Page 22 - The Modul of Psycholinguistics Studies_2

processor to identify the sounds (or written symbols) occurring in
the input. Then, the lexical processor identifies the component

words. The next step is for the syntactic processor (also called
the parser , and incorporating the syntactic component of the

grammar) to provide a syntactic representation of the sentence
(i.e. a representation of how the sentence is structured out of
phrases and the phrases out of words). So we see that mental

processes work here in a hierarchal way and language is not an
unconscious process. Displacement and Imagination Human
language is unique because we can speak about past events

stored in our memory. We can also think and predict about
future and imaginary things and imagining is something which is

unique to human mind only. Animal communication is only for
the present moment. Psychology cannot be ignored there also
but limitations are there. Language is Arbitrary but Part of

Semiotic System Humans communicates not just through
language but through such means as gesture, art, dress, and

music. The study of communication systems has its origins in
semiotics, a field of inquiry that originated in the work of
Ferdinand de Saussure in a series of lectures published in A

Course in General Linguistics (2001). According to Saussure,
meaning in semiotic systems is expressed by signs, which have a

particular form, called a signifier, and some meaning that the
signifier conveys, called the signified. Signified is the mental
image of the real object in mind. In fact it is the symbolic

content and duality of verbal communication that accounts for
its extraordinary effectiveness. Innateness/ Cultural Transmission

but Worldviews through Language. The theories of Chomsky
brought a revolution in language and linguistics studies in the
22 | Fatma Yuniarti, M.Pd., B.I