A Brief Introduction on Psycholinguistics

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Contents
A Brief Introduction on Psycholinguistics.......................................................................................................................3
1.1. A Preliminary Introduction about Psycholinguistics .................................................................................................3
What is Psycholinguistics?...............................................................................................................................................3
1.2. Some Definitions of Psycholinguistics......................................................................................................................3
1.3. Significance of the studying of psycholinguistic........................................................................................................5
2. Historical Perspectives on Psycholinguistics................................................................................................................5
2.1. The Starting Point of Psycholinguistics.....................................................................................................................5
2.2.1 Noam Chomsky’s Work in Cognitive Linguistics....................................................................................................6
2.2.2. Modularity of Language.........................................................................................................................................7
2.3. Historical Models and Theories of Language Acquisition .........................................................................................7
2.3.1. Behaviourist Theory ..............................................................................................................................................8
2.3.2. Innateness Theory.........................................................................................................................................8
2.4. A Paradigm Shift: New Perspectives on Language Learning.....................................................................................9
2.4.1. Cognitive Theory...........................................................................................................................................9
2.4.2. Social Interactionist Theory.........................................................................................................................11
2.5. The Modern Era....................................................................................................................................................12
2.6. Modern Theories and Models of Language Acquisition........................................................... 14
2.6.1. Usage-Based Theory....................................................................................................................................14
2.6.2. Optimality Theory.......................................................................................................................................16
2.6.3. Native Language Magnet Model ..................................................................................................................16

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PART 1:
A Brief Introduction on Psycholinguistics
1.1. A Preliminary Introduction about Psycholinguistics
What is Psycholinguistics?
This is the question that has bothered the mind of scholars in the past sixty or so years since Transformational
Generative Grammar movement has forced the subject of the link between language and its relationship to
the human psychology to the forefront of linguistic studies. Essentially, psycholinguistics is the study of
language as it relates to the human mind. Some scholars see psycholinguistics as the study of how language
influences and is influenced by the human mind. Other scholars, especially those with psychological leaning,
tend to see psycholinguistics in terms of the experimental form of the study of human mind within the
laboratory and its ability to comprehend language. This has led to the division of the area of study into the
psycholinguistics and the psychology of language broad categorizations. It should be obvious that
psycholinguistics is not an easy concept to define.
1.2. Some Definitions of Psycholinguistics
Aitchison (Cited in Traxler & Gernsbacher, 2006 ) defines psycholinguistics as the study of language and
mind, which “aims to model the way the mind” works in “relation to language”. Looking at this definition, it
is obvious that her view of psycholinguistics is that which maps out the strategizing of language usage as well
as language comprehension. To her then, anything that the mind does in relation to language is
psycholinguistics. She further distinguishes between psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. Her point of
contention is that while neurolinguistics seeks to link language to brain functioning and its influence on
language, psycholinguistics measures the unobservable operations of the mind as it relates to the human
language experience. It is obvious then that the human brain relates to language in a physically observable
manner as is seen in the language of aphasics, while psycholinguistics has many nuances in linguistic
employment of humans that may not be possible to measure in a realistic manner. One could agree with this
observation as the manner in which medical science could measure language related task of humans is not
realistically possible in psycholinguistics. This has thus resulted in so many controversies concerning the
subject as it relates to its source in the work of psychologists and linguists.
Aitchison (Traxler & Gernsbacher, 2006) claims that psychologists’ attempts to study the language of humans
in the laboratory environment have proven unrealistic. This she notes has made it obvious that language is a
social phenomenon, which needs to be observed beyond the walls of the laboratory. For, according to her, it

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is effectively frustrating to psychologists who found that a realistic state of affairs in terms of finding how the
human mind works in relation to their language production and comprehension could not give the correct
data in a laboratory environment.
Another important issue that should be taken into consideration is that, while psychologists maintain that
laboratory study of the human language is the best way to elicit data for psycholinguistic study, linguists
continue to favor a descriptive study of the human language as they see the more naturalistic study of
language as providing best evidence for trustworthy data in psycholinguistic study. Even though psychologists
have always looked at laboratory experiments as the most acceptable, the reality is that linguistics that best fits
and likely to show a realistic state of affairs in terms of human language usage may be best elicited from
human beings in real situations. Descriptive linguistics thus provides the most sensible manner of collecting
psycholinguistic data. Having said this, one needs to also state that the linguist as a source of data is still
tenable. When one considers the way language death is spreading to the languages of the world, a time may
come, and as Crystal (2000) has even already reported, the time may already be with us, when there may be
only one speaker of a language of the world. And clearly, it is from the assumed internal processing of the
linguistic usages of the informant of that particular language that is on the verge of extinction that the
psycholinguistic operations would have to be deduced. As Lang (1994) asserts, language operates in a social
form even while presenting its psychological foundation. It is, however, this psychological foundation that
psycholinguistics seeks to unravel. To Hawkins (1994), the internal processing is an important means of
unraveling the meaning content in a linguistic context. Human psychology thus retains its important position
in human communication process. Vygotsky (1962) (Cited in Traxler & Gernsbacher, 2006) actually avers that
communication with language only makes meaning in relation to deciphering the communicative intentions of
the speaker. This essentially refers to the psychological basis of language use by both speaker and hearer.
Even though many scholars have found Chomsky’s (1965) cognitive base for language use objectionable on
many fronts, especially his claims of exclusive dominance of competence over performance in language usage,
the fact is that his recognition of the important role of the human mind in the psychological base for human
language performatives is very insightful. Halliday’s (cited in Traxler & Gernsbacher, 2006) ideational concept
appears to lean towards this view too even though he views the sociological foundation of language as a
stronger base of human language operations.
Psycholinguistics that means psychology of language is the study of the psycho- logical and neurological
factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language (Altman 2001).
As Daniel (2009) firmly notes, the two bases are important in true linguistic inquiries. The link between the
two foundations of language obviously affects the way we communicate. As such, linguistic acquisition,
processing, comprehension and production are all intertwined. In a nutshell, Psycholinguistics is simply

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defined as the study of the relationship between human language and human mind. Psycholinguistics is a
branch of cognitive science that investigates how an individual uses (e.g., produce and comprehend) and
acquire language (Treiman, Clifton, Meyer, & Wurm, 2003). Three important processes are investigated in
psycholinguistics: (1) language production, (2) language comprehension, and (3) language acquisition. From
many questions that psycholinguistics attempts to answer, it, specifically, addresses two questions (1)what
knowledge of language is needed for us to use language? and (2) what cognitive processes are involved in the
ordinary use of language?
1.3. Significance of the studying of psycholinguistic
According to Gernsbacher (1994), in psycholinguistics, researchers try to develop models to describe and
preferably predict specific linguistic behavior. The significance is that it captures all aspects of language use.
Ultimately psycholinguistics tries to have a model that describes how language is processed in our brain. As
Bates, Dale, & Thai (1995) put, the other significance of studying of psycholinguistics is that it uncovers
universal processes that governs the development, use, and breakdowns of language.
However to the extent that research in a given subfield of psycholinguistics is dominated by English, we
cannot distinguish between universal mechanisms and English-specific facts. Psycholinguistics present a
research on language development in children, language symptoms in brain injured adults, and language
processing in normal adults, in an order that reflects the impact that cross language variations have had on
theoretical framework within each field
( Duffy, Henderson, & Morris cited in Traxler & Gernsbacher, 2006).
2. Historical Perspectives on Psycholinguistics
2.1. The Starting Point of Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics as a scientific endeavor started as far back as the 18th century. Aitchison (1990) asserts that
the first known experiment in psycholinguistics was conducted by the German philosopher, Dietrich
Tiedemann. He used his son as the experiment. In his study, he carefully recorded the linguistic development
of his son along with other developmental characteristics that he exhibited. The first experimental record in
psycholinguistics is nonetheless credited to the British psychologist Francis Galton (1822-1911). Psychology
did not exist as a discipline in the first half of the nineteenth century. However, it was only recently, precisely
the middle of the 20th century, when the field got serious some attention from scholars. It was believed that
Noam Chomsky is the father of psycholinguistics. The general feeling and belief is that the field grew out of
the research efforts of Noam Chomsky in linguistics and philosophy of language (Aitchison, 1990).

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In agreement with Aitchison, Reber (1987, Cited in Traxler & Gernsbacher, 2006) asserts that
psycholinguistics has its beginning pre-20th century but nevertheless re-invented itself in the middle of the
century. By the 1950s and 1960s, the field has grown in leaps and bounds due to the assiduous work of such
scholars like Noam Chomsky, Zelig Harris, George Miller, Karl Lashley, Charles Osgood, John Carroll,
Thomas Sebeok, and Herbert Simon among a host of others. Though, in his view, which appears to be Roger
Brown’s as noted by Reber, psycholinguistics seems an aberration as a name to call the emerging field that
linked psychology to linguistics. It is better to have used such a term like psycho-linguistics, with a hyphen
separating and indicating the hybrid nature. In Reber’s view, psycholinguistics started to decline by the 1970s
as many questions seemingly trail it. He nonetheless acknowledged that scholarship of Chomsky did not
decline. Moreover, considering Chomsky is always in ‘bold relief’ when discussing the scholarship of
psycholinguistics, one finds it difficult to agree with his claim that the field is in decline.
As a scholar of language, you are therefore encouraged to explore the relevance of psycholinguistics to the
present linguistic studies. As much as many would like to discountenance the psychological aspect of linguistic
studies and subsume it to the sociological performance, Daniel (2008) proves that the relevance of psychology
to linguistic studies is without doubt paramount to the full understanding of linguistic inquiries.
2.2. The Factors That Led to the Emergence of the Psycholinguistic Field
A critical look at the emergence of psycholinguistics will indicate that some important factors are responsible
for its emergence. We looked at the beginning of the field. In this section, we intend to look at the factors that
led to the emergence of the field. Like any academic field of study, there are always problems that require
solutions. When it is said that necessity is the mother of invention, it appears the inventor of the saying did
not have psycholinguistics in mind. However, it is obvious that all fields of human endeavor are always
created out of a need to be met. The question then is, what factors could be said to be responsible for the
emergence of the psycholinguistics field?
2.2.1 Noam Chomsky’s Work in Cognitive Linguistics
One major factor is the work of Noam Chomsky. Aitchison (1990) asserts that a direct factor that affected the
development of psycholinguistics is the impactful work of Noam Chomsky in linguistics. His cognitive
linguistics greatly affected the way the field of psycholinguistics developed. Reber (1987) acknowledged the
influence of Chomsky in the development of psycholinguistics. It is thus obvious that the growth of
Transformational Generative Grammar, with its focus on the cognitive ability of the native speaker to
properly use their language brought the psychological basis of the linguistic performance into great focus.
Aitchison actually used the term ‘inspired’ (1990: 334) to describe the impact of Chomsky’s influence in

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directing research efforts of various scholars in this direction. In this wise, research into child language usage
became popular in that period.
Nonetheless, in line with the assertions of Reber (1987), the field began to suffer splintering and
disillusionment from different scholars and thus led to a loss of focus. Aitchison(1989) notes that many of the
Chomsky-inspired work could not be really given conclusive evidence to his theories and proposals. In
addition, psychologists became disillusioned with the fact that psycholinguistics focus was to test hypotheses
advanced by theoretical linguistics. Naturally, the field of psycholinguistics began to suffer from such negative
attitude. As such, recent years saw different people actually working with their mind on psycholinguistic study
but with diverse philosophical traditions as their base of approach.
2.2.2. Modularity of Language
The concept of Modularity, i.e., the degree to which the lexicon, syntax, and other neurocognitive domains
operate independently of one another, has played an important role in theorizing about brain architecture and
function, both in development and in adulthood. Despite the varying approaches to psycholinguistic study, it
is generally agreed among scholars that language is modular in nature. What this means is that Karmiloff-
Smith, A. (1992). Broadly speaking, modularity concerns the degree to which cognitive domains can be
thought of as separable, i.e., whether they function independently of one another.
Exactly what constitutes a module varies widely across disciplines and theoretical approaches. When one looks
at Chomsky’s (1981) work, a full description of the nature and manner in which these modules interact is
explained in details. It is thus a firm base for psycholinguistic inquiry as it exposes the manner in which these
linguistic components operate among one another. It could thus be seen that Chomsky remains an important
factor in the way the field continues to develop over the years.
Aitchison (1990) however notes that despite this apparent agreement among scholars on the modular nature
of the human speech, the integration of the modules has become a point of contest among scholars of
language. While some scholars believe that these components are separate with links between them, others are
of the view that encapsulation is the watchword in which each module works automatically and
independently, with its content sealed off from that of other modules.
The issue nevertheless is that scholarship does not have an end. You may therefore look at the two arguments
above and research into that which you think is the most likely in your own language. Remember that the
human language is universal in nature; this is an important point that scholars cannot dispute over. You can
thus apply these principles to your own language and ascertain the veracity of these claims.
2.3. Historical Models and Theories of Language Acquisition

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2.3.1. Behaviourist Theory
In 1957, a piece of literature appeared that would come to affect how we view language, human behavior and
language learning. B.F Skinner's Verbal Behaviour (1957) applied a functional analysis approach to analyze
language behavior in terms of their natural occurrence in response to environmental circumstances and the
effects they have on human interactions( McLaughlin, 2010). Skinner's behavior learning approach relies on
the components of classical, which involves unconditioned and conditioned stimuli, and operant conditioning
but particularly the elements of operational conditioning. Operational conditioning refers to a method of
learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Behavior operates on the environment to
bring about favorable consequences or avoid adverse ones. These same ideas of operant conditioning can also
be applied to language acquisition because Skinner believed that language could be treated like any other kind
of cognitive behavior. According to the behaviorist theory, language learning is a process of habit formation
that involves a period of trial and error where the child tries and fails to use correct language until it succeeds.
Infants also have human role models in their environment that provide the stimuli and rewards required for
operant conditioning. For example, if a child starts babblings, which resembles appropriate words, then his or
her babbling will be rewarded by a parent or loved one by positive reinforcement such as a smile or clap. Since
the babblings were rewarded, this reward reinforces further articulations of the same sort into groupings of
syllables and words in a similar situation (Demirezen, 1988). Children also utter words because they cause
adults to give them the things they want and they will only be given what they want once the adult has trained
or shaped the child through reinforcement and rewards speech close to that of adult speech. Before long
children will take on the imitation or modeling component of Skinner's theory of language acquisition in
which children learn to speak by copying the utterances heard around them and by having their responses
strengthened by the repetitions, corrections and other reactions that adults provide. However, before a child
can begin to speak, they first start by listening to the sounds in their environment for the first years of their
life. Gradually, the child learns to associate certain sounds with certain situations such as the sound of
endearment a mother produces when feeding her child. These sounds then become pleasurable for the child
on their own without being accompanied by food and eventually the child will attempt to imitate these sounds
to invite the attention of his mother or another adult. If these sounds resemble that of adult language, the
mother will respond with reward and the operant conditioning process begins.
2.3.2. Innateness Theory
Noam Chomsky's innateness or nativists theory proposes that children have an inborn or innate faculty for
language acquisition that is biologically determined. According to Goodluck (1991), nativists view language as

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a fundamental part of the human genome, as a trait that makes humans human, and its acquisition is a natural
part of maturation. It seems that the human species has evolved a brain whose neural circuits contain
linguistic information at birth and this natural predisposition to learn language is triggered by hearing speech.
The child's brain is then able to interpret what she or he hears according to the underlying principles or
structures it already contains (Linden, 2007). Chomsky has determined that being biologically prepared to
acquire language regardless of setting is due to the child's language acquisition device (LAD), which is used as a
mechanism for working out the rules of language. Chomsky believed that all human languages share common
principles, such as all languages have verbs and nouns, and it was the child's task to establish how the specific
language she or he hears expresses these underlying principles. For example, the LAD already contains the
concept of verb tense and so by listening to word forms such as "worked" or "played". The child will then
form a hypothesis that the past tense of verbs are formed by adding the sound /d/,/t/ or /id/ to the base
form. Yang (2006) also believes that children also initially possess, then subsequently develop, an innate
understanding or hypothesis about grammar regardless of where they are raised. According to Chomsky,
infants acquire grammar because it is a universal property of language, an inborn development, and has coined
these fundamental grammatical ideas that all humans have as universal grammar (UG). Children under the age of
three usually don't speak in full sentences and instead say things like "want cookie" but yet you would still not
hear them say things like "want my" or "I cookie" because statements like this would break the syntactic
structure of the phrase, a component of universal grammar. Another argument of the nativist or innate theory
is that there is a critical period for language acquisition, which is a time frame during which environmental
exposure is needed to stimulate an innate trait. Linguist Eric Lenneberg in 1964 postulated that the critical
period of language acquisition ends around the age of 12 years. He believed that if no language was learned
before then, it could never be learned in a normal and functional sense. It was termed the critical period
hypothesis and since then there has been a few case examples of individuals being subject to such
circumstances such as the girl known as Genie who was imposed to an abusive environment, which didn't
allow her to develop language skills.
2.4. A Paradigm Shift: New Perspectives on Language Learning
2.4.1. Cognitive Theory
Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist that was famous for his four stages of cognitive development for
children, which included the development of language. However, children do not think like adults and so
before they can begin to develop language they must first actively construct their own understanding of the
world through their interactions with their environment. A child has to understand a concept before he or she

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can acquire the particular language which expresses that concept. For example, a child first becomes aware of
a concept such as relative size and only afterward do they acquire the words and patterns to convey that
concept. Essentially it is impossible for a young child to voice concepts that are unknown to them and
therefore once a child learns about their environment then they can map language onto their prior experience.
An infant's experience of a cat is that it meows, is furry and eats from a bowl in the kitchen; hence they
develop the concept of cat first and then learns to map the word "kitty" onto that concept. Language is only
one of the many human mental or cognitive activities and many cognitivists believe that language emerges
within the context of other general cognitive abilities like memory, attention and problem solving because it is
a part of their broader intellectual development. However, according to Goodluck (1991), once language does
emerge it is usually within certain stages and children go through these stages in a fixed order that is universal
in all children. There is a consistent order of mastery of the most common function morphemes in a language
and simple ideas are expressed earlier than more complex ones even if they are more grammatically
complicated. Piaget's cognitive theory states that, children's language reflects the development of their logical
thinking and reasoning skills in stages, with each period having a specific name and age reference. There are
four stages of Piaget's cognitive development theory, each involving a different aspect of language acquisition:
Sensory-Motor Period: (birth to 2 years) Children are born with "action schemas" to "assimilate"
information about the world such as sucking or grasping. During the sensory-motor period, children's
language is "egocentric" and they talk either for themselves or for the pleasure of associating anyone who
happens to be there with the activity of the moment
Pre-Operational Period:(2 years to 7) Children's language makes rapid progress and the development of
their "mental schema" lets them quickly "accommodate" new words and situations. Children's language
becomes "symbolic" allowing them to talk beyond the "here and now" and to talk about things such as the
past, future and feelings.
Egocentrism: Involves "animism" which refers to young children's tendency to consider everything,
including inanimate objects, as being alive. Language is considered egocentric because they see things purely
from their own perspective.
Operational Period: (7 to 11 years) and (11 years to adulthood) Piaget divides this period into two parts: the
period of concrete operations and the period of formal operations. Language at this stage reveals the
movement of their thinking from immature to mature and from illogical to logical. They are also able to "de-

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center" or view things from a perspective other than their own. It is at this point that children's language
becomes "socialized" and includes things such as
Chomsky’s view adheres to a natavistic approach in that he believes that certain skills or abilities are hard
wired into the brain at birth. He argues that humans are born with certain cognitive abilities that enable them
to learn and acquire certain skills. “For example, children demonstrate a facility for acquiring spoken language
but require intense training to learn to read and write” (Slobin, 2004). Nativism enables a child to grow
exponentially once spoken language has been realized at a significant level. Thus, without cognition, full
understanding and realization of mental processes is impossible. Perception is influenced by emotion and
cultural background. What appears one way to one individual will vary greatly to the next.
Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways. It accepts the use of
the scientific method, and generally rejects introspection as a valid method of investigation - in contrast with
such approaches as Freudian psychology. Additionally, it explicitly acknowledges the existence of internal
mental states (such as belief, desire, idea, knowledge, and motivation) (Schunk, 2008). Understandably, many
scientists and researchers argue that the empirical nature of cognitive psychology is at war with the
immeasurable mental states of cognitive thought. However, given the very functioning of the brain in relation
to higher thinking, it is a natural progression from empiricism to cognition.
2.4.2. Social Interactionist Theory
Vygotsky's social interaction theory incorporates nurture arguments in that children can be influenced by their
environment as well as the language input children receive from their care-givers. Although the theories of
Skinner, Chomsky and Piaget are all very different and very important in their own contexts, they do not
necessarily take into account the fact that children do not encounter language in isolation. The child is a little
linguist analyzing language from randomly encountered adult utterances. The interaction theory proposes that
language exists for the purpose of communication and can only be learned in the context of interaction with
adults and older children. It stresses the importance of the environment and culture in which the language is
being learned during early childhood development because this social interaction is what first provides the
child with the means of making sense of their own behaviour and how they think about the surrounding
world. According to Williamson (2008), children can eventually use their own internal speech to direct their
own behaviour in much the same way that their parents' speech once directed their behaviour. Speech to
infants is marked by a slower rate, exaggerated intonation, high frequency, repetition, simple syntax and
concrete vocabulary. This tailored articulation used by care-givers to young children to maximize phonemic
contrasts and pronunciation of correct forms is known as child-directed speech (CDS). Vygotsky also developed

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the concepts of private speech which is when children must speak to themselves in a self guiding and
directing way- initially out loud and later internally and the zone of proximal development which refers to
the tasks a child is unable to complete alone but is able to complete with the assistance of an adult. The
attention and time that a mother spends talking about topics that the child is already focused on highly
correlates with early vocabulary size. In the early stages of a child`s life this is usually done through motherese
or ``baby talk`` which may allow children to ``bootstrap`` their progress in language acquisition (Williamson,
2008). The mother and father also provide ritualized scenarios, such as having a bath or getting dressed, in
which the phases of interaction are rapidly recognized and predicted by the infant. The utterances of the
mother and father during the activities are ritualized and predictable so that the child is gradually moved to an
active position where they take over the movements of the care-taker and eventually the ritualized language as
well. Basically the care-giver is providing comprehensible contexts in which the child can acquire language
(Mason, 1980). Another influential researcher of the interaction theory is Jerome Bruner who elaborated and
revised the details of the theory over a number of years and also introduced the term Language Acquisition
Support System (LASS), which refers to the child`s immediate adult entourage but in the fuller sense points to
the child`s culture as a whole in which they are born. Adults adapt their behavior towards children to
construct a protected world in which the child is gradually inclined to take part in a growing number of
scenarios and scripts and in this way the child is lead gradually further and further into language. However,
one must remember that although our social context provides support for language acquisition, it does not
directly provide the knowledge that is necessary to acquire language and this perhaps where a child`s innate
abilities come into play.
2.5. The Modern Era
Just as psychology as a science is traditionally traced to the founding of Wundt’s laboratory in Leipzig, modern
(largely Anglo-Saxon) psycholinguistics has its quasi-mythical founding moment. Actually, there are three
related moments. Two seminars sponsored by the Social Science Research Council (US) and the subsequent
publication of the original version of Osgood and Sebeok’s (1965) Psycholinguistics: A survey of theory and research
problems. A leading figure in the instigation and organization of these seminars was John B. Carroll, editor of
the collected papers of Benjamin Lee Whorf (Carroll, 1956), and a psychologist who is associated with
attempts to establish the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis using psychological techniques. The leading idea was
“reuniting linguistics and psychology” (Osgood & Sebeok, 1965), thus recognizing that they had previously
been much closer than they were in 1950. John W. Gardner, another psychologist who played a leading role in
setting up the seminars, hoped that the reunion would have profound implications for problems in education.

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In retrospect, the seminars and Osgood and Sebeok’s survey have an almost surreal feel to them. There is
little, if any, hint of the impending impact of Chomsky’s work on either linguistics itself or psycholinguistics.
Of the three “approaches to language behavior” identified, one is the linguistic approach and the other two
are the learning theory approach (behaviorism) and the information theory approach. Both information theory
and learning theory were very quickly dismissed, in the period following the seminars, as too narrow to
encompass language behavior. While learning theory approaches never recovered from withering attacks by
Chomsky (1959), Fodor (1965) and others, information theory has been important for cognitive psychology
more generally. It influenced work on attention, short-term memory and, to some extent work on language –
one thinks of Miller and Selfridge’s (1950) use of texts with different orders of approximation to English, and
Yngve’s (1962) work on transition probabilities. One might even argue that it is (however tenuously!) linked to
the notion of information processing, which was hugely important in the cognitive revolution of the 1950s
and 1960s.
Miller, information theory’s most important psychological proponent, was soon lured away from that
approach by the idea that a theory like that outlined in Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures (1957) could form the
basis of a processing theory (see, e.g., Miller & Chomsky, 1963). This paper is the origin of a set of ideas that
later came to be dubbed as the Derivational Theory of Complexity.
The psychological plausibility of a transformational model of the language user would be strengthened, of
course, if it could be shown that our performance on tasks requiring an appreciation of the structure of
transformed sentences is some function of the nature, number and complexity of the grammatical
transformations involved (Miller & Chomsky, 1963, p. 481). Unfortunately the Derivational Theory was never
formulated in a testable way, and it is unclear how it could be (Garnham, 1983).
The 1965 reprint of Osgood and Sebeok’s survey contains a follow-up Survey of Psycholinguistic Research,
1954–1964 by A. Richard Diebold Jr. (1965) Its bibliography, which runs to nearly 16 pages, is informative.
There are references to work on language and thought, language acquisition, verbal learning, and information
theory as represented at the original meetings. There are a good many references to work by linguists,
including Chomsky, and there is mention of the early experimental work inspired by Chomsky’s linguistic
theory. What is noticeable, however, is how few of these references would appear in a modern text on
psycholinguistics. Psycholinguistics as we know it really got started in the mid-to late 1960s.
As we have already mentioned, the first major wave of work looked at the psychological reality of
transformations and led to the Derivational Theory of Complexity. Chomsky’s ideas were also influential in
empirical work on language acquisition (e.g., Roger Brown’s First Language project, see Brown, 1973, and the
notion of the Logical Problem of Language Acquisition, see Baker & McCarthy, 1981), and on the biological
foundations of language (e.g., Lenneberg, 1967). Chomsky, notoriously, soon backed away from the idea that

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experimental work in psychology might have implications for linguistic theory. And, indeed, other linguists,
including contemporary cognitive linguists, who claim that cognitive considerations are important for
language, have proved similarly reluctant to engage with psychological methods (as opposed to psychological
considerations). Reber’s (1987) claim of a “(surprisingly rapid) fall of psycholinguistics” is misleading in that
all it is really saying is that the particularly strong link between Chomskyan theory and psychological research
on language, which existed briefly in the 1960s, was broken and it was not replaced by a similar link to another
framework. Therefore, for example, neither Generative Semantics, nor any of the Phrase Structure Grammars
of the 1970s and 1980s, both of which have an obvious psychological appeal, have inspired much in the way
of psycholinguistic research. And neither, as we have already said, has cognitive linguistics. Reber’s comments
do, however, open a debate about the link between linguistics and psychology and the extent to which the
psychology of language should be psycholinguistics. Can language use be explained partly or wholly in terms
of general cognitive principles, or do we have special language processing devices? And if the latter, what
linguistic concepts are needed to describe them? We do not have answers to these questions. We believe that
proper descriptions of languages are important for the psychology of language, but the relation between
linguistic descriptions and descriptions of processing mechanisms is likely to be a complex one. Nevertheless,
even without definitive answers, work on sentence processing has continued apace in the 1980s and 1990s and
through into the 21st century.
Another major influence on psycholinguistic research from the 1960s was work in artificial intelligence, and in
particular research from Minsky’s (1968) semantic information processing framework, which culminated, as
far as language processing was concerned, with Terry Winograd’s (1972) SHRDLU. The other major influence
from the semantic information processing literature on psycholinguistics research was Ross Quillian’s (1968)
notion of a semantic network for representing meaning. Perhaps more generally influential, first in setting
unreasonable expectations for AI, and then for the backlash against it, was Joseph Weizenbaum’s (1966)
ELIZA program, in its various manifestations.
The mental model theory (Johnson-Laird, 1983) has revolutionized thinking about text meaning. For example,
it gives a much clearer idea of what is meant by the integration of information in comprehension than the
“bizarre” Bransford and Franks (1971) experiment. There is a great deal more to be learned about the
understanding of extended texts.
2.6. Modern Theories and Models of Language Acquisition
2.6.1. Usage-Based Theory
According to Tomasello (2003), the usage-based approach to linguistic communication may be summarized
in the two aphorisms:

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• Meaning is use
• Structure emerges from use
The usage-based theory of language suggests that children initially build up their language through very
concrete constructions based around individual words or frames on the basis of the speech they hear and use.
Basically this means, according to Tomasello (2003) the developer of the theory, that children learn language
from their language experiences and a language structure emerges from language use. The usage-based theory
takes constructions, which are direct form meaning pairings, to be the basic units of grammar and believe that
children learn constructions by first mastering specific instances before going on to generalize and use the
constructions productively with other lexical items. Constructions gradually become more general and more
abstract during the third and fourth years of life and grammar emerges as the speakers of a language create
linguistic constructions out of recurring sequences of symbols (Tomasello, 2003). Tomasello (2003) also
emphasizes the effects of frequency of use on cognitive representations, as patterns that are repeated for
communicative reasons seem to become automated and conventionalized. Research by Saxton (2010)
indicates that, the more often a linguistic form occurs in the input, the more often it is experienced by the
child and the stronger the child's representation of it becomes. It will then be activated more easily when using
it themselves on subsequent occasions. Therefore, the child's mental representation is reinforced or
increasingly entrenched and the more deeply entrenched a structure is, the more likely it becomes that this will
form the basis of the child's speech output. Usage-based linguistics holds that language use shapes
entrenchment through frequency repetitions of usage, but there are separable effects of token frequency and
type frequency(Doughty & Long, 2003). According to Doughty and Long (2003), token frequency is how
often in the input particular words or specific phrases appear and type frequency counts how many different
lexical items a certain pattern or construction is applicable to. Linguistic forms with high token frequency will
be learned early and lead to more strongly entrenched linguistic representations and seems to protect the child
from error. Token frequency also has a strong influence on child learning and you often see a close
relationship between adult input and child output (Saxton, 2010). Type frequency determines productivity
because high type frequency ensures that a construction is used frequently, thus strengthening its
representational schema and making it more accessible for further use with new items. Also the more items
the category must cover, the more general are its criteria features, and the more likely it is to extend to new
items (Doughty & Long, 2003). Another term coined in the usage-based theory is pre-emption, which is an
anti-frequency mechanism that suggests that children who experiences a verb in a rare construction this will
cause the child to avoid using that verb in a more common structure.

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2.6.2. Optimality Theory
Optimality Theory (OT) was originally proposed by Prince and Smolensky (cited in Traxler
Gernsbacher, 2006). OT suggests that the observed forms of language arise from the interaction between
conflicting constraints and like other models of linguistics, contain an input and an output and a relation
between the two. A constraint is a structural requirement that may be either satisfied or violated by an output
form and a surface form. A constraint is considered optimal if it incurs the least serious violations of a set of
constraints, taking into account their hierarchical ranking. In optimality theory, the essence of both language
learning in general (learnability) and language acquisition (actual development children go through) entails the
rankings of constraints from an initial state of the grammar to the language specific ranking of the target
grammar (McCarthy, 2004). OT is a development of generative grammar, a theory sharing the quest for
universal principles such as universal grammar but differs from the theory proposed by Chomsky because
optimality theory believes that these universal constraints are violable (Kager,1999). Languages are able to
differ in their ranking of constraints by giving priorities to some constraints over others. Language acquisition
can be described as the process of adjusting the ranking of these constraints that are considered universal.
According to Archangeli & Langendoen (1997, cited in Traxler Gernsbacher, 2006), these constraints include
constraints governing aspects of phonology, such as syllabification constraints, constraints governing
morphology and constraints that determine the correct syntactic properties of a language. There is also one
family of constraints whose properties cut across all subdisciplinary domains, called the faithfulness constraints,
which say that input and output are identical. Faithfulness is the general requirement for linguistic forms to be
realized as close as possible to their lexical "basic forms" and violations of faithfulness lead to differences
between input and output (Archangeli & Langendon, 1997). Another term coined by the optimality theory is
markedness, which refers to the continuum that language-universal and language-specific properties rest on,
with completely unmarked properties being those found in virtually all languages and extremely marked
properties being found quite rarely. However markedness embodies universality in a "soft" sense, with
violations of universality existing between languages.
2.6.3. Native Language Magnet Model
Young children learn their mother tongue rapidly and effortlessly, following similar developmental paths
regardless of culture. How infants accomplish this task has become the focus of debate especially for Patricia
Kuhl who has developed the Native Language Magnet Model to help explain how infants at birth can hear all
the phonetic distinctions used in the world's languages. According to Kuhl and colleagues (2005), to acquire a
language, infants have to discover which phonetic distinctions will be utilized in the language of their culture
and do so by discriminating among virtually all the phonetic units of the world's languages. During the first

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year of life, prior to the acquisition of word meaning, infants begin to perceive speech by forming perceptual
maps of the speech they hear in their environment. Kuhl's (2005) research focused on the mechanism
underlying the development transition from an infants' universal phonetic capacity to native phonetic
discrimination. They used ERP brain measure of infants' native and non-native speech perception in infancy
to predict language in 2nd and 3rd years of life. Although we still remain capable of discriminating non native
phonetic contrasts as we age, it is at a reduced level when compared with native contrasts. The idea that more
than selection is involved in development phonetic perception has been clearly demonstrated by experimental
findings showing that native language phonetic perception shows a significant improvement between 6 and 12
months of age. Previous studies had shown native language improvement after 12 months of age and before
adulthood but newer studies such as Kuhl's and colleagues has gone beyond selection in explaining
developmental change in infants' perception of speech. The Native Language Magnet Model (NLM) proposed
by Kuhl (1994, 2000) focuses on infants' native phonetic categories and how they could be structured through
ambient language experience. The NLM specified three phases in development:
Phase 1- infants are capable of differentiating all the sounds of human speech and abilities are derived from
their general auditory processing mechanisms rather than from a speech-specific mechanism.
Phase 2- infants' sensitivity to the distributional properties of linguistic input produces phonetic
representations. Experience accumulates and the representations most often activated begin to function as
perceptual magnets for other members of the category.
Phase 3- The perception termed perceptual magnet effect produces facilitation in native and a reduction in
foreign language phonetic abilities.
Recently Kuhl's research has initiated the revision of the NLM and expanded the model to include native
language neural commitment, which explains effects of language experience on the brain. Native language
neural commitment describes the brain's early coding of language and how it affects our subsequent abilities
to learn the phonetic scheme of a new language. This is due to the fact that initial language exposure causes
physical changes in neural tissue that reflects the statistical perceptual properties of language input (Kuhl
2005). The neural networks then become committed to the patterns of native language speech. Another
finding by Kuhl (2008) that has expanded the Native Language Magnet Model has been the research
indicating that both native and non-native performances at 7 months of age predicted future language abilities
but in opposite directions. Better native phonetic perception at 7 months of age predicted accelerated
language development at between 14 and 30 months whereas better non-native performance at 7 months

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predicted slower language development at 14 and 30 months. Results supported the view that the ability to
discriminate non-native phonetic contrasts reflects the degree to which the brain remains in the initial state,
open and uncommitted to native language speech patterns.
3. FUTURE DIRECTIONS
The original handbook chapter on Future Directions opened with the statement that there is nothing more
foolish than trying to predict the Future (Traxler & Gernsbacher, 2006). And that is still as true today as it was
then (although it is a fair bet that we shall see much more from the laboratories of cognitive neuroscientists).
Instead of trying to predict the future we pick some issues in psycholinguistics that we feel call out for future
study. The issues are not in any way intended to be exclusive. They are just issues that we feel are important,
unresolved and relate directly to the primary goal of psycholinguistics in elucidating psychological mechanisms
of language use.
The first issue concerns the range of language use addressed by the subject. The modern era of
psycholinguistics has concentrated almost exclusively on one kind of language use: namely, that associated
with monologue settings. Yet, the most natural and basic form of language use is dialogue: Every language
user, including young children and illiterate adults, can hold a conversation, yet reading, writing, preparing
speeches and even listening to speeches are far from universal skills. Therefore, we feel that a central goal of
psycholinguistics of the future should be to provide an account of the basic processing mechanisms that are
employed during natural dialogue.
The second issue we consider also concerns scope, but in this case in relation to the more conventional topic
of reading comprehension, and the extent to which standard psycholinguistic approaches do justice to the
complexity of texts that people read in everyday life. In both cases the issue is about taking seriously how
language processing in the psycholinguistic sense relates to the wide range of uses to which language may be
put.