Transcript Introduction to Linguistics Day One

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Psycholinguistics: Competence,
Performance and Acquisition
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Noam Chomsky proposes three models to
reflect what a fluent speaker of a language
uses in producing language:
1. Linguistic competence: what a
speaker knows about his language
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2. Performance model: the actual
processes of producing the language
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3. Acquisition model (device):
reflects the changes in linguistic
competence and performance
during a child's growth.
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10.2 Speech Production
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Conceiving a message:
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Cognitive background
The speaker has a variety of beliefs and
desires concerning such factors as:
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a. the nature and direction of the talkexchange
b. the social and physical context of
the utterance
c. the hearer's beliefs in general,
beliefs pertinent to the speaker's
impending remark in particular and
whatever contextual beliefs the hearer
shares with the speaker
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Next, the speaker must formulate
the beginnings of the message to
be communicated, as well as the
manner in which it is to be
communicated. We call this the
speaker's pragmatic intentions:
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a. referring to the something
(referential intent)
b. performing some communicative
act(s) (communicative intent)
c. performing these acts literally, nonliterally, directly or indirectly
d. having various effects on the hearer
(perlocutionary intent).
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How does a speaker put these
intentions together into words and
meaningful talk-exchange?
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The message model suggests that we
put messages together word by word.
However, the presence of speech errors,
seems to defy that notion, suggesting
instead that we employ more complex
encoding mechanisms.
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Speech errors are interesting
(linguistically and socially) since
they happened relatively rarely
(about 1/1000 words).
The most famous speech error maker of
all time was the Reverend William A.
Spooner, who lent his name
(spoonerisms) to such classics as these:
 "Work is the curse of the drinking class"
 "Noble tons of soil"
 "You have hissed all my mystery
lectures. I saw you fight a liar in the
back quad; in fact you have tasted the
whole worm."
-and one not from Spooner: "The
French eat with their hamburgers
with a fike and norf."
At first glance, these errors may merely
seem random, but careful studies have
shown that certain types of errors
predominate:
 a: Exchange errors
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hissed all my mystery lectures
 b: Anticipation errors
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a leading list (a reading list)
 c: Perseveration errors
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phonological fool (phonological rule)
d: Blends
 moinly (mainly, mainly) impostinator
(imposter, impersonator)
 e: Shifts
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Mermaid moves (mermaids move)
 f: Substitutions: sympathy for
symphony
sometimes called a
Freudian Slip)
 g: Phonetic features (voicing)
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glear plue sky (clear blue sky)
h: Stress
 Stop beating your BRICK against a
head wall.
 i: Syntactic features
 (indefinite) a meeting marathon
(an eating marathon.
 (past tense) Rosa always date
shranks (dated shrinks).
j. Stem and affix
 He favors pushing busters (busting
pushers).
 k. Negation
 I disregard this as precise (I
regard this as imprecises)
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These categories of errors suggest that
speech is encoded in linguistic units, not
in words or sounds.
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Speech errors can be summarized in the
following way:
1. Word exchange errors are
predominately between phrases, and in
fact, between words of the same
syntactic category (noun, verb, etc.)
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2. Sound exchange errors are
predominately within phrases and do
not respect syntactic categories.
3. Morpheme errors are of both types.
If they can occur between phrases, then
the morphemes are from words of the
same category occur within phrases,
then the morphemes are rarely from
words of the same category.
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4. Exchange errors for words,
morphemes and sounds are restricted
mainly to major (open, content)
categories, such as noun, verb,
adjective.
5. Shift errors are restricted mainly to
minor (closed function) categories.
6. Substitution errors can be either
form related or meaning related.