Lemma (psycholinguistics)

Last updated

In psychology, a lemma (pl.: lemmas or lemmata) is an abstract conceptual form of a word that has been mentally selected prior to the early stages of speech production. This concept is used to explain how the process of generating speech occurs. In particular, lemmas are seen as the mental representations of words that are organised and retrieved from memory before they are eventually spoken.. [1] A lemma represents a specific meaning but does not have any specific sounds that are attached to it.

When a person produces a word, they are essentially turning their thoughts into sounds, a process known as lexicalisation. In many psycholinguistic models this is considered to be at least a two-stage process. The first stage deals with semantics and syntax; the result of the first stage is an abstract notion of a word that represents a meaning and contains information about how the word can be used in a sentence. It does not, however, contain information about how the word is pronounced. The second stage deals with the phonology of the word; it attaches information about the sounds that will have to be uttered. The result of the first stage is the lemma in this model; the result of the second stage is referred to as the lexeme .

This two-staged model is the most widely supported theory of speech production in psycholinguistics, [2] although it has been challenged. [3] For example, there is some evidence to indicate that the grammatical gender of a noun is retrieved from the word's phonological form (the lexeme) rather than from the lemma. [4] This can be explained by models that do not assume a distinct level between the semantic and the phonological stages (and so lack a lemma representation). [3]

During the process of language activation, lemma retrieval is the first step in lexical access. In this step, meaning and the syntactic elements of a lexical item are realized as the lemma. Lemma retrieval, as explained through a spreading-activation theory, is part of a network of separate elements consisting of the abstract concept, the lemma and the lexeme. Lemma retrieval is aided by the activation level of the concept that has yet to be verbalized. When activation takes place on the lemma level, the highest activated lemma element is selected. [5]

Lexical selection experiments have provided evidence that lemma retrieval is affected by the frequency of the word. [6] This indicates that word frequency not only significant for retrieving the lexical elements but also in accessing semantic and syntactic elements for encoding lemmas into a phrase. [7]

Experiments that have studied the Tip-of-the tongue (TOT) phenomenon have provided evidence that less strong connections of phonological elements (lexemes) and lexical and syntactic representation (lemmas) lead to inability to retrieve a lexical item. [8] TOT utterances provide evidence that the lemmas and lexemes are separate processes in language activation. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Language center</span> Speech processing areas of the brain

In neuroscience and psychology, the term language center refers collectively to the areas of the brain which serve a particular function for speech processing and production. Language is a core system that gives humans the capacity to solve difficult problems and provides them with a unique type of social interaction. Language allows individuals to attribute symbols to specific concepts, and utilize them through sentences and phrases that follow proper grammatical rules. Finally, speech is the mechanism by which language is orally expressed.

A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge. In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word lexicon derives from Greek word λεξικόν, neuter of λεξικός meaning 'of or for words'.

The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to linguistics:

Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind and brain; that is, the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neurolinguistics</span> Neuroscience and linguistics-related studies

Neurolinguistics is the study of neural mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. As an interdisciplinary field, neurolinguistics draws methods and theories from fields such as neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive science, communication disorders and neuropsychology. Researchers are drawn to the field from a variety of backgrounds, bringing along a variety of experimental techniques as well as widely varying theoretical perspectives. Much work in neurolinguistics is informed by models in psycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics, and is focused on investigating how the brain can implement the processes that theoretical and psycholinguistics propose are necessary in producing and comprehending language. Neurolinguists study the physiological mechanisms by which the brain processes information related to language, and evaluate linguistic and psycholinguistic theories, using aphasiology, brain imaging, electrophysiology, and computer modeling.

Conceptual semantics is a framework for semantic analysis developed mainly by Ray Jackendoff in 1976. Its aim is to provide a characterization of the conceptual elements by which a person understands words and sentences, and thus to provide an explanatory semantic representation. Explanatory in this sense refers to the ability of a given linguistic theory to describe how a component of language is acquired by a child.

In linguistics, linguistic competence is the system of unconscious knowledge that one knows when they know a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance, which includes all other factors that allow one to use one's language in practice.

A speech error, commonly referred to as a slip of the tongue or misspeaking, is a deviation from the apparently intended form of an utterance. They can be subdivided into spontaneously and inadvertently produced speech errors and intentionally produced word-plays or puns. Another distinction can be drawn between production and comprehension errors. Errors in speech production and perception are also called performance errors. Some examples of speech error include sound exchange or sound anticipation errors. In sound exchange errors, the order of two individual morphemes is reversed, while in sound anticipation errors a sound from a later syllable replaces one from an earlier syllable. Slips of the tongue are a normal and common occurrence. One study shows that most people can make up to as much as 22 slips of the tongue per day.

Tip of the tongue is the phenomenon of failing to retrieve a word or term from memory, combined with partial recall and the feeling that retrieval is imminent. The phenomenon's name comes from the saying, "It's on the tip of my tongue." The tip of the tongue phenomenon reveals that lexical access occurs in stages.

In linguistics, lexicalization is the process of adding words, set phrases, or word patterns to a language's lexicon.

Language production is the production of spoken or written language. In psycholinguistics, it describes all of the stages between having a concept to express and translating that concept into linguistic forms. These stages have been described in two types of processing models: the lexical access models and the serial models. Through these models, psycholinguists can look into how speeches are produced in different ways, such as when the speaker is bilingual. Psycholinguists learn more about these models and different kinds of speech by using language production research methods that include collecting speech errors and elicited production tasks.

Sentence processing takes place whenever a reader or listener processes a language utterance, either in isolation or in the context of a conversation or a text. Many studies of the human language comprehension process have focused on reading of single utterances (sentences) without context. Extensive research has shown that language comprehension is affected by context preceding a given utterance as well as many other factors.

Speech production is the process by which thoughts are translated into speech. This includes the selection of words, the organization of relevant grammatical forms, and then the articulation of the resulting sounds by the motor system using the vocal apparatus. Speech production can be spontaneous such as when a person creates the words of a conversation, reactive such as when they name a picture or read aloud a written word, or imitative, such as in speech repetition. Speech production is not the same as language production since language can also be produced manually by signs.

The logogen model of 1969 is a model of speech recognition that uses units called "logogens" to explain how humans comprehend spoken or written words. Logogens are a vast number of specialized recognition units, each able to recognize one specific word. This model provides for the effects of context on word recognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trevor Harley</span>

Trevor Harley is emeritus chair of Cognitive Psychology. His primary research is in the psychology of language and consciousness. From 2003 until 2016 he was Head and Dean of the School of Psychology at the University of Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom. He is author of several books, including "The Psychology of Language", currently in its fourth edition, published by Psychology Press, "Talking the talk", a book about the psychology of language (psycholinguistics) aimed at a more general audience, "The Science of Consciousness", a general text on consciousness, and "The Psychology of Weather", about how weather affects behaviour. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

The cohort model in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics is a model of lexical retrieval first proposed by William Marslen-Wilson in the late 1970s. It attempts to describe how visual or auditory input is mapped onto a word in a hearer's lexicon. According to the model, when a person hears speech segments real-time, each speech segment "activates" every word in the lexicon that begins with that segment, and as more segments are added, more words are ruled out, until only one word is left that still matches the input.

Bilingual interactive activation plus (BIA+) is a model for understanding the process of bilingual language comprehension and consists of two interactive subsystems: the word identification subsystem and task/decision subsystem. It is the successor of the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) model which was updated in 2002 to include phonologic and semantic lexical representations, revise the role of language nodes, and specify the purely bottom-up nature of bilingual language processing.

The mental lexicon is defined as a mental dictionary that contains information regarding the word store of a language user, such as their meanings, pronunciations, and syntactic characteristics. The mental lexicon is used in linguistics and psycholinguistics to refer to individual speakers' lexical, or word, representations. However, there is some disagreement as to the utility of the mental lexicon as a scientific construct.

Bilingual lexical access is an area of psycholinguistics that studies the activation or retrieval process of the mental lexicon for bilingual people.

The Integrational theory of language is the general theory of language that has been developed within the general linguistic approach of integrational linguistics.

References

  1. ↑ Warren, Paul (2012). Introducing Psycholinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 243. ISBN   978-0521130561 . Retrieved 24 March 2015.
  2. ↑ Harley, T. (2005). The Psychology of Language. Hove; New York: Psychology Press. p. 359.
  3. 1 2 Caramazza, A. (1997). "How many levels of processing are there in lexical access?". Cognitive Neuropsychology. 14: 177–208. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.455.4266 . doi:10.1080/026432997381664.
  4. ↑ Starreveld, P. A.; La Heij, W. (2004). "Phonological facilitation of grammatical gender retrieval" (PDF). Language and Cognitive Processes. 19 (6): 677–711. doi:10.1080/01690960444000061. hdl:1871/17124. S2CID   51826019.
  5. ↑ Roelofs, Ardi (1992-01-01). "A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval in speaking". Cognition. 42 (1–3): 107–142. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(92)90041-F. PMID   1582154. S2CID   25237845.
  6. ↑ "Short article Does word frequency affect lexical selection in speech production? (PDF Download Available)". ResearchGate. Retrieved 2017-05-02.
  7. ↑ Kormos, Judit. (1998). PROBLEM-SOLVING MECHANISMS IN L2 COMMUNICATION. Studies in Second Language Acquisition. 20. 349 - 385.
  8. ↑ Hofferberth-Sauer, N. J. (2014). "Resolving tip-of-the-tongue states with syllable cues". In V. Torrens & L. Escobar (Eds.), the Processing of Lexicon and Morphosyntax: (pp. 43–68).
  9. ↑ Abrams, Lise; Davis, Danielle K. (2016). Cognition, Language and Aging. pp. 13–53. doi:10.1075/z.200.02abr. ISBN   978-90-272-1232-0.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.