analysis: unhappiness

[Lise Menn]

if you-all will forgive me for a little advance self-promotion, my new  
book, Psycholinguistics: Introduction and Applications, will be  
available from Plural Publishing by the end of the year.  It's  
intended to be completely accessible for anyone (linguist,  
psychologist, speech-language pathologist, language teacher...) who  
needs to be able to think about brain and language, and what Tom says  
about experimental techniques and word storage is one of the things I  
explore, starting from analyses of slips of the tongue. Also a chapter  
each on the brain, reading, language development, aphasia, and second  
language learning.
	You can see the full table of contents on the web page for the book:
http://www.pluralpublishing.com/publication_psl.htm
	Best regards to all, Lise

On Sep 8, 2010, at 7:03 PM, Tom Givon wrote:

>
> Right on, Lise. And further, there is a well-known experimental  
> technique called "semantic priming" that is admirably well suited  
> for investigating whether when a language used hears "unhappiness",  
> "happy" and "happiness" are activated ('come to mind'). This  
> technique will probably not answer the question of the differential  
> bracketing (un[happiness] vs. [unhappy]ness). And it is too rough to  
> answer questions of directionality (does "unhappy" prime "happy"  
> stronger than vice versa?). But it does tends to suggest that we  
> don't store complex words in total disconnect from their parts, at  
> least not as frequent adult users. And that phonological similarity  
> (shared parts of words) has semantic consequences.  Cheers,  TG
>
> ==============
>
>
> Lise Menn wrote:
>> So we see an important phenomenon: Tacit knowledge really IS tacit,  
>> and 'intuitions' are very poor guides to what our minds are doing  
>> when we are using the patterns of our language as speakers/ 
>> hearers.  Introspection cannot replace observation of actual usage  
>> and psycholinguistic experiments; it can only act as a suggestion  
>> of where to dig.  After all, we can't figure out vision or  
>> digestion by thinking about how they feel, although we certainly  
>> have to account for subjective feelings of contrast and  
>> indigestion. The same is true for language,  mutatis mutandis.
>>
>> On Sep 8, 2010, at 9:26 AM, Johanna Rubba wrote:
>>
>>> One thing that consistently occurs in my intro linguistics classes  
>>> is that at least half of my students do not analyze complex words  
>>> the way a linguist would -- many would analyze "unhappiness" as  
>>> "un" + "happiness." They make such analyses over and over. It  
>>> makes one wonder, of course, about how much native-speaker  
>>> intuition is in agreement with some linguistic analyses. I can  
>>> *feel* that the analysis is [[un-happy]-ness], but, apparently,  
>>> large numbers of native speakers cannot.
>>>
>>> Another thing I often find is that many students cannot locate  
>>> either primary or (especially) secondary stress in words. This is  
>>> very bizarre, considering that they produce the stresses correctly  
>>> and hear them correctly in others' speech. So many are  
>>> unsuccessful at this that I have stopped requiring them to find  
>>> stress in words on tests. I give them tricks like singing the word  
>>> and monitoring for the highest-pitched syllable, but the tricks  
>>> don't work. That many students can't be tone-deaf.
>>>
>>> Dr. Johanna Rubba, Ph. D.
>>> Professor, Linguistics
>>> Linguistics Minor Advisor
>>> English Dept.
>>> Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo
>>> San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
>>> Ofc. tel. : 805-756-2184
>>> Dept. tel.: 805-756-2596
>>> Dept. fax: 805-756-6374
>>> E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu
>>> URL: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Lise Menn                      Home Office: 303-444-4274
>> 1625 Mariposa Ave    Fax: 303-413-0017
>> Boulder CO 80302
>> http://spot.colorado.edu/~menn/index.html
>> Professor Emerita of Linguistics
>> Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science
>> University of  Colorado
>>
>> Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics]
>> Fellow, Linguistic Society of America
>>
>> Campus Mail Address:
>> UCB 594, Institute for Cognitive Science
>>
>> Campus Physical Address:
>> CINC 234
>> 1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder
>>
>>
>>
>

Lise Menn                      Home Office: 303-444-4274
1625 Mariposa Ave       Fax: 303-413-0017
Boulder CO 80302

Professor Emerita of Linguistics
Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science
University of  Colorado

Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics]

Campus Mail Address:
UCB 594, Institute of Cognitive Science

Campus Physical Address:
CINC 234
1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder