Psycholinguistics is the interdisciplinary study of the psychological and neurobiological factors involved in language. It has roots in education and philosophy and examines how the brain processes language from speech sounds to meaning. Psycholinguistics is divided into subfields that correspond to different components of language, such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Rationalism holds that language is learned through logical reasoning abilities innate to humans. Cognitive approaches view language as part of broader human cognitive capacities and reject the behaviorist idea that language is learned through conditioning alone.

1. Psycholinguistics
Applied Linguistics
Junaid
junaidamjed@gmail.com
Abstract
Rationalistic and Cognitive approaches in concern to Psycholinguistics

2. 1 Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that
enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial attacks into
psycholinguistics were largely philosophical or educational schools of thought, due mainly to their
location in departments other than applied sciences (e.g., organized data on how the human brain
functioned). Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics,
and information science to study how the brain processes language, and less so the known
processes of social sciences, human development, communication theories and child growth,
among others. There are a number of sub disciplines with non-invasive techniques for studying
the neurological workings of the brain; for example, neurolinguistics has become a field in its own
right.
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. Developmental psycholinguistics studies children's ability to learn
language.
Psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field. Hence, it is studied by researchers from a
variety of different backgrounds, such as psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, and speech
and language pathology.
Subdivisions in psycholinguistics are also made based on the different components that make up
human language.
Linguistics-related areas:
 Phonetics and phonology are concerned with the study of speech sounds. Within
psycholinguistics, research focuses on how the brain processes and understands these
sounds.
 Morphology is the study of word structures, especially the relationships between related
words (such as dog and dogs) and the formation of words based on rules (such as plural
formation).
 Syntax is the study of the patterns which dictate how words are combined to form
sentences.
 Semantics deals with the meaning of words and sentences. Where syntax is concerned with
the formal structure of sentences, semantics deals with the actual meaning of sentences.
 Pragmatics is concerned with the role of context in the interpretation of meaning.
2 Rationalist
Rational is something that can be accepted by the mind and thoughts are accepted in accordance
with the ability of the brain. Things that are rational (sensible) is a matter that in the process can be
understood in accordance with reality and reality that exist. Usually the word rational is intended for
one thing or activity that makes sense and is well received by the community. Also means that rational
norms is standard in the community and has become a regular and permanent.
Plato argues that humans acquire knowledge by concluding with logical way. Rationalist genre
known as the mentalist genre, in which one character is Noam Chomsky. This genre is also called
Chomsky genre. Which since 1957 brought important changes in the language.
The rationalist argued that every language has a same way in forming. Almost every language has
a sound system, word formation system, the structure of time, at and vocabulary.
The rationalists argue also that the language must be learned and the only human
who could learn the language (Hidayat, 1944:65).

3. Therefore the rationalist develop principles:
1. A living language is characterized by creativity demanded by the rules.
2. Grammar rules related to the real behavior of psychiatric.
3. Humans are the only creatures who learn the language.
4. Living language is a language that can be used in thinking.
3 Cognitivist
Cognitive psychology is one of branch of cognitive psychology approach to understand
human behavior. Cognitive psychology learn about how people receive, perceive, learn, reason,
remember and think about the information.
Cognitive psycholinguistic refers to empirical findings from cognitive psychology to explain
the mental processes that underlie the acquisition, storage, production and comprehension of
speech and writing.
Cognitive Linguistics argues that there is no separation between knowledge of language with
thought or cognition. Cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics is the relation between language
and thought.
Cognitive linguistic considers that language behavior is part of the cognitive abilities that
allow humans to learn something. Cognitive linguistic considers that all the structure of language
is a symbol so, in any language form and meaning are considered to have no form without meaning.
The cognitivists reject the view of the Behaviourist. They believe that "all people learn the
language, not because they have the same conditioning process, but because they have an innate
capacity that enables them to acquire the language as a normal maturation process.