Sentence Processing and Psychological Reality

1.      Meaning, Sound, and Syntax in Relationship in Chomsky’s Grammar

In Chomsky’s theory of grammar there are three fundamental conceptions of the grammar meaning, sound and syntax are related to one other. In relating with sound and meaning, Chomsky’s doesn’t begin with the meaning of the sentence or the sound of the sentence but he begins with the syntax of the sentence. In fact, he starts with letter S, which one might be determine to interpretation the meaning of sentence. The structure that represent the sound of Phonetic Form (PF) and the meaning or Logical Form (LF) of the sentence are first generated from the syntax, which activated by the vacuous S. syntax function autonomously of meaning and sound. The meaning and sound pattern on a sentence is defined by the function of syntax.

2.      Why Chomsky’s Grammar is not Performance Model

For the speaker production the true process would begin with something would the idea a person wants to express and it must be end with speech sound.

In Chomsky’s terminology, this process would begin with something like Logical Form (LF) and end with the Phonetic Form (PF). While, for speaker understanding the true process would involved a reverse ordering. In Chomsky’s terminology, the process would be begin with the PF and end with the LF. Chomsky’s grammar could not be used directly as either a model of production or of understanding. Chomsky’s believed of this and has long cautioned readers not to interpret his grammar as a kind of performance process. Chomsky has made it an essential of part of the performance process. He asserts that his grammar will be used in both the process on sentence production and understanding. In the regard, the speaker must develop some sort of use rules, heuristics, or strategies so that grammar can be used for such performance processes.

3.      Types of Performance Model

There are two possible basic performance conceptions: the first conception is Resource Grammar Approach, it is also as a component model. Here the grammar is used as a sort of resource in order that speaker may engage in the process of production or understanding sentence. The second conception is Process Grammar Approach. Here a grammar is itself a process in the production or understanding of sentences.

a.      Chomsky’s resource grammar performance

There are two performance processes to be explained, two sets of rule are required: one set for production, the other for understanding. Essentially, production performance involves meaning or ideas as input, and speech as output, while understanding involves speech as input and meaning as output. When given input, one of the sets of use rules will interact with the grammar to provide an output.

b.      A process grammar performance model

Three are types of grammar that are part of the process itself- for example, the semantics- based grammar (Functional Grammar, mainly derived from Generative Semantics Grammar) and psychological process grammar (Cognitive Grammar), the semantic based grammar could serve directly as model of sentence production since they take the meaning of the sentence as input and provide the sound pattern of the sentences output. However, to suppose that a speaker would actually go step by step through such as grammar to produce a sentence is doubtful.

c.       No workable performance model yet with Chomsky’s grammar

There are two distinct possibilities why Chomsky’s grammar is on workable performance model. Either psycholinguistics is not smart enough to create a workable model, or, there is something wrong with Chomsky’s conception grammar such that a performance model cannot be devised.

4.      Some Features of Sentence Production and Understanding

a.      Explaining the speed of conversation

Speed is made possible by a speaker or hearer having knowledge and strategies that often enable one to jump directly from meaning to sound and vice verse without the mediation of syntax in the process of understanding and producing sentence. For example, in production, because the production of a sentence involves the output of words in a linier order. In this respect, familiar phrases and sentence are especially useful.

b.      Some features of sentence production

The aim of the production process is to provide a set of sounds for the thought that the speaker wishes to convey. There are some features of sentence production:

Ø  Though process

This is universal process use knowledge and a stock of concepts to create thoughts. It is stimulated by various mental and environmental influences.

Ø  Purpose + preposition

This is the essential thought which a person wishes to communicate to someone. The purpose of a thought involves such intentions as questioning, asserting, denying, and warning with respect to a proposition. The proposition consists of two basic types of concept: arguments and predicates.

Ø  Pragmatics and Semantics Structure

This is includes politeness, persuasions, and other pragmatic factors will influence what the final meaning of the sentence will be.

Ø  Basic Strategies

This component identifies certain properties of the Semantic Structure and assigns research to be done of the Stored Items and Transformations rules.

Ø  Phonetics Structure and Acoustics signal

The phonetic Structure is a psychological level which represents the pronunciation of the sentence. Its consist of the discrete speech and prosodic features (pitch, stress, etc.).

c.       Some feature of sentence understanding

Fodor, Bever, and Garret have postulated that s string of incoming words are first identified in terms of their grammatical class (noun, verb, etc) so that for English syntactic strategy like

A FUNDAMENTAL SYANTACTIC STRATEGY

NP + V + NP        Subject + Verb + Direct Object

This means that the first NP is identified as the Subject, while the NP that follows the V is identified as the Direct Object. Such as in the sentence “The cat chased the mouse”

Basics strategies are better specified in term of semantics aspects, thus rather than the strategy of NP + V + NP          Subject, etc, the strategy would be a semantic strategy, something like

A FUNDAMENTAL SEMANTICS STRATEGY

Living + thing + Action + Thing              Agent + Action Action’s object

Here, with the identifications of the individual concepts of “living Thing”. “Action” and “Thing” the semantics roles of “Agent” and “Action’s Object” are assigned with respect to “Action”. Thus, given a sentence like “Mary pushed Sally”, the first word of “Mary” (assuming for convenience a single word-by-word analysis) will be immediately identified in the Stored Items as the name of a person, person being an item that includes the meaning of living thing.

5.      The Psychology Unreality of Chomsky’s Grammar

v  The psychological contradiction in Chomsky’s theorizing

The content of the rules of the grammar are thus determined by the directional relationship which Chomsky postulated with respect to the levels of his grammar. But, he declares that it would be “absurd” to propose that producing sentence speaker would start from the initial letter S, construct a D-structure line by line, then insert lexical items and apply transformations to form a S-structure, etc. Thus, Chomsky asserts, the process of generating a linguistic derivation is not process that a speaker would ever that employ in producing a sentence. The same would be true for understanding of sentences- a performance process that must begin with sound and not the letter S and a variety of syntactic principles.

Now, since the direction order in Chomsky’s grammar is psychologically unreal, and since the content of his grammatical principles and parameters are determined by this directional order, we can only conclude that Chomsky’s principles and parameters are as the psychologically unreal as the psychologically unreal order which they were based.

6.      The Anti-Mentalist Skeletons in Chomsky’s Closet

How is Chomsky’s theorizing has resulted in this internal psychological contradiction. The facts show that Chomsky’s was not always a Mentalist and that the psychological theorizing for his grammar comes some years later.

We find that Chomsky supporting Bloomfield, a pro-Behaviorist linguist, in this attack on Mentalist, ideas and meanings (ideas and meaning are attacked because such abstract entities lead to a theory of mind). Chomsky, in his work 1955, devoted over a hundred pages to attacking the relevance of semantics to grammar. Even so, semantics was given primary autonomous role in the grammar. Because Chomsky continued to give syntax a primary role, mentalist claims about grammar, that Chomsky fell into psychological self-contradiction. Not even his brilliant competence-performance
solution was enough to save the theory, although it did serve to detract critics from focusing psychological attention on the grammar.