Psycholinguistics

Objectives and competences

The goal of the course is to familiarize students with the basic knowledge of the psychology of language (comprehension, production, acquisition of language), organization of the language function in the brain and children's acquisition of language

Acquired competences:
• Ability to recognize interesting topics in the area of psycholinguistics
• Ability to search, read and critically review the psycholinguistic literature

Prerequisites

The subject is related to the linguistics courses in this programme.

Content

• Introduction to psycholinguistics
• Psychological foundations of comprehension, production and acquisition of language
• Speech processing
• Lexical access
• Sentence comprehension
• Sentence production
• Language acquisition by children

Intended learning outcomes

• Basic knowledge of psycholinguistics and innateness of language
• Basic knowledge of language comprehension and production
• Basic knowledge of language acquisition by children

Readings

  • Altmann, Gerry T.M. (1997): The Ascent of Babel. An Exploration of Language, Mind, and Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Catalogue E-version
  • Fernandez, Eva M. in Cairns, Helen Smith. 2010. Fundamentals of psycholinguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Catalogue
  • Golden, Marija. 1996. O jeziku in jezikoslovju. Ljubljana: Univerza v Ljubljani, Filozofska fakulteta. Catalogue
  • Kranjc, Simona (1990): Razvoj govora predšolskih otrok. Ljubljana: Znanstveni inštitut Filozofske fakultete.
  • Pavlič, Matic in Stepanov, Artur (2021). Psiholingvistični vidiki procesiranja oziralnih odvisnikov v slovenščini. Slavistična revija 69(1). E-version
  • Pinker, Steven (1994): The Language Instinct : How the Mind Creates Language. William Morrow and Company. Catalogue

Assessment

Regular attendance and active participation at the lectures and exercises; 3 or 4 homework assignments; written or oral final exam based on the entire content of the course

Lecturer's references

Assoc. Prof. dr. Artur Stepanov teaches linguistics at the Faculty of Humanities and Graduate School at the University of Nova Gorica. He is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of formal syntax, experimental psycholinguistics and cognitive aspects of bilingualism and multilingualism. In these domains, he was leading nationally and internationally funded research projects and published numerous scientific contributions.

Selected publications:

-STEPANOV, Arthur, KODRIČ, Karmen Brina, STATEVA, Penka. The role of working memory in children's ability for prosodic discrimination. PloS one. Mar. 2020, vol. 15, no. 3, str. 1-16.
-STEPANOV, Arthur, ANDREETTA, Sara, STATEVA, Penka, ZAWISZEWSKI, Adam, LAKA, Itziar. Anomaly detection in processing of complex syntax by early L2 learners. Second language research. 2020, vol. 36, iss. 3, str. 371-397.
-STEPANOV, Arthur, PAVLIČ, Matic, STATEVA, Penka, REBOUL, Anne. Children's early bilingualism and musical training influence prosodic discrimination of sentences in an unknown language. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 2018, vol. 143, iss. 1, str. el1-el7.
-STEPANOV, Arthur, STATEVA, Penka. Cross-linguistic evidence for memory storage costs in filler-gap dependencies with wh-adjuncts. Frontiers in psychology. Sep. 2015, vol. 6, 19 str.
- PAVLIČ, Matic in STEPANOV, Artur. Psiholingvistični vidiki procesiranja oziralnih odvisnikov v slovenščini. Slavistična revija 69(1).2021.