14.2857, Diss: Modified Issue 14-2856: Psycholing

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-14-2857. Tue Oct 21 2003. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 14.2857, Diss: Modified Issue 14-2856: Psycholing

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1)
Date:  Tue, 21 Oct 2003 11:30:16 -0400 (EDT)
From:  hamidfp <hamidfp at hotmail.com>
Subject:  Consciousness in Linguistic Perception

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Tue, 21 Oct 2003 11:30:16 -0400 (EDT)
From:  hamidfp <hamidfp at hotmail.com>
Subject:  Consciousness in Linguistic Perception

Institution: University of Tehran
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2003

Author: Hamid Fathollahipour

Dissertation Title: Consciousness in Linguistic Perception

Linguistic Field: Psycholinguistics, Cognitive Science

Dissertation Director 1: Mahmoud Bijankhan
Dissertation Director 2: Ali Afkhami

Dissertation Abstract:

The aim of thesis is to investigate the role played by frequency in
conscious linguistic perception.

The research questions are as follows:

1. Whether the addressee's mental effort in order to perceive a
linguistic unit depends on its frequency, and

2. If so, how?

The mental effort to perceive a stimulus is in direct relation to the
amount of attention paid to it, i.e. the more mental effort for
perception, the higher the level of the attention and consciousness.
On the other hand, it goes without saying that from the lexical point
of view a feature like frequency has nothing to do with the linguistic
units. So as to investigate the role of the frequency to make
linguistic perception a conscious process, it should be studied in a
contextual framework, which includes linguistic as well as
extra-linguistic factors, in order to control all of factors affecting
the said process.

Based on the above points, the research hypothesis was determined as
follows:

- The addressee's mental effort to perceive a linguistic unit depends
on its frequency in a certain context.

- This dependency is such that the increase of the frequency results
in the reduction of the consciousness, and inversely, the decrease of
the frequency leads to the growth of consciousness.

Consciousness is a mental state. Cognitive science, offering a clear
definition of mind, provides the recognition of all effective factors
in the best manner, which is an essential fact for controlling all of
linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. This approach, providing the
interaction of Psychology and Linguistics, allows the researcher to
use the findings of both sciences for analyzing the subject.

The thesis includes five chapters:

1. Introduction;

2. Review of the literature and the history of the research;

3. Research plan;

4. Data analysis, and

5. Conclusion.

Based on the cognitive approach it has been attempted in these
chapters to study the role of the frequency in the conscious
linguistic perception at six levels: Phonology, Syntax, Semantics,
Morphology, Pragmatics and Style. In this respect, several proper
linguistic and statistical methods have been applied to measure the
consciousness of the subjects having different sexes, ages, and
educational backgrounds, by classifying them into two separate groups:
auditory and visual. This concluded to confirm the hypothesis in some
ways and refuse it in others. Furthermore, through a peripheral
research it has been attempted to determine the time when the
subjects' mental activities take place to perceive the above-stated
linguistic structures.

The keywords of this study are: Frequency, Perception, Memory,
Consciousness and Attention, Context, Cognition, Concept and
Prototype.

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