In talking and reading each day, we comprehend a large number of sentences. Successful comprehension is a prerequisite for effective communication, the foundation of our social interactions. For these reasons, it is important to inquire into the knowledge and the processing that enable us to comprehend. In this article we deal with the meaning of comprehension and various aspects involved in comprehension such as syntactic knowledge, semantic knowledge, pragmatic knowledge and world knowledge.
Psycholinguistics is the discipline that studies structure of language i.e., speech sounds, meanings, grammar etc., from the perspective of psychology. In this lesson we will discuss one of the important view·on language development that is psycholinguistic theory.
COMPREHENSION
When you were in high school do you remember of solving comprehension exercises in English textbook or in the examination? These tests involve answering questions on a set text to test understanding. Thus comprehension means the action or capability of understanding (mentally) a given message either written or oral.
Comprehending language requires the use of many kinds of knowledge, including syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and world knowledge. In this article we will examine the processing of these aspects of knowledge in detail. In this section we will cover these aspects briefly.
24.3.1 Syntactic knowledge
Syntactic knowledge includes our knowledge of how the words and phrases within a sentence relate to one another, for example, which word is subject and which is predicate. Adults do understand grammatical relations such as subject and object, and they use this syntactic knowledge in reading and talking.
Semantic knowledge
Semantic knowledge consists of our familiarity with the meaning of particular wordsand with the relationships between them. One cannot understand the sentences unless one knows the meaning of the words in the sentence. Further, our knowledge of the relations between words is the basis of the conceptually driven processing that occurs in talking and reading. For instance, in comprehending the sentence. The name of our planet is earth the concept earth can be accessed before we actually read the word earth. The reason is that name of our planet and earth are closely related in meaning, and we use this knowledge of semantic relations to guide the processing of incoming information. In general, semantic knowledge is important because comprehending a sentence is a process of determining the meaning of the sentence.
Pragmatic knowledge
Pragmatics is defined as the study of the social functions of language. Pragmatic knowledge consists of understanding how to communicate effectively. For example, we know that the sentence "Do you know what time it is"? has two meanings, literal and intended. The literal meaning concerns whether the listener known the time. But the intended meaning is "will you please tell me the time? In order to comprehend the original question, we must use our knowledge that the question is really as polite request. In other 1 words, we must infer the intention of the speaker. Our knowledge of what speakers and writers really mean, of how to ask questions politely, and of how to communicate clearly are all aspects of pragmatic knowledge, and they all influence the process of comprehension.World knowledge
World knowledge also plays an important role in the comprehension of language. ,.-Consider what would happen if some one shouted from your kitchen "John has a chicken bone stuck in his throat!" You would understand not only that John had a chicken bone stuck in his throat!" You would understand not only that John had a bone lodged in his throat but also that he was in danger of choking to death and that immediate action was necessary. This understanding is based upon the world know ledge that objects lodged in the throat prevent breathing, that people can survive only a short time without breathing, and that there are ways to dislodge the object and so on. As this example illustrates we can understand statements on many different levels. Achieving the deeper levels of comprehension often involves making inferences on the basis of our world know ledge.Insufficient knowledge limits compr-ehension because the reader tnust dev~lop some structure of knowledge about the material as well as encode the inforrnation being read.
Studies of eye fixation indicate that comprehension is influenced by such factors as rare words, the integration of important clauses, and making inferences.
INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLINGUISTIC THEORY
The study of linguistics is the formal description of the structure of language, including a description of speech sounds, meanings, and grammar.
Language as studied by linguists tends to be competency based (dealing with some ideal potential of the speaker-listener), while psychologists generally view language in terms of performance, or how humans use language. The discipline that incorporates both approaches to the study of language is called psycholinguistics.
There are various nativist views on language development. Among them are perspective of Davic Mc Neill, Noam Chomsky, and Eric Lenneberg. Mc Neill's and Chomsky's views are referred to as psycholinguistic theory.
According to psycholinguistic theory, language acquisition involves an interaction between environmental influences such as exposure to parental speech and reinforcement, and an inborn tendency to acquire language (Chomsky, 1968, 1980). Evidence for an inborn tendency is found in the universality of human language abilities and in the invariant sequences of language development.
The following points are the most important aspects of Chomsky's psycho linguistic theory
i) Languages share universal grammar'-an underlying deep structure or set of rules for turning idea into sentences.
ii)Chomsky argued that underlying people's language abilities is an implicit system of rules, collectively known as a generative grammar. These rules allow speakers to construct, and listeners to understand, sentences that are "legal" in the language.
iii) All the rules of a language are not consciously accessible to speakers of that language. Instead rules operate implicitly i.e., we don't know exactly what the rules are, but we use them rather easily to produce understandable sentences.
iv) Competence is not always fully evident in actual use or performance of language. Competence refers to the underlying linguistic knowledge. This occurs because of interfering factors such as lapses of attention or memory, tiredness, shifts in interest etc.
v) People are born with language universals; that is, they are biologically prepared to acquire a human language. The actual language that a child acquires almost certainly is subject to environmental influences. For example children born to English speakers invariably acquire English.
vi) Chomsky believes that people have a language acquisition device (LAD), an inborn set of mechanism and knowledge that requires only an environmental trigger to be set in motion. The environment controls which language(s) are acquired, but the capacity to acquire a human language is regarded as innate.
SUMMARY
Comprehension is an important aspect in effective communication. Comprehension means the action or capability of understanding a given message either written or oral. If comprehending sentences and passages of prose, adults use their syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and world knowledge in an interactive manner. Syntactic knowledge refers to our knowledge of how the words and phrases within a sentence relate to one another i.e., grammatical structure of the sentence. Semantic knowledge consists of the knowledge of meanings of words. Pragmatic knowledge consists of understanding how to communicate effectively.
According to psycholinguistic theory, language acquisition involves an interaction between environmental influences and inborn tendencies to acquire language. Chomsky has proposed this theory, which emphasizes on universal grammar, generative grammar, language universals, and language acquisition device.