina Press [->0] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Word [->1] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Sentence_(linguistics) [->2] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Spoken [->3] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Phonetic [->4] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Motor_system [->5] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Vocal_apparatus [->6] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Conversation [->7] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Reading_(process) [->8] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Writing [->9] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Speech_repetition [->10] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Language [->11] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Sign_language [->12] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Spoken_language [->13] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Conceptualization. [->14] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Intention [->15] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Language [->16] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Syntactic [->17] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Phonological [->18] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Phonetic [->19] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Manner_of_articulation [->20] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Phonetics [->21] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Motor_coordination [->22] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Phonation [->23] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Tongue [->24] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Lip [->25] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Jaw [->26] – http://www. columbia. edu/~rmk7/HC/HC_Readings/Levelt. pdf [->27] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Social_psychology [->28] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud [->29] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard [->30] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Gustave_Le_Bon [->31] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Wilfred_Trotter [->32] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Gabriel_Tarde [->33] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud [->34] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Elias_Canetti [->35] – http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Steve_Reicher