Language in Mind An Introduction to Psycholinguistics Second Edition JULIE SEDIVY University of Calgary About the Cover and Chapter Opener Images Bruno Mallart is one of the most talented European artists, his work having appeared in some of the world’s premier publications: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the New Scientist, to name a few. A freelance illustrator since 1986, Mallart first worked for several children’s book publishers and advertising agencies, using a classical realistic watercolor and ink style. Some years later he began working in a more imaginative way, inventing a mix of drawing, painting, and collage. His work speaks of a surrealistic and absurd world and engages the viewer’s imagination and sense of fun. Despite the recurring use of the brain in his art, Mallart’s background is not scientific— though his parents were both neurobiologists. He uses the brain as a symbol for abstract concepts such as intelligence, thinking, feeling, ideas, and knowledge. Attracted to all that is mechanical, Mallart’s art frequently includes machine parts such as gears and wheels that imply movement and rhythm. These features together, in their abstract representation, beautifully illustrate the topics discussed in Language in Mind , Second Edition. To see more of Bruno Mallart’s art, please go to his website: www.brunomallart.com. Language in Mind , Second Edition Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America © 2020 Oxford University Press Sinauer Associates is an imprint of Oxford University Press. For titles covered by Section 112 of the US Higher Education Opportunity Act, please visit www.oup.com/us/he for the latest information about pricing and alternate formats. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Address editorial correspondence to: Sinauer Associates 23 Plumtree Road Sunderland, MA 01375 USA Address orders, sales, license, permissions, and translation inquiries to: Oxford University Press USA 2001 Evans Road Cary, NC 27513 USA Orders: 1-800-445-9714 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sedivy, Julie, author. Title: Language in mind : an introduction to psycholinguistics / Julie Sedivy, University of Calgary. Description: Second edition. | New York : Oxford University Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018044934 | ISBN 9781605357058 (hardcover)| ISBN 9781605358369 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Psycholinguistics. | Cognition. Classification: LCC BF455 .S3134 2020 | DDC 401/.9--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018044934 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America For My Students 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Brief Contents ■ Science, Language, and the Science of Language ■ Origins of Human Language ■ Language and the Brain ■ Learning Sound Patterns ■ Learning Words ■ Learning the Structure of Sentences ■ Speech Perception ■ Word Recognition ■ Understanding Sentence Structure and Meaning ■ Speaking: From Planning to Articulation ■ Discourse and Inference ■ The Social Side of Language ■ Language Diversity 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Contents CHAPTER 1 Science, Language, and the Science of Language ■ BOX 1.1 Wrong or insightful? Isaac Asimov on testing students’ knowledge What Do Scientists Know about Language? Why Bother? CHAPTER 2 Origins of Human Language Why Us? ■ BOX 2.1 Hockett’s design features of human language ■ METHOD 2.1 Minding the gap between behavior and knowledge The Social Underpinnings of Language ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 2.1 Social scaffolding for language ■ METHOD 2.2 Exploring what primates can’t (or won’t) do The Structure of Language ■ BOX 2.2 The recursive power of syntax ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 2.1 Engineering the perfect language The Evolution of Speech ■ BOX 2.3 Practice makes perfect: The “babbling” stage of human infancy ■ BOX 2.4 What can songbirds tell us about speaking? How Humans Invent Languages 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 2.2 From disability to diversity: Language studies and Deaf culture Language and Genes ■ BOX 2.5 Linguistic and non-linguistic impairments in Williams and Down syndromes Survival of the Fittest Language? ■ BOX 2.6 Evolution of a prayer ■ DIGGING DEEPER Language evolution in the lab CHAPTER 3 Language and the Brain Evidence from Damage to the Brain ■ BOX 3.1 Phineas Gage and his brain ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 3.1 One hundred names for love: Aphasia strikes a literary couple ■ METHOD 3.1 The need for language diversity in aphasia research Mapping the Healthy Human Brain ■ METHOD 3.2 Comparing apples and oranges in fMRI ■ BOX 3.2 The functional neuroanatomy of language ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 3.2 Brain bunk: Separating science from pseudoscience ■ BOX 3.3 Are Broca and Wernicke dead? The Brain in Real-Time Action ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 3.3 Using EEG to assess patients in a vegetative state ■ BOX 3.4 A musical P600 effect ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 3.1 Using ERPs to detect cross-language activation ■ DIGGING DEEPER Language and music CHAPTER 4 Learning Sound Patterns Where Are the Words? 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 ■ METHOD 4.1 The head-turn preference paradigm ■ BOX 4.1 Phonotactic constraints across languages Infant Statisticians ■ BOX 4.2 ERPs reveal statistical skills in newborns What Are the Sounds? ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 4.1 The articulatory phonetics of beatboxing ■ BOX 4.3 Vowels ■ METHOD 4.2 High-amplitude sucking Learning How Sounds Pattern ■ BOX 4.4 Allophones in complementary distribution: Some crosslinguistic examples Some Patterns Are Easier to Learn than Others ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 4.1 Investigating potential learning biases ■ DIGGING DEEPER How does learning change with age and experience? CHAPTER 5 Learning Words Words and Their Interface to Sound Reference and Concepts ■ BOX 5.1 Some sources of non-arbitrariness in spoken languages ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 5.1 How different languages cut up the concept pie Understanding Speakers’ Intentions ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 5.1 Assessing the accuracy of adult speakers ■ METHOD 5.1 Revisiting the switch task Parts of Speech The Role of Language Input ■ BOX 5.2 Learning from bilingual input Complex Words ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 5.2 McLanguage and the perils of branding by prefix 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 7.1 ■ BOX 5.3 The very complex morphology of Czech ■ BOX 5.4 Separate brain networks for words and rules? ■ DIGGING DEEPER The chicken-and-egg problem of language and thought CHAPTER 6 Learning the Structure of Sentences The Nature of Syntactic Knowledge ■ BOX 6.1 Stages of syntactic development ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 6.1 Constituent structure and poetic effect ■ BOX 6.2 Rules versus constructions ■ BOX 6.3 Varieties of structural complexity Learning Grammatical Categories ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 6.1 The usefulness of frequent frames in Spanish and English How Abstract Is Early Syntax? ■ BOX 6.4 Quirky verb alterations ■ BOX 6.5 Syntax and the immature brain Complex Syntax and Constraints on Learning ■ BOX 6.6 Specific language impairment and complex syntax ■ METHOD 6.1 The CHILDES database What Do Children Do with Input? ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 6.2 Language universals, alien tongues, and learnability ■ METHOD 6.2 What can we learn from computer simulations of syntactic learning? ■ DIGGING DEEPER Domain-general and domain-specific theories of language learning CHAPTER 7 Speech Perception Coping with the Variability of Sounds ■ BOX 7.1 The articulatory properties of English consonants ■ BOX 7.2 Variability in the pronunciation of signed languages 7.2 7.3 7.4 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 ■ BOX 7.3 Categorical perception in chinchillas ■ METHOD 7.1 What can we learn from conflicting results? Integrating Multiple Cues ■ BOX 7.4 Does music training enhance speech perception? Adapting to a Variety of Talkers ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 7.1 To dub or not to dub? ■ BOX 7.5 Accents and attitudes ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 7.1 Adjusting to specific talkers The Motor Theory of Speech Perception ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 7.2 How does ventriloquism work? ■ BOX 7.6 What happens to speech perception as you age? ■ DIGGING DEEPER The connection between speech perception and dyslexia CHAPTER 8 Word Recognition A Connected Lexicon ■ BOX 8.1 Controlling for factors that affect the speed of word recognition ■ METHOD 8.1 Using the lexical decision task ■ BOX 8.2 Words: All in the mind, or in the body too? Ambiguity ■ BOX 8.3 Why do languages tolerate ambiguity? ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 8.1 Evidence for the activation of “sunken meanings” ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 8.1 The persuasive power of word associations Recognizing Spoken Words in Real Time ■ BOX 8.4 Do bilingual people keep their languages separate? ■ BOX 8.5 Word recognition in signed languages Reading Written Words ■ BOX 8.6 Do different writing systems engage the brain differently? ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 8.2 Should English spelling be reformed? ■ DIGGING DEEPER The great modular-versus-interactive debate 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 10.1 10.2 CHAPTER 9 Understanding Sentence Structure and Meaning Incremental Processing and the Problem of Ambiguity ■ BOX 9.1 Key grammatical terms and concepts in English ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 9.1 Crash blossoms run amok in newspaper headlines ■ METHOD 9.1 Using reading times to detect misanalysis Models of Ambiguity Resolution ■ BOX 9.2 Two common psychological heuristics ■ BOX 9.3 Not all reduced relatives lead to processing implosions Variables That Predict the Difficulty of Ambiguous Sentences ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 9.1 Subliminal priming of a verb’s syntactic frame ■ BOX 9.4 Doesn’t intonation disambiguate spoken language? Making Predictions When Memory Fails Variable Minds ■ BOX 9.5 The language experience of bookworms versus socialites ■ BOX 9.6 How does aging affect sentence comprehension? ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 9.2 A psycholinguist walks into a bar... ■ DIGGING DEEPER The great debate over the “bilingual advantage” CHAPTER 10 Speaking: From Planning to Articulation The Space between Thinking and Speaking ■ BOX 10.1 What spoken language really sounds like ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 10.1 The sounds of silence: Conversational gaps across cultures Ordered Stages in Language Production ■ BOX 10.2 Common types of speech errors ■ BOX 10.3 Learning to fail at speaking 10.3 10.4 10.5 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 Formulating Messages ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 10.1 Message planning in real time ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 10.2 “Clean” speech is not better speech Structuring Sentences ■ METHOD 10.1 Finding patterns in real-world language ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 10.3 Language detectives track the unique “prints” of language users Putting the Sounds in Words ■ METHOD 10.2 The SLIP technique ■ BOX 10.4 Was Freud completely wrong about speech errors? ■ BOX 10.5 Patterns in speech errors ■ DIGGING DEEPER Sentence production in other languages CHAPTER 11 Discourse and Inference From Linguistic Form to Mental Models of the World ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 11.1 Probing for the contents of mental models ■ BOX 11.1 Individual differences in visual imagery during reading ■ METHOD 11.1 Converging techniques for studying mental models ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 11.1 What does it mean to be literate? Pronoun Problems ■ BOX 11.2 Pronoun systems across languages Pronouns in Real Time ■ BOX 11.3 Pronoun types and structural constraints Drawing Inferences and Making Connections ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 11.2 The Kuleshov effect: How inferences bring life to film ■ BOX 11.4 Using brain waves to study the time course of discourse processing Understanding Metaphor ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 11.3 The use and abuse of metaphor ■ DIGGING DEEPER Shallow processors or builders of rich meaning? 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 13.1 13.2 13.3 CHAPTER 12 The Social Side of Language Tiny Mind Readers or Young Egocentrics? ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 12.1 Learning through social interaction ■ BOX 12.1 Social gating is for the birds ■ METHOD 12.1 Referential communication tasks ■ BOX 12.2 Does language promote mind reading? Conversational Inferences: Deciphering What the Speaker Meant ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 12.1 On lying and implying in advertising ■ BOX 12.3 Examples of scalar implicature ■ BOX 12.4 Using conversational inference to resolve ambiguity ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 12.2 Being polite, indirectly Audience Design Dialogue ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 12.3 Why are so many professors bad at audience design? ■ DIGGING DEEPER Autism research and its role in mind-reading debates CHAPTER 13 Language Diversity ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 13.1 The great language extinction What Do Languages Have in Common? ■ BOX 13.1 Language change through language contact Explaining Similarities across Languages ■ RESEARCHERS AT WORK 13.1 Universals and learning biases ■ METHOD 13.1 How well do artificial language learning experiments reflect real learning? ■ BOX 13.2 Do genes contribute to language diversity? ■ BOX 13.3 Can social pressure make languages less efficient? Words, Concepts, and Culture 13.4 13.5 ■ BOX 13.4 Variations in color vocabulary ■ BOX 13.5 ERP evidence for language effects on perception Language Structure and the Connection between Culture and Mind ■ METHOD 13.2 Language intrusion and the variable Whorf effect ■ BOX 13.6 Mark Twain on the awful memory-taxing syntax of German One Mind, Multiple Languages ■ LANGUAGE AT LARGE 13.2 Can your language make you broke and fat? ■ DIGGING DEEPER Are all languages equally complex? Glossary Literature Cited Author Index Subject Index Preface Note to Instructors As psycholinguists, we get to study and teach some of the most riveting material in the scientific world. And as instructors, we want our students to appreciate what makes this material so absorbing, and what it can reveal about fundamental aspects of ourselves and how we interact with each other. That desire provided the impetus for this textbook. As I see it, a textbook should be a starting point—an opening conversation that provokes curiosity, and a map for what to explore next. This book should be accessible to students with no prior background in linguistics or psycholinguistics. For some psychology students, it may accompany the only course about language they’ll ever take. I hope they’ll acquire an ability to be intelligently analytical about the linguistic waters in which they swim daily, an appreciation for some of the questions that preoccupy researchers, and enough background to follow significant new developments in the field. Some students will wind up exploring the literature at close range, perhaps even contributing to it. These students need an introductory textbook that lays out important debates, integrates insights from its various subdisciplines, and points to the many threads of research that have yet to be unraveled. Throughout this book, I’ve tried to encourage students to connect theories and findings to observations about everyday language. I’ve been less concerned with giving students a detailed snapshot of the newest “greatest hits” in research than with providing a helpful conceptual framework. My goal has been to make it as easy as possible for students to read the primary literature on their own. Many students find it very difficult to transition from reading textbooks to digesting journal articles; the new Researchers at Work boxes are designed to help students by serving as a model for how to pull the key information out of a journal article. I’ve tried to emphasize not just what psycholinguists know (or think they know), but how they’ve come to know it. Experimental methods are described at length, and numerous figures and tables throughout the book lay out the procedural details, example stimuli, and results from some of the experiments discussed in the chapters. To help students actively synthesize the material, I’ve added a new series of Questions to Contemplate after each section. These may prompt students to organize their thoughts and notes, and instructors can nudge students into this conceptual work by assigning some as take-home essay questions. This edition continues to offer a mix of foundational and newer research. More examples of crosslinguistic research, including work with signed languages, have been included. I’ve also put greater emphasis on language development over the lifespan, with more detailed discussions of the role of language experience and the effects of age on language. And I’ve encouraged students to think about some current research controversies, such as the disputed connection between bilingualism and enhanced cognitive skills. Needless to say, there are many potential pages of material that I regretfully left out; my hope is that the book as a whole provides enough conceptual grounding that students can pursue additional topics while having a sense of the overall intellectual context into which they fit. I’ve also tried to give students a balanced view of the diverging perspectives and opinions within the field (even though, naturally, I subscribe to my own favorite theories), and a realistic sense of the limits to our current knowledge. And if, along the way, students happen to develop the notion that this stuff is really, really cool—well, I would not mind that one bit. Thanks! I hope that everyone understands that on the cover of this book, where it says “Julie Sedivy,” this is shorthand for “Julie Sedivy and throngs of smart, insightful people who cared enough about this book to spend some portion of their brief lives bringing it into the world.” I’m indebted to the numerous scholars who generously took time from their chronically overworked lives to read and comment on parts of this book. Their involvement has improved the book enormously. (Naturally, I’m to blame for any remaining shortcomings of the book, which the reader is warmly encouraged to point out to me so I can fix them in any subsequent editions.) Heartfelt thanks to the following reviewers, who helped me develop the original edition of this book: Erin Ament, Janet Andrews, Stephanie Archer, Jennifer Arnold, Julie Boland, Craig Chambers, Morten Christiansen, Suzanne Curtin, Delphine Dahan, Thomas Farmer, Vic Ferreira, Alex Fine, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Carol Fowler, Silvia Gennari, LouAnn Gerken, Richard Gerrig, Ted Gibson, Matt Goldrick, Zenzi Griffin, Greg Hickok, Carla Hudson Kam, Kiwako Ito, T. Florian Jaeger, Michael Kaschak, Heidi Lorimor, Max Louwers, Maryellen MacDonald, Jim Magnuson, Utako Minai, Emily Myers, Janet Nicol, Lisa Pearl, Hannah Rohde, Chehalis Strapp, Margaret Thomas, John Trueswell, Katherine White, Eiling Yee. A special thanks to Jennifer Arnold and Jan Andrews for taking this book out for a spin in the classroom in its earlier versions, to their students and my own at the University of Calgary for providing valuable comments. The following reviewers generously offered their comments on the second edition, prompting much adding, deleting, reorganizing, and useful agonizing on my part: Janet Andrews, Vassar College Iris Berent, Northeastern University Jonathan Brennan, University of Michigan Craig Chambers, University of Toronto Jidong Chen, California State University, Fresno Judith Degen, Stanford University Anouschka Folz, Bangor University Zenzi Griffin, The University of Texas at Austin Adele Goldberg, Princeton University Karin Humphreys, McMaster University Timothy Justus, Pitzer College Michael Kaschak, Florida State University Lisa Levinson, Oakland University Sophia Malamud, Brandeis University Maryellen McDonald, University of Wisconsin Katherine Midgley, San Diego State University Jared Novick, University of Maryland, College Park Eleonora Rossi, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona Gregory Scontras, University of California at Irvine Ralf Thiede, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona In today’s publishing climate, it’s common to question whether book publishers contribute much in the way of “added value.” The editorial team at Sinauer Associates (Oxford University Press) has shown a single-minded devotion to producing the best book we possibly could, providing skills and expertise that are far, far outside of my domain, and lavished attention on the smallest details of the book. Thanks to: Sydney Carroll, who shared the vision for this book, and kept its fires stoked; Carol Wigg, who, as production editor, knows everything; Alison Hornbeck, who stepped into Carol’s capable shoes and shepherded the book over the finish line; Elizabeth Budd, who spotted the hanging threads and varnished up the prose; Beth Roberge Friedrichs, who designed exactly the kind of book I