User:Pkatamba/sandbox

Gary Libben
Nationality	Canadian
Academic background
Alma mater	McGill University Concordia University
Academic work
Discipline	Psycholinguist Neurolinguist

Gary Libben is a Canadian psycholinguist and neurolinguist. Libben is the current Department Chair Professor of Applied Linguistics at Brock University in Ontario. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the founding director and co-director of the University of Alberta’s Centre for Comparative Psycholinguistics and former President of the Canadian Linguistics Association.

Education

• BA, Cum Laude: Psychology, Concordia University, 1976
• MA: Applied Linguistics, Concordia University, 1982
• PhD: Linguistics, McGill University, 1986

Work in Linguistics

The basis of Libben's work lies in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. Libben's study of language focuses on word processing and word representation in our mind and our brain. He argues that the properties of words have a psychological meaning linked to the mind. He argues that words are a part of our memory and that we interpret new words from “memory association” and “associative links”. But he also maintains that we can interpret words using our computational (problem-solving) side that is separate from our memory.

Words and Mind

Study of Language Processing

Libben’s 2011 chapter on "Psycholinguistics: The Study of Language Processing” focuses on how humans use word, sentence and discourse meaning in their minds through language processing in the brain to communicate. To collect research for this study, language users should have no knowledge that they are currently language processing because it is a subconscious act. He argues that if the process is done unknowingly from the conscious mind, “the language processing system is maximising its ability to operate with speed and efficiency”

He gives an example of how to sense that language processing is subconscious:

• Libben argues that by giving a participant of research, an extract to read and noticing their eye movement, you can see them language processing. He is implying that the common conception that the participant's eyes move "smoothly from left to right" is wrong, that human's eyes "saccade" and that the participant is not aware of it.

Libben also argues that another example of language processing is how "words are organised in our minds" to give us the skill of communication. He argues that humans rely on "mental lexicon" to adapt to learning new words and collecting them quickly. He maintains that humans collect words during language processing, on the foundation of sound, spelling and meaning. .

Libben insists that gaining data about lexical and language processing requires experimentation. Accordingly, he argues that the lexical decision task and the Priming (psychology) are experiments that measure the response time of both processing. He explains that during the lexical decision task, a participant is shown words on a computer and gathers whether it is an “existing word of the language.” And argues that the experiment helps measure the speed of the participant “lexical access” to their mental lexicon.

Libben states that in a priming paradigm experiment, the participant is shown a word after another word on a computer. The purpose is to see the response time for the related word answers. To explain this, Libben uses the words ("cat-dog"). He claims that when a participant looks at the word cat then dog on screen, the words' mental representation triggers subconsciously in their mind. The mental representation of a cat and dog is a pet. He argues that this trigger allows their mind to connect the target (cat) to its “semantic related prime” (dog), meaning that the words are related. Reasoning that the response time is quicker when the target comes before the "semantic related prime". This is known as the "priming effect."

Lexical Processing

Libben argues that once language processing of a word is done, humans can interpret similar words by making correlations using semantic patterns and morphological patterns. Lexical processing comes from human's ability to make relations between existing words and new words of their knowledge to interpret its meaning. Libben bases his study of lexical processing on "multi- morphemic words": made up of meaningful morphemes. He argues that they can be stored in a mind’s mental lexicon and computed. To explain this he uses the multi-morphemic word going, implying that the word can be stored in mind wholely during processing, or computed from the word’s “constituent morphemes "go and -ing” and its separate meaning. Libben argues that computation can only be done to regular verbs going. But irregular verbs such as went can only be stored in our mind because of its lack of affixation.

Compound Processing

Libben argues that compound processing is the concept of “maximization of opportunity.” He argues that the representation of compound words should occur in a human's mental dictionary with morphological patterns and associative links to other words from our mental lexicon. The study of compounds allows linguists to access the “fundamental characteristics of morphology in language.” Libben maintains the idea, that humans are capable of separating compound words into their separate morphemes or computing its meaning with links to their mental dictionary and implies that without this ability newly created compound words would be difficult to interpret.

Libben argues that compounds can be processed through mental lexicon and computation in human's mind through constituent morphemes. To explain this, he claims that the meaning of "houseboat" can be understood because of the mind's mental dictionary or understood through the computation of the separated morphemes "(house - boat)." Libben also reasoned that boat being a “morphological head” should be taken into account because the word "houseboat" can be interpreted as a type of a house, depending on a non-English speakers’ structure of word meaning or because the two constituent morphemes are nouns. Libben argues that some compound words contain constituent morphemes that have an anticipated meaning such as "blueberry." But mentions that this does not apply to all -berry compound words, "elder" does not provide "elderberry" with its meaning when broken down into constituent morphemes. This means that not all lexical compound words are "semantically transparent."

During his linguistic study, Libben discovers that if the mind only “maximizes storage efficiency", the human mind can only select lexical words to form compounds from its mental dictionary with “full decomposition.” He argues that this would make it unnecessary to separate compounds to morphemes. His research implies that the mind needs to make links using its mental dictionary and break down compounds to morphemes when processing words. This is the meaning of "maximization of opportunities."

Words and Brain

The basis of Libben's work on Neurolinguistics focuses on the representation and processing of language in our brain. Libben explains how linguists can investigate the brain. He implies that there are techniques that would be useful in this neurolinguistics investigation. Libben argues that autopsy studies had a contribution to the understanding of the brain. He implies that linguists looking at CT and PET scans can allow them to gain information about how the relationship between language and the brain is obtained by investigating the brain. To explain the study of language & the brain, Libben mentions parts of the brain, e.g. cerebral cortex, cerebral hemispheres and lobes of the brain that have a specific role in its function. Libben also reviews alternative approaches after concluding that language behaviour changes in the brain hemisphere. He suggested Dichotic listening test and split-brain studies after studies had implied that the left hemisphere of the brain has the job of language processing in right handers. Futhermore, Libben implies that the Broca area has main control over speech production, Wernicke's area has main control over an individual having the ability to understand language and the area surrounding the angular gyrus contributes to the function of reading language. Libben argues that a linguist can use Functional magnetic resonance imaging and MEG scans to gain information on the brain’s anatomy/function and language processing.

In an attempt to understand language representation and processing in the brain, Libben bases his investigation on studying patients with aphasia- "language deficit due to brain damage". He reasoned the need to look at aphasia as linguistic theory, looking at the condition in terms of "loss of semantic features and phonological rules." Libben labelled phonological features as a device to identify language representation and processing in the brain. He bases his argument on observations of "phonetic paraphasias of Broca's aphasics". Individuals with Broca's aphasia have limited ability to produce spoken language, the way they express themselves phonetically differs from what they intended to say. An example from a patient:

• 1a) It's hard to eat with a spoon
• 1b) ...har eat ...wIt...pun

In (1b), Libben implies that the change of phonemes compared to (1a) signifies the patients difficultly to produce certain phonemes. with differs from /wIt/ in this example and shows the difference in one specific phoneme/ feature, which he proposes can be identified as a phonetic rule associated with the condition. This observation made him argue that linguists looking at phonological features was the right device in describing how language is represented and produced.

In terms of loss of semantic features, Libben implies that the study of aphasia can bring attention to the “nature of semantic representation” of language in the brain. He argues that the read "word mother is likely to be read as father" for a deep dyslexia patient because they say words “systematically related” to the intended read word. He reasons that in this case both words have a “semantic relation.” Linking back, Libben argues that patients with aphasia like patients with deep dyslexia have difficulty processing particular words.

The linguistic knowledge of understanding the way the brain relates to language is moving forward.

Bibliography

• O'Grady, W.D., Archibald, J. & Katamba, F. 2011, Contemporary linguistics: an introduction, 2nd, [U.K.] edn, Pearson Education, Harlow.
• Libben, G. 2008, "Words, mind, and brain" in: Sterkenburg, P. G. J. van (2008) Unity and Diversity of Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co (Retrieved:29/02/2020)
• Libben, G. 2014, "The nature of compounds: A psychocentric perspective", Cognitive Neuropsychology, vol. 31, no. 1-2, pp. 8-25. (psychology) (Retrieved:23/02/2020)
• Libben, G. & Jarema, G. 2006;2007;2010;2005;, The representation and processing of compound words, Oxford University Press, Oxford. (compound processing)(Retrieved:23/02/2020)
• Davis, C.P., Libben, G. & Segalowitz, S.J. 2019, "Compounding matters: Event-related potential evidence for early semantic access to compound words", Cognition, vol. 184, pp. 44-52. (compound matters)(Retrieved:23/02/2020)

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