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psycholinguistics
Columbia Encyclopedia entry: psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics, the study of psychological states and mental activity associated with the use of language. An important focus of psycholinguistics is the largely unconscious application of grammatical rules that enable people to produce and comprehend intelligible sentences. Psycholinguists investigate the relationship between language and thought, a perennial subject of debate being whether language is a function of thinking or thought a function of the use of language. However, most problems in psycholinguistics are more concrete, involving the study of linguistic performance and language acquisition, especially in children. The work of Noam Chomsky and other proponents of transformational grammar have had a marked influence on the field. Neurolinguists study the brain activity involved in language use, obtaining much of their data from people whose ability to use language has been impaired due to brain damage.

See D. Foss and D. Hakes, Psycholinguistics (1978); V. C. Tartter, Language Processes (1986); A. Radford, Syntactic Theory and the Acquisition of English Syntax (1990).

The Columbia Encyclopedia. Copyright © 2001-09 Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Wikipedia search results for: Psycholinguistics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the human brain functioned. Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and information theory to study how the brain processes language. There are a number of subdisciplines; for example, as non-invasive techniques for studying the neurological workings of the brain become more and more widespread, neurolin has become a field...more »
Columbia Encyclopedia search results: psycholinguistics
Results 1 - 4  of 4
  • language acquisition

    Language acquisition, the process of learning a native or a second language. The acquisition of native languages is studied primarily by developmental psychologists and psycholinguists. Althou...

  • Vygotsky, Lev Semyonovich

    Vygotsky, Lev Semyonovich, 1896–1934, Russian psychologist. His most productive years were at the Institute of Psychology in Moscow (1924–34), where he expanded his ideas on cognitive developm...

  • Chomsky, Noam

    Chomsky, Noam, 1928–, educator and linguist, b. Philadelphia. Chomsky, who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1955, developed a theory of transformational (sometimes...

  • linguistics

    Linguistics, scientific study of language, covering the structure (morphology and syntax; see grammar), sounds (phonology), and meaning (semantics), as well as the history of the relations of ...

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