This document defines and describes several key terms related to linguistics and language learning: - Linguistics is defined as the study of language, including areas like phonetics, morphology, and syntax. Applied linguistics deals with language use in professional settings and seeks to solve real-world problems. - Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior, including areas like cognitive psychology which examines mental processes like perception, memory, and learning. - Other terms defined include schema, psycholinguistics, second language acquisition, universal grammar, monitor theory, behaviorism, and connectionism. Interactionism specifically examines the interplay between the linguistic environment and a child's mental abilities in first and second language acquisition

1. Useful Terms
Linguistics: The study of the nature, structure, and variation of
language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax,
semantics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics. (The American
Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.)
Applied Linguistics:"[A]pplied linguistics is an area of work that
deals with language use in professional settings, translation,
speech pathology, literacy, and language education; and it is not
merely the application of linguistic knowledge to such settings
but is a semiautonomous and interdisciplinary . . . domain of work
that draws on but is not dependent on areas such as sociology,
education, anthropology, cultural studies, and psychology."
(Alastair Pennycook, Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical
Introduction. Routledge, 2001).
Applied Linguistics (AL) provides the theoretical and
descriptive foundations for the investigation and solution of
language-related problems, especially those of language education
(first-language, second-language and foreign-language teaching and
learning), but also problems of translation and interpretation,
lexicography, forensic linguistics and (perhaps) clinical
linguistics. As far as the Research Assessment Exercise is
concerned, research in AL is assessed by the Linguistics panel,
and covers areas of basic research in the general territory of
Linguistics - parts of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics,
language acquisition - as well as language-related research in
specialized areas such as pedagogy and the theories of translation
and lexicography. The main distinguishing characteristic of AL is
its concern with professional activities whose aim is to solve
`real-world' language-based problems, which means that research
touches on a particularly wide range of issues - psychological,
pedagogical, social, political and economic as well as linguistic.
As a consequence, AL research tends to be interdisciplinary.
It is generally agreed that in spite of its name AL is not
simply the `application' of research done in Linguistics. On the
one hand, AL has to look beyond Linguistics for relevant research
and theory, so AL research often involves the synthesis of
research from a variety of disciplines, including Linguistics. On
the other hand, AL has been responsible for the development of

2. original research in a number of areas of Linguistics - e.g.
bilingualism, literacy, genre.
Beyond this agreement, there is at least as much disagreement
within AL as within Linguistics about fundamental issues of theory
and method, which leads (among other things) to differences of
opinion about the relationships between the two disciplines.(An
attempt at definition by Dick Hudson)
Psychology: Psychology is both an applied and academic field that
studies the human mind and behavior. Research in psychology seeks
to understand and explain thought, emotion and behavior.
Applications of psychology include mental health treatment,
performance enhancement, self-help, ergonomics and many other
areas affecting health and daily life.
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. The
discipline embraces all aspects of the human experience — from the
functions of the brain to the actions of nations, from child
development to care for the aged. In every conceivable setting
from scientific research centers to mental health care services,
"the understanding of behavior" is the enterprise of
psychologists. (APA)
Cognitive Psychology: Cognitive psychology is the branch of
psychology that studies mental processes including how people
think, perceive, remember and learn. As part of the larger field of
cognitive science, this branch of psychology is related to other
disciplines including neuroscience, philosophy and linguistics.
The core focus of cognitive psychology is on how people acquire,
process and store information. There are numerous practical
applications for cognitive research, such as improving memory,
increasing decision-making accuracy and structuring educational
curricula to enhance learning.
Until the 1950s, behaviorism was the dominant school of
thought in psychology. Between 1950 and 1970, the tide began to
shift against behavioral psychology to focus on topics such as
attention, memory and problem-solving. Often referred to as the
cognitive revolution, this period generated considerable research
including processing models, cognitive research methods and the
first use of the term "cognitive psychology."
The term "cognitive psychology" was first used in 1967 by
American psychologist Ulric Neisser in his book Cognitive
Psychology. According to Neisser, cognition involves "all

3. processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced,
elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. It is concerned with
these processes even when they operate in the absence of relevant
stimulation, as in images and hallucinations... Given such a
sweeping definition, it is apparent that cognition is involved in
everything a human being might possibly do; that every
psychological phenomenon is a cognitive phenomenon."
Schema:A schema is a cognitive framework or concept that helps
organize and interpret information. Schemas can be useful, because
they allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting a vast amount of
information. However, these mental frameworks also cause us to
exclude pertinent information in favor of information that confirms
our pre-existing beliefs and ideas. Schemas can contribute to
stereotypes and make it difficult to retain new information that
does not conform to our established schemas.
The History of Schemas
The use of schemas as a basic concept was first used by a British
psychologist named Frederic Bartlett as part of his learning
theory which suggested that our understanding of the world is
formed by a network of abstract mental structures.
Theorist Jean Piaget introduced the term schema and its use
was popularized through his work. According to his stage theory of
cognitive development, children go through a series of stages of
intellectual development. In Piaget's theory, a schema is both the
category of knowledge as well as the process of acquiring that
knowledge. As experiences happen and new information is presented,
new schemas are developed and old schemas are changed or modified.
Schema Examples
For example, a young child may first develop a schema for a
horse. She knows that a horse is large, has hair, four legs and a
tail. When the little girl encounters a cow for the first time, she
might initially call it a horse. After all, it fits in with her
schema for the characteristics of a horse; it is a large animal
that has hair, four legs and a tail. Once she is told that this is
a different animal called a cow, she will modify her existing
schema for a horse and create a new schema for a cow.
Now, let's imagine that this very young girl encounters a
miniature horse for the first time and mistakenly identifies it as a
dog. Her parents explain to her that the animal is actually a very

4. small type of horse, so the little girl must this time modify her
existing schema for horses. She now realizes that while some
horses are very large animals, others can be very small. Through
her new experiences, her existing schemas are modified and new
information is learned.
Problems With Schemas
While the use of schemas to learn in most situations occurs
automatically or with little effort, sometimes an existing schema
can actually hinder the learning of new information. Prejudice is
one example of schema that prevents people from seeing the world as
it really is and inhibits them from taking in new information. By
holding certain beliefs about a particular group of people, this
existing schema may cause people to interpret situations
incorrectly. When an event happens that challenges these existing
beliefs, people may come up with alternative explanations that
uphold and support their existing schema instead of adapting or
changing their beliefs
Psycholinguistics: Psycholinguists study how word meaning, sentence
meaning, and discourse meaning are computed and represented in the
mind. 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. . . .
In general, psycholinguistic studies have revealed that many
of the concepts employed in the analysis of sound structure, word
structure, and sentence structure also play a role in language
processing. However, an account of language processing also
requires that we understand how these linguistic concepts interact
with other aspects of human processing to enable language
production and comprehension.
(William O'Grady, et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An
Introduction. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001)
Psycholinguistics . . . draws on ideas and knowledge from a
number of associated areas, such as phonetics, semantics and pure
linguistics. There is a constant exchange of information between
psycholinguists and those working in neurolinguistics, who study
how language is represented in the brain. There are also close
links with studies in artificial intelligence. Indeed, much of the
early interest in language processing derived from the AI goals of
designing computer programs that can turn speech into writing and

5. programs that can recognize the human voice."
(John Field, Psycholinguistics: A Resource Book for Students.
Routledge, 2003)
Psycholinguistics has classically focused on button press
tasks and reaction time experiments from which cognitive processes
are being inferred. The advent of neuroimaging opened new research
perspectives for the psycholinguist as it became possible to look
at the neuronal mass activity that underlies language processing.
Studies of brain correlates of psycholinguistic processes can
complement behavioral results, and in some cases . . . can lead to
direct information about the basis of psycholinguistic processes.
(Friedmann Pulvermüller, "Word Processing in the Brain as Revealed
by Neurophysiological Imaging." The Oxford Handbook of
Psycholinguistics, ed. by M. Gareth Gaskell. Oxford Univ. Press,
2009)
SLA or Second Language Acquisition: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.
Universal Grammar: the study of general principles believed to
underlie the grammatical phenomena of all languages; also : such
principles viewed as part of an innate human capacity for learning
a language.
In linguistics, the theory of universal grammar holds that
there are certain fundamental grammatical ideas which all humans
possess, without having to learn them. Universal grammar acts as a
way to explain how language acquisition works in humans, by
showing the most basic rules that all languages have to follow.
The basic idea of universal grammar, that there are foundational
rules in common among all humans, has been around since the 13th
century. In the following centuries this idea led many
philosophers to try to design a perfect language from the ground
up, taking into account what they felt were the core principles of
all languages.
The most famous theory of the idea of a universal grammar was
put forth by the linguist Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. Chomsky held
that there was a universal grammar hardwired into the brain of all
humans, and that all human languages had evolved on top of that

6. universal grammar, and that children learned their native
languages using the universal grammar as a support structure.
Monitor Theory:This hypothesis shows how acquisition and learning
are two different processes. The ability to produce utterances in
a second language comes from the acquired competence, from the
subconscious knowledge. On the other hand, learning which is a
conscious knowledge serves only as an editor, or Monitor. The
learned knowledge helps us to make corrections or change the
output of the acquired system.
According to Gass & Selinker (1994), Krashen has stated three
conditions to be met to access the learned system. The three
conditions for Monitor are:
1. Time. Second language learners need enough time to think
consciously about the rules they learned.
2. Focus on form. Besides time, the learner needs to focus not
only on what to say but also how to say it, the form.
3. Know the rule. Second language learners should know the
rules of the language in order to use them.
As McLaughlin (1987) reported, Krashen has divided second
language learners when using the Monitor process into three types
due to their individual differences. These three types are:
1. Monitor over-users. This is when performers Monitor all the
time. As a result, they may speak with hesitation and
usually correct themselves in the middle of the utterance.
Sometimes, this happens when second language learners are
taught only grammar.
2. Monitor under-users. This is when performers depend only on
the acquired system. They do so either because they have
not learned or because they don’t want to use their learned
system. They don’t self-correct even if the three
conditions are met. They just use their ‘feel’ for
correctness.
3. The optimal Monitor user. This is when the performer uses
the Monitor process when it is suitable and will not affect
communication. When the three conditions are met, the
optimal performer will Monitor to make his output more
accurate.
Behaviorism: Behavioral psychology, also known as behaviorism, is
a theory of learning based upon the idea that all behaviors are
acquired through conditioning. Conditioning occurs through
interaction with the environment. According to behaviorism,

7. behavior can be studied in a systematic and observable manner with
no consideration of internal mental states.
There are two major types of conditioning:
1. Classical conditioning is a technique used in behavioral
training in which a naturally occurring stimulus is paired
with a response. Next, a previously neutral stimulus is
paired with the naturally occurring stimulus. Eventually, the
previously neutral stimulus comes to evoke the response
without the presence of the naturally occurring stimulus. The
two elements are then known as the conditioned stimulus and
the conditioned response.
2. Operant conditioning Operant conditioning (sometimes referred
to as instrumental conditioning) is a method of learning that
occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through
operant conditioning, an association is made between a
behavior and a consequence for that behavior.
Connectionism: a school of cognitive science that holds that human
mental processes (as learning) can be explained by the
computational modeling of neural nets which are thought to
simulate the actions of interconnected neurons in the brain.
Connectionism is a movement in cognitive science which hopes
to explain human intellectual abilities using artificial neural
networks (also known as ‘neural networks’ or ‘neural nets’).
Neural networks are simplified models of the brain composed of
large numbers of units (the analogs of neurons) together with
weights that measure the strength of connections between the
units. These weights model the effects of the synapses that link
one neuron to another. Experiments on models of this kind have
demonstrated an ability to learn such skills as face recognition,
reading, and the detection of simple grammatical structure.
Philosophers have become interested in connectionism because
it promises to provide an alternative to the classical theory of
the mind: the widely held view that the mind is something akin to a
digital computer processing a symbolic language. Exactly how and
to what extent the connectionist paradigm constitutes a challenge
to classicism has been a matter of hot debate in recent years.
Interactionism:
First Language Acquisition
The theory under discussion concentrates on the relation
between the linguistic environment and the child’s mental

8. capacities. The interactionists claim that language maturation is
a result of the complex interplay between the unique human
faculties and the environment in which the child grows up. Unlike
generative linguists, the interactionists argue that the
modification of speech to suit the abilities of the learner is an
essential component of the language acquisition process
(Lightbown and Spada 1993: 13-14; Davies and Elder 2004: 518).
Many interactionist researchers have studied the adult
modified speech used to address children and noticed that this type
of speech involves slower simple sentences, repetition and
paraphrase. They have also found that conversation is often
restricted to the child’s environment and that adults often repeat
children’s speech in a syntactic correct way.
It is extremely difficult to say whether the modification of
children speech by adults is important. Children who do not
receive such modified speech will still acquire language, but they
may also access this type of input when they are with their
siblings or other adults (Lightbown and Spada 1993: 14). To the
interactionist, the importance lies in the speech interaction in
which the adult estimates the level of language the child is
capable of processing. The significance of child-adult interaction
seems to be clear when examining the unusual cases in which it is
missing.
Second Language Acquisition
As indicated above, a crucial element in the process of
language acquisition is the modified input to which learners are
exposed and the way native speakers interact with learners.
Proponents of the interactionist view (Long 1985) claim that
interactional modification makes input comprehensible which, in
turn, facilitates and promotes acquisition. Therefore,
interactional modification must be necessary for language
acquisition. Long argues that there are no cases of acquiring a
second language from natives without the modification of speech in
some way. In fact, research shows that native speakers modify
their speech when they talk with non-native speakers (Lightbown
and Spada 1993: 30). Research which has been carried out to examine
these claims proved that conversational tuning can aid
comprehension, but no research provided conclusive evidence that
comprehensible input causes or explains acquisition (Davies and
Elder 2004: 518).