4. Modern time and psycholinguistics

Already in the first decades of the 20th century, long before the “official” design of psycholinguistics as a science (50s of the last century), the attention of scientists to the processes of speech activity increases significantly, which is connected not only with the theoretical needs of a number of sciences (primarily linguistics, semiotics, psychology), but also with purely practical social “needs”: expansion and modification of information occurring in society, with general literacy training, with problems of diagnosis and treatment of mental diseases, overcoming speech .. Arusheny, etc. At the same time the nature of the study of speech activity had a significant impact various areas of scientific thought: functionalism, Gestalt psychology, associationism, behaviorism, and others.

The founder of linguistics of the 20th century, the Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure, clearly demarcated the language itself (“langue”) as an abstract, supraindividual system, language ability (“faculte du langage”) as a function of the individual (he combined these two categories in the notion of langage, or speech ) and speech (“parole”) - an individual act that realizes linguistic ability through the medium of language as a social system. The system of concepts proposed by F. de Saussure was reflected in the canonical text of his Course in General Linguistics, published after the death of the author (208, 293).

The concept of F. de Saussure was further developed in the works of the famous Russian linguist L.V. Scherby (1880–1944), who introduced the concept of “psychophysiological speech organization of the individual”, which, together with the speech activity caused by it, is a “social product”. Essentially important for domestic psycholinguistics is the work of L.V. Scherbs “On the Threefold Aspect of Linguistic Phenomena and Experiment in Linguistics” (263). It was proposed to consider the following three aspects of language as a subject of linguistics.

The first aspect is speech activity, by which the scientist understood the processes of speaking and understanding. At the same time, he noted that the processes of understanding and interpreting signs are no less active than the processes of pronouncing sounds, speaking.

The second aspect of the language he considered the language system - first of all the vocabulary and grammar. “Properly compiled vocabulary and grammar must exhaust knowledge of the language,” said L.V. Scherba (264, p. 214).

The third aspect of linguistic phenomena is linguistic material, that is, “the totality of everything spoken and understood in a certain situation in a particular era of the life of a given social group” (ibid., P. 218).

The relationship between speech activity and linguistic material L.Scherba defined as follows. Speech activity creates language material. The language system is derived by linguists from the language material. Speech activity and produces language material, and carries a change in the language system. Thus, all three aspects of linguistic phenomena are closely related to each other.

The individual language system is connected with the language system belonging to the whole community through an individual speech system (psycho-physiological speech organization). Therefore, the representation of individuals about the language system bears the imprint of personal speech experience.

L.V. Scherba introduced into science an important psychological distinction between the mechanism (speech organization of a person) and the process (speech activity), as well as the process (speech activity) and product (language material). Speaking about the “system of language”, L. V. Scherba emphasized that this is “a certain social value, something common and obligatory for all members of this public group, objectively given in the living conditions of this group” (264, p. 24-25). According to A.A. Leontiev, namely the views of L.V. Scherbs exerted the strongest influence on the psychological and linguistic science in the event of the emergence of the national school of psycholinguistics (117, 131, 133).

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, several scientific concepts and theories were created at once in psychological science, which largely determined the appearance of psycholinguistics or created the conditions for its emergence.

The most interesting works for psycholinguistics belonged to psychologists of the second generation of this school. Thus, in the experiments of O. Niemeyer (310) it was shown that when he perceives a sentence, its grammatical structure is recreated from the very beginning as a whole, as a Gestalt. But the idea put forward by O. Dietrich is especially important: “Not only language, but each separate act of speech and speech understanding is not simple, but, on the contrary, an extremely complex psychophysiological function, and hence the division of not only the language as a whole, but above all these acts to different strata, each of which has its own relative value in each case under consideration ”(288, pp. 25–26). It should be noted that O. Dietrich, as far back as 1913 (287), suggested the need for a special scientific discipline (he called it “the psychology of language”), which does not coincide either with psychology proper or with linguistics.

Karl Bühler (1878–1963) - representative of the so-called. Wurzburg Psychological School - in the book "Theory of Language" (1934) focuses its attention on the role of man, the characteristics of his activities and situations of activity in understanding the phenomenon of "language". “The treatment of a language as a tool or an organon in Plato’s terminology,” says K. Buhler, “does not mean anything other than considering it in relation to those who use it and create it.” [58] According to K. Buhler, “each expression can be interpreted as a human act, because each specific statement is associated with other conscious actions of a given person.” [59] In contrast to V. von Humboldt and F. de Saussure, K. Buhler identifies not four, but four components (“phenomena”) of the speech process, namely: (1) speech action (2) language work, (3) speech act , (4) language structure. Regarding speech actions, he writes: "There are situations in which, with the help of speech, a vital task of the moment is solved, that is, speech actions are carried out." [60]

In speech activity, its result always arises, but a language work “strives for independence from the position in the life of an individual and the experiences of the author.” [61]

The speech act is defined by K. Bühler as “subjective sense of purpose”. Language, according to K. Bühler, has the “ability to adapt to the inexhaustible wealth of facts to be formulated in each particular case. It is this that provides a certain degree of freedom of meaning. ”[62] The language structure (language education) has an “intersubjective nature”. K. Bühler explains this position in the following way: “The verb, the article and accusative refer to linguistic formations in the same way as the“ right-angled triangle ”refers to the“ formations ”of elementary geometry.” [63] In accordance with this K. Buhler identifies three functions of the language: representative, expressive and appealing. When the linguistic sign is related to objects, it appears as a symbol. Hence the representative function of the language. Being dependent on the speaker, the sign is a symptom. Hence its expressive function. When appealing to the listener, the mark becomes a signal. Therefore, the language has an appellate function.

The speech situation, according to K. Bühler, is formed by: the speaker, the listener, and the objects of speech. He stresses that “in creating a speech situation, not only the sender, but also the recipient have their own positions.” [64] They reach “language agreements” that are governed by interpersonal communication. The “action field” necessarily includes two synchronous aspects: the internal and external situation. All this to a certain extent determines the nature of the actions of the subjects of speech communication, makes it possible to establish what the speaker means.

One of the leading directions in world psychology at the beginning of the 20th century. was associated with the so-called behaviorist (from the English. "behavior" - behavior) psychology.

Behavioral psychology largely agrees with materialistic psychology, and it is not by chance that she considers I.Pavlov, one of her forerunners, the great Russian physiologist. It recognizes only objective methods of studying the psyche, includes the psyche in the general context of human life and considers it to be due to external influences and the physiological characteristics of the organism. But proclaiming the objectivity of the methods of psychology, behaviorists said that if something in the psyche does not lend itself to direct observation and measurement, then this does not exist at all. Considering the psyche as a product of external influences, behaviourists understand these influences only as stimuli that exert an influence on the body, and reduce the content of the human psyche to a combination of body reactions to these stimuli and the linkages of stimuli to reactions arising from the fact that one or another reaction turns out to be beneficial for the body. (221, 313).

According to behaviorism, speech is a specific form of behavior. It is assumed that people are accustomed to use a certain speech form in some repetitive situations. Based on this concept, verbal behavior is a verbal reaction due to external influences . It is reinforced by the mutual understanding of people and their appropriate actions in response to the speech addressed to them. Repeated occurrence of a similar situation automatically causes the developed verbal reaction in a hidden or explicit form. And since a verbal reaction can serve as a stimulus for another verbal reaction, a chain of reflex actions arises. This chain of speech acts is used by people in communication with each other and forms “verbal behavior”.

The behavioral approach to speech has as its goal the identification of certain repetitive stereotypical forms in the complex processes of people's speech communication.

The most striking expression of the behavioral approach to the definition of speech are the works of the American linguist Leonard Blomfield (22, 23). L. Bloomfield (1887–1949), applying the behavioral approach to the analysis of verbal communication, believed that the spheres of human activity are the needs and actions to satisfy them. Cooperating people can influence each other with practical (i.e. non-speech) and speech stimuli. They react to these incentives in two ways: verbal and nonverbal actions. At the same time, speech effects L. Bloomfield called substitute practical stimuli. Consequently, speech stimuli and reactions of communicants have a practical aspect. According to L. Bloomfield, speech is a means of solving practical problems, and its main function is the regulation of human activity.

Pointing to the fact that speech helps thinking, L. Bloomfield singled out such properties as the ability to transmit information, the conditionality of the presence of the speech team. At the same time, L. Bloomfield, defining language as a special form of human behavior, reduced the communicative function of language to a chain of stimuli and reactions, and the social nature of language to processes of the same order as biological processes. Thus, the question of the relationship between language and thinking, the social nature of language was ignored. In accordance with the traditions of behaviorism, the object of research is only observable, but not all real-life fragments of the process of speech communication. According to L. Bloomfield, language is a simple quantitative increase to other stimuli; linguistic forms provide more subtle and specific coordination than other means, but qualitatively it (language) does not differ from other stimuli and there is only “a form of behavior by which an individual adapts to the social environment” (22, p. 52).

A great contribution to the understanding of speech generation and perception continued to be made by neuroscientists who dealt with the problem of aphasia. Thus, A. Peak (1851–1924), a renowned neurologist, student and follower of X. Jackson, in his classic work on agrammatism (1913) develops the ideas of functionalism. Following X. Jackson, he distinguishes between the sensory and motor components of speech from its modal, symbolic component. In his opinion, there is no parallelism between mental and speech processes (in speech, this only a part of what is in thinking is expressed). Speech is considered by A. Peak in a wide range of semantic phenomena - “forms of expression”. He divides them into conditional forms of expression, to which he refers to oral, written, and “manual” (kinetic) speech, as well as special - “musical,” that is, prosodic means, and so on. unconditional forms: imitative and automated movements in facial expressions and gestures. A. Peak emphasizes the important role of the prediction mechanism and the primacy of the phrase over the word in speech processes. On the path of transition from thought to speech, he identifies four phases. At the first stage, there appear “unspecified content of consciousness” and “deterministic tendencies” (i.e., orientation towards the upcoming activity, awareness of the purpose of the activity, etc.). In the second phase, an analysis of the situation of activity takes place (where, in particular, the point of view of the speaker and the listener is taken into account). Here the mental structure of the forthcoming utterance is created. The third phase is the transition from the mental structure to the structure of the sentence. First, the “general scheme of the sentence” is outlined (without the use of words) and its “musical (i.e. prosodic) design, to which A. Peak attached great importance in the process of speech formation. In the fourth phase, the operations of choosing words, their coordination, are performed, after which the actual speaking begins. The process of speech perception, as A. Peak believes, is also complex and has several stages. At first, the listener should define the audio stream as a “speech signal”. For this, the installation of the listener, the analysis of the situation in which communication takes place, and the “musical” components of speech are particularly significant. At the second stage, the perceived material is included in the language mechanism of the listener. At the same time, speech perception is performed not mechanically, but as an active independent activity, proceeding in accordance with the structural and functional features of the language in which communication takes place. A. Peak emphasizes the holistic nature of speech perception, the primary role in it of “large” linguistic structures - phrases and sentences. At the third stage, the hearer relates the perceived with the meanings of words, i.e., understanding occurs.

G. Head (1861–1940) - a famous neurologist, also one of the students of X. Jackson - believed that speech cannot be reduced to its sensory or motor component. Speech, he said, is “an act of symbolic formulation and expression of thought.” At the same time, G. Head emphasized that “speech and language use in the widest form require the preservation and interaction of a whole series of complex processes. They are acquired and arbitrary and come down to the orderly and harmonious collaboration of conscious, subconscious and fully automated functions. "[65] In his capital work "Aphasia and similar speech disorders" (1926), he proved the reality of this "series of complex processes." To these he attributed the processes of semantic, lexical, syntactic and morpho-syntactic. Despite their necessary interrelationship in the production and perception of speech, they have autonomy (which, in particular, is “proved” by their selective violation in cases of speech pathology). Mr. Head emphasizes that each of these processes, like speech in general, depends not only on the specifics of functions and forms of speech, but also on the specifics of the non-speech activity served by the speech.

Many interesting and very productive thoughts about the processes of speech activity are also contained in the works on the pathology of other researchers: P. Marie (1906), J. Dejerina (1914), K. Monakova (1914), K. Goldstein (1926). Psychologists paid attention to the study of speech formation. Separately, it is necessary to dwell on the studies of L. S. Vygotsky, who had the greatest influence on the development of ideas about speech as a specific type of human activity. [66]