The Psychology of Language, 3rd Edition, by Trevor Harley

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New Edition of Bestselling Textbook!

on e l lab ION i a Av ECT P INS

“I want this book for me,

not just for my students.

For the student, it’s an exceptionally thorough, but lively, introduction to language use in a wider context. For me, it’s a valuable reminder of psycholinguistics’ evolution from its concerns with the psychological reality of grammar, to its current spot at the center of modern cognitive neuroscience.” - Gary S. Dell, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Comprehensive coverage of all the major topics in psycholinguistics

Considers child as well as adult language

Includes recent connectionist models of language and new techniques of brain imaging

Looks at language in context: how it depends on the brain, and how it is used in practice

Now in two-color with a range of supplementary materials


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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE, THIRD EDITION is a thorough revision and update of the popular second edition. It contains everything the student needs to know about the psychology of language including how we acquire, produce, and store language. This third edition contains new chapters on how children learn to read, and how language is used in everyday settings. It also describes recent research on the impact of new techniques of brain imaging. The text is comprehensive and written in a lively and accessible style. It covers all the main topics in this complex field, focusing on reading, writing, speaking, and listening in both adult and child language. There is an emphasis on language processing as well as language production and coverage of the social basis of language. The text includes recent connectionist models of language, describing complex ideas in a clear and approachable manner. Following a strong developmental theme, the text describes how children acquire language (sometimes more than one), and also how they learn to read. The Psychology of Language also demonstrates how language is related to the brain, and to other aspects of cognition. For the first time, a CD-ROM of supplementary materials will be available to accompany the textbook, which will include: • Chapter-by-chapter lecture slides • An interactive chapter-by-chapter multiple-choice question test bank • Multiple-choice questions in paper and pen format. The CD-ROM will be available free of charge to qualifying adopters.

The Psychology of Language assumes no prior knowledge other than a grounding in the basic concepts of cognitive psychology. This third edition of this bestselling textbook will be essential reading for any student of cognition, psycholinguistics or the psychology of language. It will also be useful for those on speech and language therapy courses.

Trevor Harley carried out his Ph.D. work at the University of Cambridge on speech errors and what they tell us about how we plan language. He has been Head of the School of Psychology at the University of Dundee since 2003. His research interests include speech production, how we represent meaning, and the effects of ageing on language.

January 2008: 7½x9¾: 624pp Hb: 978-1-84169-381-1 ISBN10: 1-84169-381-2: £54.95 Pb: 978-1-84169-382-8 ISBN10: 1-84169-382-0: £27.50

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1. THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE

GLOSSARY

15

491

FIGURE 1.3 Cerebral cortex

Parietal lobe

Cingulate gyrus

Glossary

Hippocampus Frontal lobe Corpus callosum Thalamus

Suprachiasmatic nucleus Optic chiasm

Occipital lobe

Pituitary

Cerebellum

Hypothalamus

Brain stem

Pineal gland

Midbrain Locus coeruleus Pons Medulla

A cross-sectional view of the brain.

Shallice went on to argue that sometimes this approach has been taken too far, and called this extreme position ultra-cognitive neuropsychology. First, it has gone too far in arguing that group FIGURE 1.4 Motor cortex Broca’s area

3

2

1 Primary auditory cortex

Wernicke’s area

The location of Wernicke’s area (1) and Broca’s area (3). When someone speaks a word, activation proceeds from Wernicke’s area through the arcuate fasciculus (2) to Broca’s area.

studies cannot provide any information appropriate for constructing cognitive models. This proposal led to heated controversy (e.g., Bates, McDonald, MacWhinney, & Appelbaum, 1991; Caramazza, 1986, 1991; McCloskey & Caramazza, 1988). Second, it has gone too far in claiming that information about the localization of function is irrelevant to our understanding of behavior (e.g., Morton, 1984). Third, it has undervalued clinical information about patients. Seidenberg (1988) pointed to another problem, which is that cognitive neuropsychology places too much emphasis on uncovering the functional architecture of the systems involved. That is, the organization of the components—specifying levels of processing and how they are connected to each other—involved is emphasized at the cost of exploring the processes actually involved, leading to the construction of box-and-arrow diagrams with little advance in our understanding of what goes on inside the boxes, or how we get from one box to another. More emphasis is now being placed on what happens inside the components, particularly since connectionist modeling has been applied to cognitive neuropsychology.

Acoustics: the study of the physical properties of sounds. Acquired disorder: a disorder caused by brain damage is acquired if it affects an ability that was previously intact (contrasted with developmental disorder). Activation: can be thought of as the amount of energy possessed by something. The more highly activated something is, the more likely it is to be output. AD: Alzheimer’s disease or dementia—often there is some uncertainty about the diagnosis, so this is really shorthand for “probable Alzheimer’s disease” or “dementia of the Alzheimer’s type.” Adjective: a describing word (e.g., “red”). Adverb: a type of word that modifies a verb (e.g., “quickly”). Affix: a bound morpheme that cannot exist on its own, but that must be attached to a stem (e.g., re-, -ing). It can come before the main word, when it is a prefix, or after, when it is a suffix. Agent: the thematic role describing the entity that instigates an action. Agnosia: disorder of object recognition. Agrammatism: literally, “without grammar”; a type of aphasia distinguished by an impairment of syntactic processing (e.g., difficulties in sentence formation, inflection formation, and parsing). There has been considerable debate about the extent to which agrammatism forms a syndrome. Alexia: inability to read.

Allophones: phonetic variants of phonemes. For example, in English the phoneme /p/ has two variants, an aspirated (breathy) and unaspirated (non-breathy) form. You can feel the difference if you say the words “pit” and “spit” with your hand a few inches from your mouth. Anaphor: a linguistic expression for which the referent can only be determined by taking another linguistic expression into account— namely the anaphor’s antecedent (e.g., “Vlad was happy; he loved the vampire”—here he is the anaphor and Vlad is the antecedent). Aneurysm: dilation of blood vessel (e.g., in the brain), where a sac in the blood vessel is formed and presses on surrounding tissue. Anomia: difficulty in naming objects. Antecedent: the linguistic expression that must be taken into account in order to determine the referent of an anaphor (“Vlad was happy; he loved the vampire”—here he is the anaphor and Vlad the antecedent). Often the antecedent is the thing for which a pronoun is being substituted. Aphasia: a disorder of language, including a defect or loss of expressive (production) or receptive (comprehension) aspects of written or spoken language as a result of brain damage. Apraxia: an inability to plan movements, in the absence of paralysis. Of particular relevance is speech apraxia, an inability to carry out properly controlled movements of the articulatory apparatus. Compare with dysarthria. 491

Sample pages from the new edition

2. DESCRIBING LANGUAGE

31 3. THE FOUNDATIONS OF LANGUAGE

FIGURE 2.2

55

FIGURE 3.1 Hard palate Alveolar ridge

The waggle dance

Nasal cavity Velum (soft palate)

Uvula Tongue Lips Teeth Esophagus Trachea

Vocal cords Epiglottis

The position of the tongue modifies the range of harmonics produced by the larynx. Consonants (such as p, b, t, d, k, g) are made by closing or restricting some part of the vocal tract at the beginning or end of a vowel. Most consonants cannot be produced without some sort of vowel. This description suggests that one way to examine the relation between sounds is to look at their place of articulation—that is, the place where the vocal tract is closed or restricted. The contrasting features needed to describe sounds are known as distinctive features.

Vowels Vowels are made with a relatively free flow of air. The nature of the vowel is determined by the way in which the shape of the tongue modifies the airflow. Table 2.2 shows how vowels can be classified depending on the position (which can be raised, medium, or lower) of the front, central, or rear portions of the tongue. For example, the /i/ sound in “meat” is an example of a high front vowel because the air flows through the mouth with the front part of the tongue in a raised (high) position. Two vowel sounds can be combined to form a diphthong. Examples are the sounds in “my,” “cow,” “go,” and “boy.”

Research shows that dolphins do not possess a language in terms of the intentional structuring of sub-units to deliver intelligible communications. However, this prompts the question; at what juncture do we decide that communication can be classed as a language?

Larynx

Glottis

The structure of the human vocal tract.

TABLE 2.2 Vowels as combinations of distinguishing phonological features

High Mid Low

Front

Central

Back

i ı e g æ

d

u i o c a

e

Whereas the pronunciation of consonants is relatively constant across dialects, that of vowels can differ greatly.

Consonants Consonants are made by closing or restricting some part of the vocal tract as air flows though it.

KEY TERMS Consonants: a sound produced with some constriction of the airstream, unlike a vowel. Diphthong: a type of vowel that combines two vowel sounds (e.g., in “boy,” “cow,” and “my”).

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relative to the sun, and the rate at which the bee waggles during the dance represents distance. Primates use visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory signals to communicate with each other. They use a wide variety of calls to symbolize a range of features of the environment and their emotional states. For example, a vervet monkey produces one particular “chutter” to warn others that a snake is nearby, a different call when an eagle is overhead, and yet another distinct call to warn of approaching leopards. Each type of call elicits different responses from other nearby vervets (Demers, 1988). However, the signals are linked to particular stimuli and are only produced in their presence. Primates communicate about stimuli for which they do not already possess signals, suggesting that their communicative system has an element of creativity. It is a widespread belief that whales and dolphins possess a language. However, the research does not support this belief. There is currently no evidence to suggest that dolphins employ sequences of sub-units that convey particular messages, in the same way as we combine words to form sentences to convey messages. Early research suggesting that dolphins were communicating with each other to carry out cooperative tasks to obtain fish turned out to be explicable in terms of conditioning; the dolphins carried on making sounds in the obvious absence of other dolphins (Evans & Bastian, 1969). Hump-backed whale song

consists of ordered sub-parts, but their function is unknown (Demers, 1988). How would we decide if an animal communication system had crossed the boundary to be counted as a language?

Defining language “Language” is a difficult word to define. The dictionary defines language as “human speech . . . an artificial system of signs and symbols, with rules for forming intelligible communications for use e.g., in a computer” (Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary, 1977). Many introductions to the study of language avoid giving a definition, or consider it to be so obvious that it does not need to be defined. To some extent the aim of modern theoretical linguistics is to offer an answer to this question (Lyons, 1977a). Perhaps the difference between an animal communication system and a language is just a matter of degree?

Design features Hockett (1960) attempted to sidestep the thorny issue of defining language by listing 16 general properties or design features of spoken human language (see Table 3.1). The emphasis of his design features is very much on the physical

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CONTENTS Preface How to use this book SECTION A: INTRODUCTION 1. The study of language Introduction What is language? The history and methods of psycholinguistics Language and the brain Themes and controversies in modern psycholinguistics Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

2. Describing language Introduction How to describe speech sounds Linguistic approaches to syntax Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

SECTION B: THE BIOLOGICAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL BASES OF LANGUAGE 3. The foundations of language Introduction Where did language come from? Do animals have language? The biological basis of language The cognitive basis of language: the cognition hypothesis The social basis of language The language development of visually and hearing-impaired children What is the relation between language and thought? Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

4. Language development Introduction The driving forces of language development Do children learn any language in the womb? Phonological development Lexical and semantic development Early syntactic development Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

5. Bilingualism and second language acquisition Introduction Bilingualism Second language acquisition Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

SECTION C: WORD RECOGNITION 6. Recognizing visual words Introduction Basic methods and basic findings Meaning-based facilitation of visual word recognition Morphology: processing complex words Models of visual word recognition Coping with lexical ambiguity Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

7. Reading Introduction A preliminary model of reading The processes of normal reading The neuropsychology of adult reading disorders: acquired dyslexia Models of word naming Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

8. Learning to read and spell Introduction Normal reading development Developmental dyslexia Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

9. Understanding speech Introduction Recognizing speech Models of speech recognition The neuropsychology of spoken word recognition Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

SECTION D: MEANING AND USING LANGUAGE 10. Understanding the structure of sentences Introduction Dealing with structural ambiguity Early work on parsing Processing structural ambiguity Gaps, traces, and unbounded dependencies The neuroscience of parsing Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

11. Word meaning Introduction Classic approaches to semantics Semantic networks Semantic features Family resemblance and classification Combining concepts Processing figurative language The neuropsychology of semantics Connectionist approaches to semantics Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

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12. Comprehension Introduction Memory for text and inferences Reference, co-reference, and ambiguity Models of text representation and processing Individual differences in comprehension skills The neuropsychology of text and discourse processing Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

SECTION E: PRODUCTION AND OTHER ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE 13. Language production Introduction Speech errors and what they tell us Syntactic planning Lexicalization Phonological encoding The analysis of hesitations The neuropsychology of speech production Writing and agraphia Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

14. How do we use language? Introduction Making inferences in conversation The structure of conversation Collaboration in dialog Sound and vision Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

15. The structure of the language system Introduction What are the modules of language? How many lexicons are there? Language and short-term memory Summary Some questions to think about Further reading

16. New directions Introduction Themes in psycholinguistics revisited Some growth areas? Conclusion

Appendix: Connectionism Interactive activation models Back-propagation Further reading

Glossary Example of sentence analysis

References Author index Subject index


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“Trevor Harley provides a systematic and lucid introduction to the scientific study of human language use. He traverses a complex range of topics from foundational theory and experiment to practical matters of pedagogy and pathology. It’s a winning combination delivered with wit, balanced accuracy, and admirable directness of style.” - Merrill Garrett, University of Arizona, USA “Harley’s book offers

an excellent means of enhancing our understanding

of language. It provides a clear, comprehensive and thorough review of the current state of play in psycholinguistics, making it an ideal choice for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.” - Annukka Lindell, University of Wales, Bangor, UK “Harley has thoroughly revised his very successful textbook on psycholinguistics in light of new research. The coverage of this work is quite remarkable and it constitutes the ideal resource for advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers interested in the field.” - Martin Pickering, University of Edinburgh, UK “I have been using Harley's text in my third year undergraduate ‘Psychology of Language’ course since the first edition came out because I believe its coverage of the important issues is comprehensive and scholarly while being highly accessible and intellectually stimulating. My students have always found it to be a very useful resource in helping them understand language processing.” - Marcus Taft, University of New South Wales, Australia

The Psychology of Language Third Edition

BY TREVOR A. HARLEY

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