Psycholinguistics Introduction and Garden Path Sentences

Introduction: Themes of Psycholinguistics

• Four broad areas of language knowledge: Semantics (meanings), Syntax (arrangement), Phonology (sounds), and Pragmatics (social rules).
• Psycholinguistics explores cognitive processes involved in language use (e.g., understanding, reading, writing, conversation).

Four Language Examples

• Linguistic knowledge and language processes work together.
• Garden path sentences demonstrate how comprehension proceeds (e.g., The novice accepted the deal...).
• These sentences initially lead to a mistaken interpretation which is then corrected.
• Understanding word meanings (e.g., deal) and their relationships (e.g., deal and finances) are important parts of semantic knowledge.

Garden Path Sentences

• Often called garden path sentences because the initial interpretation leads down a "garden path" that must be corrected.
• Subjective impression of a predictable destination until the interpretation is shown to be mistaken.
• Requires reinterpreting the sentence as there are different meaning stored (e.g., deal - business, deal - cards).
• Relevant semantic knowledge needed for comprehension and adjustment.

Indirect Requests

• Example of indirect requests (e.g., sentence (2)).
• Illustrates how language use involves making decisions while processing language.