An Overview of the Emergence of Psycholinguistics

History of Psycholinguistics

Disciplines generally come out after small surveys about ideas and problems which are repeatedly confronted and need explanations. Sometimes, a triggered idea may guide a researcher to look for its proponents and the factors that affect it. It also contributes in the creation of a hypothesis, a survey, results and thus theories.

 

Kess (1992) contends that: “Any discipline has a history behind its development and the stages of development actually entail the contributions of the great minds that have shaped the discipline”.

 Actually, the appearance of psycholinguistics was preceded by the examination of many important and influential thoughts and concepts that have really contributed in its evolution. The study of Morris (1938) who tackled the alliance between sings and symbols in addition to language and thought was an initial signpost which paved the way for further studies.

e.g.       sings                symbols

            Dove                It symbolizes peace

 

Thus, Morris put forward what is known as logical positivistic division of the study of sings and symbols. It includes three fields of study namely:

Syntactics = the relationship of sings to sings e.g. he comes

Semantics = the relationship of sings to their meanings

Pragmatics = the relationship of sings to the people who use them.

 

Thirty year later, Miller (1964b) puts forward a philosophical frame of reference aiming at providing explanation concerning the linguistic based approach to psycholinguistics. Miller assumes that the division of the field into problems of structure, comprehension and beliefs are of a great importance to the relevant disciplines such as linguistics, psychology and philosophy as it is so influential and helpful in understanding them.

 

1- Problems of Structure: it is necessary to understand the structure of a language.

2- Problems of Comprehension: semantics or meaning.

3- Problems of belief: once both structural analysis and semantic comprehension are achieved, an understanding of pragmatic acceptance or rejection is possible.

 

The above apportion was revised by Miller who found that it first served the requirements of that time as it suited the achievement of language progression of that era only. However, though the division was lacking updating, it has contributed in the visualization of future allotment. So, according to Miller’s above classification i.e. how the mind deals with language cannot be applied on contemporary research within the same field. Simultaneously, he was convinced that his division requires an allocation of the three fields with the other disciplines. Thus, he proposes the following distribution:

 

1- Psychology was traditionally interested in pragmatics, the psychologists were trying to understand the ways in which human beings acquire, understand and exploit the linguistic system.

2- Semantics was traditionally interested in philosophy and later in anthropology.

3- Syntax was traditionally interested in linguistics.

 

Miller’s point of view reflects his interest in the theoretical insights taken form linguistics and introduced into psycholinguistics. As he commented on it and said that:

We no longer make such severe distinctions between theories of language and theories of language users, nor do we now see the fields as neatly broken into linguists just doing syntactic analysis and psychologists describing how humans acquire and use that and related systems. Changes have occurred in the definitions of what semantics and pragmatics mean, and changes have also occurred in zones of interest. Psycholinguists are more aware of problems of structure and meaning in their research plans, as are linguists now aware of also constructing theories of language users and language acquirers. Quoted in Kess 1992:14)

 

Accordingly, Miller‟s remarks have been the precursor of the field of psychology. In other words, the construction of theory of language user requires a full understanding of the way that the user handles both syntactic and semantic features of a given language. In the same line of thought, Rieber (2013:4) tackles the emergence of psycholinguistics and says that:

Psycholinguistics can be said to have originated as far back in the history of philosophy as one cares to trace psychology. The widespread use of the term psycholinguistics and the development of a distinct discipline with that title, however, go back only on to the early 1950‟s, when George Miller, Charles Osgood, and other psycholinguist introduced a knowledge of linguistics into the psychological study of language.

 

Nonetheless, according to Treiman et al cited in Healy and Proctor (2003:527) the flourishing period of psycholinguistics was after Chomsky‟s work when they said that:

Psychologists have long been interested in language, psycholinguistics as a field of study did not emerge until the 1960‟s. It was motivated by Chomsky‟s work in linguistics, and by his claim that the special properties of language require special mechanism to handle it. The special feature of language on which Chomsky focused was its productivity.

Henceforth, Chomsky’s work entitled „Syntactic Structures‟ was nominated among the most important highbrow events of that time. At this level, Chomsky‟s emphasis was on criticizing structural linguistics1 as he put forward his well-known dichotomy of competence vs. performance.