Language Comprehension

a speech and language disorder

A.    Strategies understanding un utterance

            To understand an untterance, there are factors which help us to understanding an utterance. First, is factors which related with the knowledge. We are as human society, we lives with our environment. Our environment gives us much knowledge about life in the world.  Several of the knowledge is universality whereas another part is special about the society where their stay. General knowledge the elephant which have big body makes us assumes to the elephant which has body like a goat is small elephant. In contrast, our knowledge about an ant which has small body make us say that a ant which the length 2 centimeter is a big ant. So, the expression small elephant and big ant must be understood with the context of general knowledge.

The knowledge is one of the factors which help us to understand the content of the utterance. For example:

He bought a pair of horse shoes

He bought a pair of alligator shoes

We are understood that “horse shoes” is a shoe which is worn by the horse while “alligator” is a shoe which is made from alligator leather. This understanding simply according to the knowledge about the world where we are lives, that is in our world, many horses are wears a shoes and there is no alligator which wear a shoes.  Much leather of alligator is conducted to make a shoe but there is no a shoes is made from horse leather.

            Beside the knowledge about the world, in understanding an utterance we are also helped by syntactic factors. We use strategies syntactic to understand an utterance.  They are:

1.         After we are identify first word from a constituent which we are heard, our mental process  will start to look for others word which is correspond with the first word in that constituent. If the fist word which we are heard is a “person”, so we are look for others word syntactically can collocate with word “person”. For example, old, big, stupid, etc. this process occur because we are as pronouncer knows that like the word “ person” is followed by another word in order to be a constituent thing.

2.      After we are heard first word in a constituent, for example, after the word “ a person” appear the word “who”, so we have a conclusion that construction “ a person who” is impossible to build a constituent. We want there is another word which follow it because intuitively, we are also knows that the word “who” will build sub-clause.  So it will appear “a person who finding you”.

3.      After we are heard a verb, we will look for an argument which match the verb. For example, verb “hit”, we want there is an object of “hit”, such as “she hit a robber”.

4.      Stick every new word to the previous word. This strategy relate with the fact that the sentence is in linear shape so the word which is follow the previous word is explain the previous word. Example: The story book of Indonesia culture

5.      Use the word or first constituent from the clause to identify the function of that clause. If the words which we are heard are “if, although, or when”, of course there is no main clause. Example: If you are agree….

6.      Affixes also can help us to understand an utterance. Example: I know the boys cooked. In this case, with the affix –ed, the boys are cooking.

Beside we use syntactic strategy in understanding an utterance, we also can use semantic strategy to understand an utterance. The semantic strategies are:

1.      Use logical reasoning in understanding an utterance.

2.      Look for a constituent which is fill the requirements of certain semantic.

3.      If there is a serial “N V N”, so first “N” is the doer. For example, she eat meatball. In this case, she is the doer.

4.      If in a discourse we found word such as” we, they, or he”, we must look for antecedent for that word. For example: yesterday, I went to river with Luha and Nina. Suddenly, we looked a big snake.

B.  AMBIGUITY

Ambiguity is a term used in writing and math, and under conditions where information can be understood or interpreted in more than one way and is distinct from vagueness, which is a statement about the lack of precision contained or available in the information. A word, phrase, or sentence is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning. In psychology, the term "ambiguity" is used to indicate situations that involve uncertainty. An increasing amount of research is concentrating on how people react and respond to ambiguous situations.. There are two types of ambiguity, lexical and structural.

1.      Lexical ambiguity is presence o two or more possible meanings within a single word.

Examples:

-          They passed the port at midnight

The word “port” is lexically ambiguous. However, it would normally be clear in a given context which of the two homonyms, 'port' ('harbor') or 'port' ('kind of fortified wine'), is being used.

2.      Structural ambiguity occurs when a phrase or sentence has more than one underlying structure.

Examples:

- The phrases 'Tibetan history teacher', 

It can be 'Tibetan history teacher' and 'Tibetan history teacher'. Indeed, the existence of such ambiguities provides strong evidence for a level of underlying syntactic structure. Consider the structurally ambiguous sentence,

-'The chicken is ready to eat',

It could be used to describe either a hungry chicken or a broiled chicken. It is arguable that the operative reading depends on whether or not the implicit subject of the infinitive clause 'to eat' is tied anaphorically to the subject 'the chicken' of the main clause.

B.     Inner structure and visual structure

In many things of meaning of an utterance, can be understood from the word that be in the words, or from the particular characteristics of each word which used. Like in example:

(1) The old man still can play tennis

It can be understood from the sequence of the words that are heard or seen by us. Whoever hear this sentence will give the same interpretation, that is, there is a man, that old man, he from beginning until now play something, and that something is tennis.

In the other case, it is not impossible that a sentence that seems simple has a complex meaning. For example in this sentence:

            (2) The man and the old woman still can play tennis

      We are not sure that whether the man is also as old as the woman or just the woman that old, and the man is not. This interpretation arises because the adjective “old” can function as modifier of noun “woman” only or the phrase of “man and woman”. If we use the tree diagram, the phrase of man and old man will be different.

      From the examples above it is appears that the meaning of a sentence is not only determined by the surface of manifestation we hear or we see but even primarily by underlying representation. In the other words, a sentence is not only has the visual structure but also the inner structure.

      The differences between this visual structure and inner structure are very are very important to understand the sentences because the mental process through which human being in response the sentence such as these sentence are different from the sentences are not ambiguous. Although the concept of inner structure and visual structure now no longer followed by the initiators (Chomsky 1996), in relation with the comprehension of speech, both concepts are very useful.  

1.      Proposition

When we hear a utterance, which we hear is a series of sounds that form a syllable, the syllable into word, and from the word into phrase and so on. But, to understand that utterance we have to draw on the sounds and the words forming the fundamental representation of meaning. Units of meaning in sentences are called proposition (Clark 1977:11). Lobner defines as “a set the referents of all referring elements and how they are linked. In the other words, to understand an utterance we need to understand the proposition expressed by the sentence.

Proposition divided into two parts: (a) argument, that is the first things discussed, and (b) predication, that is the statement made about the argument. Because the argument can be “what” or “whoever”, and predication also can be various, then the proposition is generally described by formulate:

x {y,z}

Which mean “the function of x on y and z”

A sentence can include more than one proposition. Example in this sentence:

- The old clown stole my bike

Here, we have the following propositions:

a. someone stole the bike

b. someone is a clown

c. the clown is old

d. the bike is mine

e. time stating the past

      Understanding about this proposition is very important for comprehension because which we understand from a sentence is actually those propositions – the fact that there is people, the people is clown, the clown is old, the people stole the bike, the bike which stolen is mine, and so on.

      A listener receives the input in the form of a series of words which arranged linearly. From the linear arrangement, listener build a structure of proposition that are hierarchical, step by step from lower hierarchy leading to higher hierarchy. When we hear a word, our mental processes begin to work and construct meaning for this word using existing features of the word.

      Which often occurs in human is that once a proposition of the sentence understood the words that represent them to be not important anymore. We often forget what the exact words used by speaker earlier. This is proven by the fact that if we have to declare the proposition, we will not necessary use the same words and the same sequence.

B. Memory

 Memory is an integral part of human existence that underlies language and mind. Cannot imagine what kind of man that if it cannot mengiangat times past, cannot save the entries you just heard, and cannot remember what he was doing tomorrow. Most of what is known about this world does not come when human beings are born but acquired through experience that has been stored in its memory.

That's why the study of memory is an important part in psycholinguistics. Similarly, the mind (thought) that is still associated with the language.

Studies on memory mostly done by the philosophers. Until the 20th century, the research focus has gradually switched to an experimental study originally conducted by psychologists but also kemudaian conducted by biologists. In terms of psychology, among others, the question arises of how memory works, and about the kinds of memory. From a biologist's point of view the question is about how the brain that deal with learning. Both the psychology and biology will not be able to answer these questions individually. Thus, the combination of these two disciplines can provide hope to be able to present a more adequate picture of how the brain can learn and remember.

By the mid 19th century, the success of experimental science in physics and chemistry began to attract the attention of those who engaged in the field of behavior (behavior). Philosophical exploration gradually been replaced by an empirical study by the group that became known as an experimental psychologist who pioneered by Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909). Ebbinghaus was the psychologist who first succeeded in bringing the study of memory to the lab to be studied objectively and quantitatively. So that's emerged from his research that there are two kinds of memory are short-term memory  and long-term memory.

William James, an American psychologist mencoba develop and further sharpen the distinction between short-term memory to long-term memory. Short-term memory only lasts a few seconds or minutes, as when looking at the phone number and then use that number to call. Conversely long memory lasts a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and even bias is also a lifetime.

1. Position of memory

Karl Lashley (1890-1958) psychologist from Harvard University have conducted a study to to determine the presence of memory in the brain. From his study of a rat in the 20s, he concluded that the memory is not in a point or a particular region in the brain. Many parts of the brain involved ddari. The same thing is also mentioned by Nonald O. Hebb of the University of Mc. Gill. He found that these parts have different functions even though it sustains memory storage as a whole. Memory is not in a special place in the brain. Even exciting new discovery from a study conducted by the Head of et al (1996) and Cabeza et al (1997) is that the memory disorders conducted by the left hemisphere, particularly in sprefrontal cortex , anterior cingulated cortex, and parahippocampal girus. Meanwhile, the memory retival done by the right hemisphere in these same three areas. This pattern became known as HERA-Hesmispheric Encoding / Retivel asymmetry (Dardjowidjojo, 1991).

 
2. Various kinds of memory

Results of research conducted by Penfild and Robert proves that not only comprises one kind. First, there is a memory that is memory-related experience with things of the past. The more meaningful an experience that, then the longer the memory is stored and remembered. Second, conceptual memory, the memory used to build a concept based on the facts that enter. For example, after the child was introduced to the concept of a bird and then seeing pictures of birds, then the child will develop the concept of this beast so saving the concept in the bird's memory. Third, memory is memory that remembers the words to form a sound concept of the concept. Someone will forget the name of a thing if it fails to exploit the memory of words (in Chaer, 2003).

Memory can be categorized into two kinds of declarative memory and non-declarative memory. Declarative memory is memory for events, facts, words, faces, music and shape the events and experiences gained in life. There are many factors that lead to declarative memory is acquired by :

1.      Frequency factor, the more frequent recurrence of the bigger events that embedded memory.

2.      Relevance factors, an event that is felt in terms of relevant experience will be very impressive and will grow old enough memory.

3.      Factor of significance, a matter that is very significant in general will be remembered for a long time.

4.      Factors dirty rehearsal, a penyayi inevitably have to train yourself to memorize the words in the song that will be sung.

5.      Hereditary factors, entities that are organized on a regular basis will be easier to remember than a randomly placed.

References

Dardjowidjojo, Soenjono.2008. Psikolinguistik Pengantar Pemahaman Bahasa Manusia. Jakarta. Yayasan Obor Indonesia

Indah, Rohamani Nur.  Abdurrahman. 2008. Psikolinguistik Konsep dan Isu Umum. Malang. UIN-Malang Press.