Psycholinguistics

1. Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language or Psycholinguists study how word meaning, sentence meaning, and discourse meaning are computed and represented in the mind. Psycholinguistics is a branch of study which combines the disciplines of psychology and linguistics. it is concerned with the relationship between the human mind and the language as it examines the processes that occur in brain while producing and perceiving both written and spoken discourse. They study how complex words and sentences are composed in speech and how they are broken down into their constituents in the acts of listening and reading. In short, psycholinguists seek to understand how language is done. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms in which languages are processed and represented in the brain. Psycholinguistics has roots in education and philosophy, and covers the "cognitive processes" that make it possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words, text, etc.

The term psycholinguistics was coined in 1936 by Jacob Robert Kantor in his book An Objective Psychology of Grammar and started being used among his team at Indiana University, but its use finally became frequent thanks to the 1946 article "Language and psycholinguistics: a review," by his student Nicholas Henry Pronko. It was used for the first time to talk about an interdisciplinary science "that could be coherent"^[3] as well as in the title of Psycholinguistics: A Survey of Theory and Research Problems, a 1954 book by Charles E. Osgood and Thomas A. Sebeok. Psycholinguistics is the study of language with reference to human psychology. It has a very broad scope but is frequently used with specific reference to processes of language acquisition, especially of one's first language. In the more general psycholinguistics covers the following areas.

Neurolinguistics (the study of language and the brain). This has a physical dimension to it and is the domain of neurologists concerned with impairments of language due to brain lesions, tumors, injuries or strokes. It also has an observational domain which is the concern of linguists. Here certain phenomena like slips of the tongue, various performance errors (due to nervousness, tiredness for instance) are examined for the insights which they might offer about the structure of the language faculty in the human brain.

Language areas in the brain

Ø  Broca's area A part of the brain — approximately above the left temple — called after its discoverer the French doctor Paul Broca and which is responsible for speech production. Broca's area which is usually associated with the production of language, or language outputs. Paul Broca, a French surgeon, reported in the 1860s that damage to this specific part of the brain was related to extreme difficulty in producing speech. It was noted that damage to the corresponding area on the right hemisphere had no such effect. This finding was first used to argue that language ability must be located in the left hemisphere and since then has been treated as an indication that Broca’s area is crucially involved in the production of speech.

Ø  Wernicke's area A part of the brain which is taken to be responsible for the comprehension of language. It is located just above the left ear. Named after Karl Wernicke, the German scientist who discovered the area in the second half of the 19th century. Wernicke's area, which is associated with the processing of words that we hear being spoken, or language inputs.

2. 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 and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition usually refers to first language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language. This is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both childrent and adults) of additional languages. Language acquisition is just one strand of psycholinguistic which is all about how people learn to speak and the mental processes involved. Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits,because non-humans do not communicate by using language. Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language. Example of language aquisitaion connect with classroom. Babies for example learn their first language because they see a need to communicate with their parents. “Wild children” who grew up with animals do not know how to speak like other humans but they can communicate with their “parents,” the animals that raised them.

This is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages. Linguists who are interested in child language acquisition for many years question how language is acquired, lidz et al. states "The question of how these structures are acquired, then, is more properly understood as the question of how a learner takes the surface forms in the input and converts them into abstract linguistic rules and representations." So we know language acquisition involves structures, rules and representation. The capacity to successfully use language requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary. Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign. Human language capacity is represented in the brain. Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences, which is based on a syntactic principle called recursion. Evidence suggests that every individual has three recursive mechanisms that allow sentences to go indeterminately. These three mechanisms are: relativization, complementation and coordination.

Furthermore, there are actually two main guiding principles in first-language acquisition, that is, speech perception always precedes speech production and the gradually evolving system by which a child learns a language is built up one step at a time, beginning with the distinction between individual phonemes. Language acquisition is the process where by children acquire their first languages. All humans (without exceptional physical or mental disabilities) have an innate capability to acquire language. Children may acquire one or more first languages. For example, children who grow up in an environment in which only English is spoken and heard will acquire only English as their first language. However, children who grow up in an environment in which both German and English are spoken and heard equally will acquire both German and English as their first languages. Acquisition occurs passively and unconsciously through implicit learning. In other words, children do not need explicit instruction to learn their first languages but rather seem to just "pick up" language in the same way they learn to roll over, crawl, and walk. Language acquisition in children just seems to happen.

Acquisition (as opposed to learning) depends on children receiving linguistic input during the critical period. The critical period is defined as the window of time, up to about the age of twelve or puberty, in which humans can acquire first languages. Children must receive adequate linguistic input including phonology (speech sounds), semantics (vocabulary and meaning), grammar (syntax or word order and morphology or grammatical markers), and pragmatics (use and context) and prosody (intonation, rhythm, stress) before the end of the critical period in order to acquire their first languages. If linguistic input is not adequate, children will never fully acquire language Language acquisition cannot normally occur after the critical period because the brain becomes "hardwired" to the first language.

3. First and Second Language Learning

Ø  First language acquisition

First language acquisition is remarkable for the speed with which it takes place. First language acquisition This is the acquisition of the mother tongue.  Long before a child starts school, he or she has become an extremely sophisticated languageuser, operating a system for self-expression and communication that no other creature, or computer, comes close to matching. In addition to the speed of acquisition, the fact that it generally occurs, without overt instruction, for all children, regardless of great differences in their circumstances, provides strong support for the idea that there is an innate predisposition in the human infant to acquire language. We can think of this as a special capacity for language with which each newborn child is endowed. By itself, however, this inborn language capacity is not enough.

1.      Acquisition

The process of language acquisition has some basic requirements. During the first two or three years of development, a child requires interaction with other language-users in order to bring the general language capacity into contact with a particular language such as English. The child must also be physically capable of sending and receiving sound signals in a language. All infants make “cooing” and “babbling” noises during their first year, but congenitally deaf infants stop after about six months. So, in order to speak a language, a child must be able to hear that language being used. By itself, however, hearing language sounds is not enough.

2.      Cooing and Babbling

The earliest use of speech-like sounds has been described as cooing. During the first few months of life, the child gradually becomes capable of producing sequences of vowel-like sounds, particularly high vowels similar to [i] and [u]. By four months of age, the developing ability to bring the back of the tongue into regular contact with the back of the palate allows the infant to create sounds similar to the velar consonants [k] and [ɡ], hence the common description as “cooing” or “gooing” for this type of production. Speech perception studies have shown that by the time they are five months old, babies can already hear the difference between the vowels [i] and [a] and discriminate between syllables like [ba] and [ɡa]. Between six and eight months, the child is sitting up and producing a number of different vowels and consonants, as well as combinations such as ba-ba-ba and ga-gaga. This type of sound production is described as babbling. In the later babbling stage, around nine to ten months, there are recognizable intonation patterns to the consonant and vowel combinations being produced, as well as variation in the combinations such as ba-ba-da-da. Nasal sounds also become more common and certain syllable sequences such as ma-ma-ma and da-da-da are inevitably interpreted by parents as versions of “mama” and “dada” and repeated back to the child.

Ø  Second language learning

Second language acquisition (also known as second language learning or sequential language acquisition) refers to the process by which a person learns a "foreign" language—that is, a language other than his or her mother tongue. Second language refers to any language learned in addition to a person's first language; although the concept is named second-language acquisition, it can also incorporate the learning of third, fourth, or subsequent languages. Second-language acquisition refers to what learners do; it does not refer to practices in language teaching, although teaching can affect acquisition. The term acquisition was originally used to emphasize the non-conscious nature of the learning process, but in recent years learning and acquisition have become largely synonymous. A distinction is sometimes made between learning in a “foreign language” setting (learning a language that is not generally spoken in the surrounding community) and a “second language” setting.

Proponents of second language acquisition theories, including Oliveri and Judie Haynes, another ESL teacher with 28 years of experience, identify five distinct stages of second language acquisition as originally espoused by linguist Stephen Krashen. These include the following:

1. Silent/receptive

This stage may last from several hours to several months, depending on the individual learner. During this time, new language learners typically spend time learning vocabulary and practice pronouncing new words. While they may engage in self-talk, they don’t normally speak the language with any fluency or real understanding.This stage is controversial among language educators.

2. Early production

This stage may last about six months, during which language learners typically acquire an understanding of up to 1,000 words. They may also learn to speak some words and begin forming short phrases, even though they may not be grammatically correct.

3. Speech emergence  

By this stage, learners typically acquire a vocabulary of up to 3,000 words, and learn to communicate by putting the words in short phrases, sentences, and questions. Again, they may not be grammatically correct, but this is an important stage during which learners gain greater comprehension and begin reading and writing in their second language.

4. Intermediate fluency

At this stage, which may last for a year or more after speech emergence, learners typically have a vocabulary of as many as 6,000 words. They usually acquire the ability to communicate in writing and speech using more complex sentences. This crucial stage is also when learners begin actually thinking in their second language, which helps them gain more proficiency in speaking it.

5. Continued language development/advanced fluency

It takes most learners at least two years to reach this stage, and then up to 10 years to achieve full mastery of the second language in all its complexities and nuances. Second language learners need ongoing opportunities to engage in discussions and express themselves in their new language, in order to maintain fluency in it.

The key to learning a new language and developing proficiency in speaking and writing that language is consistency and practice. A student must converse with others in the new language on a regular basis in order to grow their fluency and confidence. In addition, Haynes says it’s important for students to continue to work with a classroom teacher on specific content area related to the new language such as history, social studies and writing.

4. Motivation in L2 Learning

Motivation refers to the choices people make as to what experiences or goals they will approach or avoid and the degree of effort they will exert in this respect. There are several factors that combine in a profile of a successful L2 learner. Obviously, the motivation to learn is important. Many learners have an instrumental motivation. That is, they want to learn the L2 in order to achieve some other goal, such as completing a school graduation requirement or being able to read scientific publications, but not really for any social purposes. In contrast, those learners with an integrative motivation want to learn the L2 for social purposes, in order to take part in the social life of a community using that language and to become an accepted member of that community. It is also worth noting that those who experience some success in L2 communication are among the most motivated to learn. So, motivation may be as much a result of success as a cause. A language-learning situation that provides support and encourages students to try to use whatever L2 skills they have in order to communicate successfully must consequently be more helpful than one that dwells on errors, corrections and a failure to be perfectly accurate. Indeed, the learner who is willing to guess, risks making mistakes and tries to communicate in the L2 will tend, given the opportunity, to be more successful. An important part of that opportunity is the availability of “input.”

Types of motivation in L2 learning

1. Intrinsic motivation

Tracing the word “intrinsic” down to its roots, it means “innate” or “within”, thus intrinsic motivation originates in the individual itself. Concerning learning it can be said that the drive or stimulation to learn comes from within the student, hence the teacher or instructor does not have to ‘manipulate’ the student in any way in order to make him learn. It is an inner desire of the student to fulfill a positive learning outcome. Intrinsic motivation it self is goal related, therefore it is independent from any kind of external value. The goal can be defined as the desire to accomplish an understanding for any circumstances, which originates from ones own curiosity. It follows from this assumption that intrinsic motivators have a long-term effect and constancy, because oneself is directly involved in the process of motivating. Whatever derives from ones own motivation is more likely to be remembered than anything else. This makes intrinsic motivation a very effective means for learning processes. “Once an individual identifies the activity necessary to achieve the goal, it remains constant”^. Intrinsic motivation is a key issue when it comes to learning processes. When teachers talk about motivated students, they mostly talk about students who act out of an intrinsic motivation. But if every student would be intrinsically motivated the teachers would not have the problem of motivation. Therefore there have to be other types of motivations involved in the classroom environment.

2. Extrinsic motivation

Extrinsic motivation can be regarded as the opposite of intrinsic motivation. Whereas intrinsic motivation is closely goal related, extrinsic motivation has little relationship to a goal or better the goal is a different one than with the intrinsic motivation. As explained above, the goal connected with intrinsic motivation is a positive learning effect that lasts a long time, but the goal of an extrinsic motivated student is completely different. “When individuals are extrinsically motivated, they hold some desired outcome as a goal (e.g., getting a good grade or avoiding punishment), they recognize that a certain way of behaving is an expedient means to that goal, and they make plans to modify their behaviour in such a manner that they are likely to experience the desired outcome”. Extrinsic motivated students “are motivated by an outcome that is external or functionally unrelated to the activity in which they are engaged”^[4]. The encouragement derives from an outside force and thus stands in sharp contrast to the idea of intrinsic motivation, where the student himself is the driving force. Whatever is performed is based on the expectance of an outside reward. If we talk about the manipulation to motivate somebody, this manipulation would equal an extrinsic motivation, because “extrinsic rewards can be abused to bribe or coerce someone into doing something that they would not do on their own”. Extrinsic motivation is of course effective just as intrinsic motivation, but the difference lies in the degree of effectiveness. The key determination for the effectiveness of either intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, is the duration of whatever is learned and this period is much longer when it comes to intrinsic motivation. Thus extrinsic motivation can be productive for learning but it is questionable in how far extrinsic motivation leads to the desired long term effect of learning.

5. Languange Interference

a.       Language Interference

Language transfer (also known as L1 interference, linguistic interference, and cross meaning) refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from their native language to a second language. Dulay et al (1982) define interference as the automatic transfer, due to habit, of the surface structure of the first language onto the surface of the target language. Lott defines interference as ‘errors in the learner’s use of the foreign language that can be traced back to the mother tongue’. Ellis (1997: 51) refers to interference as ‘transfer’, which he says is ‘the influence that the learner’s L1 exerts over the acquisition of an L2’. He argues that transfer is governed by learners’ perceptions about what is transferable and by their stage of development in L2 learning. In learning a target language, learners construct their own interim rules with the use of their L1 knowledge, but only when they believe it will help them in the learning task or when they have become sufficiently proficient in the L2 for transfer to be possible.

When an individual’s understanding of one language has an impact on his or her understanding of another language, that individual is experiencing language transfer. There can be negative transfers, otherwise known as interference, when the understanding of one language complicates the understanding of another language. Alternatively, there can be positive transfers such that knowing one language can aid in developing skills for a second language. Language interference is the effect of language learners’ first language on their production of the language they are learning. It means that the speaker’s first language influences his/her second or and his/her foreign language. The effect can be on any aspect of language: grammar, vocabulary, accent, spelling and so on.

Language interference is considered as one of error sources (negative transfer), although where the relevant feature of both languages is the same it results in correct language production (positive transfer). The greater the differences between the two languages, the more negative the effects of interference are likely to be. It will inevitably occur in any situation where someone has not mastered a second language. Corder outlines one way in which interference can be recast as a learner strategy. He suggests that the learner’s L1 may facilitate the development process of learning an L2, by helping him to progress more rapidly along the universal route when the L1 is similar to the L2. Krashen when he suggests that the learners can use the L1 to initiate utterances when they do not have sufficient acquired knowledge of the target language for this purpose. The relationship between the two languages must then be considered. Albert and Obler claim that people show more lexical interference on similar items. So it may follow that languages with more similar structures (e.g. English and French) are more susceptible to mutual interference than languages with fewer similar features (e.g. English and Japanese).

On the other hand, we might also expect more learning difficulties, and thus more likelihood of performance interference at those points in L2 which are more distant from L1, as the learner would find it difficult to learn and understand a completely new and different usage. Hence the learner would resort to L1 structures for help (Selinker, 1979; Dulay et al, 1982; Blum-Kulka&Levenston, 1983; Faerch& Kasper, 1983, Bialystok, 1990 and Dordick, 1996).

b.      Factors that Cause Language Interference

Interference is a general problem that occurs in bilingualism. There are many factors that contribute interference (Weinrich, 1970:64-65):

Ø  First, speaker bilingualism background. Bilingualism is the major factor of interference as the speaker is influenced by both of the source and the target language. Indonesia’s student who is Javanese and is studying good Bahasa tends to put his Javanese language into Indonesia. Look the example, ‘Andi, apakah kamu bisa mengerjakan soal matematika ini?” tanya guru. Then Andi answered, “Tidak bisa, Bu Guru, lha wong itu angel.” The impression of ‘lha wong’ is usual in Javanese cultural insight. The word ‘angel’ means difficult in Bahasa, the student should reply his teacher with “Tidak bisa, Bu Guru, soalnya sulit’. Regarding this condition, the student is a second grade of elementary school.

Ø  Second, disloyalty to target language. Disloyalty to target language will cause negative attitude. This will lead to disobedience to target language structure and further force the bilingualist to put uncontrolled structure of his first language elements to output in practicing words utterances both oral and written. Students whose language background of TL is limited tend to put words in sentences or oral in structure and sense of first language. For example is occurred in Facebook status made by an Indonesian, “So must to spirit.” While the correct sentence is “I must keep spirit.”

Ø  Third, the limited vocabularies of TL mastered by a learner. Vocabularies of certain language mostly are about words of surroundings connected to life. Thus, a learner who is willing to master another language will meet new words differ from his native words. In order to be able to speak as natives of TL, vocabularies take a big role. The more vocabularies someone has, the better he masters TL. Foreign language learner will try to put deliberately his native word to state some points when he cannot find the best words of TL. For example, when an Indonesian wants to mention‘rambutan’, he stills mention ‘rambutan’ when he speaks in English. Since there is no English word for ‘rambutan’.

Ø  Fourth, needs of synonym. Synonym in language usage plays an important role as word chosen variation in order not to repeat similar word during the communication process (redundancy). Implementing synonym in a language contact will contribute to interference in the form of adoption and borrowing of new words from SL to TL. Thus, need of synonym for certain word from SL to TL is seemingly aimed to intensify meaning.

Ø  Fifth, prestige and style. Applying unfamiliar words (foreign words) during a communication practice which dominant words are languages of both speaker and receiver is something else. Those unfamiliar words usage is aimed to get a pride. Interference will appear as there are certain words even though the receiver probably cannot catch the real idea of the speech. The usual unfamiliar words usage will become a style of the user. Unfortunately, the user sometimes does not understand the real meaning whether the meaning is denotative or connotative. The common feature is that many language users put derivational affix –ization in every word. To note, affix –ization is an adopting and borrowing process from English to state nouns.

c.       Effects of Language Interference

The background of L1 for learning L2 has both advantages and disadvantages. The factor of ‘language universal’ helps in learning. All languages have tense system, number, gender, plural etc. This helps the learner in identifying these areas in the target language. But the interference of L1 in L2 leads to errors. One of the assumptions of the contrastive analysis hypothesis was that learners with different L1s would learn a L2 in different ways, as a result of negative transfer imposing different kinds of difficulty. Interference may be viewed as the transference of elements of one language to another at various levels including phonological, grammatical, lexical and orthographical (Berthold, Mangubhai & Batorowicz, 1997). Grammatical interference is defined as the first language influencing the second in terms of word order, use of pronouns and determinants, tense and mood. Interference at a lexical level provides for the borrowing of words from one language and converting them to sound more natural in another and orthographic interference includes the spelling of one language altering another. The most common source of error is in the process of learning a foreign language, where the native tongue interferes; but interference may occur in the other contact situations (as in multilingualism). In learning L1 certain habits of perceiving and performing have to be established and the old habits tend to intrude and interfere with the learning, so that the students may speak L2 (or FL) with the intonation of his L1 or the word order of his L1 and so on.