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Linguistic structuralism The term structuralism originates in Course de Linguistique Generale of Ferdinand de Saussure (1916).

Saussure studied language from a formal and theoretical point of view. He considered language as a system of signs which could be described synchronically (as a static set of relationships independent of any changes that take place over time) rather than diachronically (as a dynamic system which changes over time). In his course he distinguishes langue and parole: langue denotes the abstract systematic principles of a language and parole refers to particular utterances which are based on those principles. The main focus of Saussure is on langue rather than parole. According to Saussure, the basic unit of language is a sign. A sign is composed of signifier (a sound-image, or its graphic equivalent) and a signified (the concept or meaning). So, for example, a word composed of the letters p-e-a-r functions as a signifier by producing in the mind of English-speakers the concept (signified). 1 According to Saussure, the relation between a signifier and a signified is arbitrary. Later this movement was taken up by the Parague Literary Circle, which laid the foundation of phonology, and Bloomfield distributionalism. According to this school of thought, it is possible to analyze the structure of a language without knowing its meaning, condition of use and the subject who speak it. Scientific Psychology The focus of this school of thought is on outward behavior.

Watson defines psychology as the study of stimulus-response (S-R) relationship. They are reductionist, and give the analogy of a humans brain with a slot machine. A coin is inserted into the slot (stimulus) and something comes out (response). Watson says that it is not necessary to know what goes inside the brain (black box), but later his successors give the idea of intervening variable ( stress influence utterance, alertness, brain stroke) and meditational response ( situation etc. influence utterances). Developmental stages of psycholinguistics First Stage The study of the psychology of language is often traced to a conference held in Cornell University (1951) in which psychologists and linguists gathered to define a common field of research, and the word psycholinguistics was first used in Osgood and Sebeoks (1954) book describing that conference and development in the field. Three disciplines were brought together to form this movement. 1. Psychology 2. Structural linguistics that was characterized by distributionalists 3. Concepts taken from mathematical probability theory. Second stage Generative grammar theory Chomskys GGT created a new excitement in the study of the psychology of language. This theory is about how phrase and sentences are formed. Rules Constitutes a Generative Grammar: Phrase Structure Rules

It is referred to a rule that breaks down a sentence into its constituent parts (S ------- NP VP ) By applying phrase structure rule a lot of sentences can be formed, but it is also possible to form a sentence that is syntactically right but semantically nonsensical. e.g., Chomskys illustration Colorless green ideas sleep furiously Therefore, syntax needs semantic to convey the meaning. Transformational rule It is referred to a rule that takes an input called Deep Structure and changes it in some restricted way to result in a Surface Structure. ----- Deep Structure is generated by a set of phrase structure rules. -----Deep structure determines the meaning -----Surface structure is what we write or speak of a sentence

In 1965, Chomsky provided a new version of syntax theory called standard theory in which he included the following principles. --- Syntactic component of a language needs a semantic component to convey the meaning, and a phonological component which translates the terminal strings into sounds. --- Semantic component bears on the deep structure of the sentence and transformations have no effect on meaning. --- The lexical elements are inserted at the deep-structure level.

Finally, Chomskys influence on psycholinguistics cannot be overstated. He drew an important distinction between competence, the knowledge we have about a language, and performance, the use of that language in concrete situations.

In the field of language acquisition, Chomsky postulated the existence of an innate language acquisition device (LAD) that was a strong argument against behavourists. In conclusion, Chomskys influence creates a new spirit in the field of psycholinguistics despite the fact that the mental operation postulate on the basis of generative grammar was not confirmed by experimental result.

Third Stage: Psycholinguistics Today From 1970s onwards Some psycholinguists considered Chomskyan theory satisfactory and emphasized performance strategies. On the other hand, a number of researchers refused to considered any linguistics theory as final and looked instead to a variety of linguists for heuristic suggestion with a view to establish experimentally a psychological model of the language user. Characterization of Modern Day Psycholinguistics: 1. It is tending toward cognitive psychology as the work of investigation and thinking analysis are difficult to be ignored in the study of language. 2. The approach to language has widened. We have moved on from purely Chomskys syntactic school to semantic and pragmatic aspects of the language. 3. Finally, in the development of Psycholinguistics we cannot ignore the role or the experiments performed on artificial intelligence.

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