PSYCHOLINGUISTICS:

A Cross-Language
Perspective

By: Elizabeth Bates

Presented By; Hendri
 Abstract
Cross-linguistic studies are essential to
the identification of universal
processes in language development,
language use, and language
breakdown. Comparative studies in all
three areas are reviewed,
demonstrating powerful differences
across languages in the order in which
specific structures are acquired by
children,
 the sparing and impairment of those
structures in aphasic patients, and the
structures that normal adults rely upon most
heavily in real-time word and sentence
processing. It is proposed that these
differences reflect a cost-benefit trade-off
among universal mechanisms for learning
and processing (perception, attention, motor
planning, memory) that are critical for
language, but are not unique to language.
 CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CROSS-LANGUAGE CONTRASTS AND THEIR
RELEVANCE FOR PROCESSING
CROSS-LINGUISTIC VARIATIONS IN
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT “SPEECH
PERCEPTION”
CONCLUSION
 INTRODUCTION
The purpose of psycholinguistic research is
to uncover universal processes that govern
the development, use, and breakdown of
language. However, to the extent that
research in a given subfield of
psycholinguistics is dominated by English,
we cannot distinguish between universal
mechanisms and English-specific facts.
Below we present a brief, selective review of
cross- linguistic research on language
development in children, and language
processing in normal adults, in an order that
reflects the impact that cross-language
variations have had on theoretical
frameworks within each field.
 CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDIES OF
MONOLINGUALS COME IN TWO
VARIETIES :
 One approach treats language as a
between-subjects variable
 The second approach treats
languages as experiments of nature
 TREATS LANGUAGE AS A BETWEEN-
SUBJECTS VARIABLE :

Applying the same experimental design in

two or more languages to determine how
theoretically relevant linguistic differences
affect performance.

Examples from child language include

crosslinguistic comparisons of tense and aspect in
narratives (Berman & Slobin 1994), the use of “path
verbs” (e.g. “ascended”) versus “manner verbs”
(e.g. “wiggled”) to describe an action-packed
cartoon (Slobin 1996)
 The second approach treats
languages as experiments of
nature
Exploiting particular properties of a
single target language to ask
questions that could not be answered
in (for example) English
 CROSS-LANGUAGE
CONTRASTS AND THEIR
RELEVANCE FOR
PROCESSING
We assume that psycholinguistic
universals do exist. Languages such as
English, Italian, and Chinese drawon
the same mental/neural machinery.
They do not “live”in different parts of
the brain, and children do not differ in
the mechanisms requiredto learn each
one.
However, languages can differ
(sometimes quite dramatically) in the
way this mental/neural substrate is
taxed or configured, making
differential use of the same basic
mechanisms for perceptual processing,
encoding and retrieval,
working memory, and planning.
languages can vary qualitatively, in
the presence/absence of specific
linguistic features (e.g. Chinese has
lexical tone, Russian has nominal case
markers, English has neither).
languages can vary quantitatively, in the
challenge posed by equivalent structures
(lexical, phonological, grammatical) for
learning and/or real-time use.

For example, passives are rare in English but

extremely common in Sesotho, and relative clause
constructions are more common in Italian than in
English. To the extent that frequency and recency
facilitate structural access, these differences should
result in earlier acquisition and/or a processing
advantage.
 CROSS-LINGUISTIC
VARIATIONS
IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Human newborns are “citizens of the
world” (Kuhl 1985), able to
discriminate virtually all of the sound
contrasts (phonetics) that are used
systematically by the world’s
languages (for a detailed review, see
Aslin et al 1998).
Nevertheless, preferential-listening
studies have shown that newborn
infants have already acquired a weak
preference for the sounds of their
native language in utero (Jusczyk et al
1993, Mehler et al 1988)
By 3 months of age, infants show
selective preference for their own
names, with discrimination of many
detailed and language-specific
phonotactic features following soon
thereafter (Jusczyk 1997),
Including a clear preference for the
prototypic vowels of their native
language by 6 months (Kuhl et al
1992)
For rapid learning of speech-specific
structure was initially cited as
evidence for the existence of a
domain-specific “speech acquisition
device” (Mehler et al 1988)
The acquisition of speech contrasts in
the first year of life may be a
language-specific manifestation of
domain-general learning
mechanisms (Kuhl 1985)
 CONCLUSION
The dominance of English in twentieth-
century psycholinguistics was a
historical accident, more socio-political
than scientific. However, it has had
particularly unfortunate consequences
for those fields that try to study the
universal psychological and neural
underpinnings of language.
Psycholinguistics has finally broken
away from the hegemony of English,
and the field is better for it. There is,
however, an immense amount of work
that needs to be done to verify
whether Englishbased findings can be
generalized and to explore the
opportunities afforded by the dramatic
structural
THANK YOU