Psycho-linguistics

What is Psycho-linguistics?

Psycho means mind mental and Linguistic means a study of language. A study of language in the mind, so it is psycholinguistics. Psycholinguistics is the study of the mental aspects of language and speech it is a branch of, both linguistics and Psychology.

Psycholinguistics of scientific discipline language is the study of psychological and Nero-biological factors that modify human to accumulate users and understand language. Psycholinguistics focuses on the comprehension and production of language.

It investigation the interpretation of the language of the mind. It deals directly with the process encoding and decoding as they relate states of a message to states of communication. It is the study of language acquisition, linguistics behaviours, as well as psychological mechanisms responsible for them. Psycholinguistics seems to be a knowledge base in nature and is studied by individuals in an exceedingly kind of fields like psychology, science, linguistics than on.

It is a separate branch of study that emerged in the late nineteenth fifty and nineteenth sixty as a result of the Avram Noam Chomsky revolution. The ideas presented by Avram Noam Chomsky became so important that they quickly gained a lot of publicity and had a big impact on a large number of contemporary views on language and language acquisition. psycholinguistics investigates how a child acquires his/her mother tongue. Avram Noam Chomsky uncovered the language acquisition device responsible for language learning- the Innate theory. Lenneberg claimed a close correspondence between physical maturation and the states of language development- the biological theory. Thus, psycholinguistics, a branch of linguistics, encompasses the scientific study especially of child language acquisition, explanation of first and second language learning acquisition. Let us now study some fundamental aspects of psycholinguistics.

Child Language Development

In almost all cases, children's language development follows a predictable order. Each child's development is usually characterized by the gradual acquisition of particular abilities and traits. Many different ways to characterize the development of child language acquisition. Basically, children go through FIVE major stages.

Different Stages of Child Language Development:

Stage-1                     Natural cries and cooling                0-6 months

Stage -2                    Babbling                                          6-12 months

Stage -3                    One word                                         12-24 months

Stage -4                     Two word stage                               24-36 months

Stage -5                     Fuller sentence                                 36+ months


In the first stage children no linguistics skills. They can only natural cries, whimper and cooling noises. In the second stage, children gradually develop the articulation movement necessary for speech production. Third stage children to bring to narrow down on random sounds. They also begin to name objects and produce one-word utterances. In the fourth stage, children begin to produce longer sentences. They can also usually made up of two words with appropriate intonation and tones. The fifth stage, after the two words stage children, tends to explode in their language skills, producing three or more words sentence.

First language acquisition is remarkable for the speed with which it takes place, The speed of acquisition and also the indisputable fact that it usually happens while not over instruction, for all children, in spite of nice variations in an exceedingly vary of social and cultural factors, have led many psychologists to put forward various theories to explain how children manage to acquire adult language. Among the theories proposed the following Four are the most of the maintenance.

1. Behaviourist Theory
2. Mentalist Theory
3. Cognitive Theory
4.Maturation Theory