2. Psycholinguistic units - structural units of speech activity, allocated on the basis of psycholinguistic analysis

Consideration of the concept of "psycholinguistic units" refers to the most important issues of the psycholinguistic theory (119, 133). The concept of a unit, as mentioned above, is interpreted in psycholinguistics in accordance with the concept of LS. Vygotsky, characterizing the unit as a product of psychological analysis, wrote: “By unit we mean such products of analysis, which, unlike elements, possess all the basic properties inherent in the whole, and which are further non-decomposable living parts of this unity ... "(42, p. 46).

Psycholinguistic units, by definition, S. Saporta, “are such message segments that are functionally operational as whole in the decoding and coding processes and are amenable to level analysis” (324, p. 61). Functionally operational units include speech actions and speech operations that are in hierarchical relations with each other (an integral act of speech activity - speech actions - speech operations).

Ch. Osgood, one of the founders of foreign psycholinguistics, proposed to isolate psycholinguistic units “according to the levels of realization of the speech process” (315).

The unit of motivational level, according to Charles Osgood, is the sentence “in a broad non-grammatical meaning” (it acts as such for both the speaker and the hearer).

The semantic level of speech realization is associated with the choice of possible values. For the speaker, the unit of this level is the "functional class" (which roughly corresponds to the concept of syntagma by LV Scherby). [154]

The unit of the next level - "sequence level" - is the word. Finally, the integrative level deals with non-segmented elements - the “building blocks” of speech (for the speaker, such is the syllable, for the listener, the phoneme).

In addition to linguistic and psycholinguistic units, in psycholinguistics of the first generation, so-called psychological units, that is, those that can be realized by the speaker himself (syllable, word, sentence), and an attempt was made to distinguish between these units (S. Saporta, [324]). According to A.A. Leontiev, they are differentiated as follows: psycho-linguistic units are operational units, a kind of functional blocks that act in the processes of generation and perception of speech; psychological units are components of our knowledge of our language; this knowledge can be introduced into the mind of a person in the process of teaching literacy, the mother tongue, as well as in the process of its “spontaneous” assimilation (before the start of systematic training) [133].

According to A.A. Leontiev (119) in the process of speech activity there are actually three types of units: (a) linguistic units that correspond to a language or a language standard; (b) psycholinguistic units that can be correlated with speech activity and, finally, (c) psychological units — a display in the mind (and in the psyche as a whole) of the structure of language ability, that is, the psychophysiological organization of speech, providing speech activity. (133, p. 57). According to AA. Leontyev, the concept of linguistic ability unites all those aspects of the human psyche that directly condition speech processes (perception, memory, thinking).

In speech activity, according to AA Leontyev, the highest hierarchically is the level of semantic coherent speech, at which the functional-operational unit is a sentence or a statement as a whole. The next level is the level of the objective action, or (as applied to speech activity) the level of naming, the unit of which is a word taken as a whole from its semantic side. According to the views of AA. Leontyev, with reference to the process of realization of speech activity, one more can be singled out - the syllable level (119, p. 333). These units are called psycholinguistic, not only because the basis for their separation is psycholinguistic analysis, but also because they “sublimate” both psychological aspects of speech activity realization (its “semantic aspect” and communicative orientation) and linguistic aspects of its language organization (119, 133).

Thus, the interpretation of psycholinguistic units [PLE] (at least in some psycholinguistic concepts) [155] is very close to the psychological interpretation of speech units (81, 187, etc.). PLE - a sentence (speech statement), the word and syllable “coincide” with the corresponding units of speech. At the same time, it should be noted that the principles of the methodological approach to distinguishing those and other units of speech activity analysis in the psychology of speech and psycholinguistics are different. Psycholinguistic units are distinguished in relation to different levels of organization of speech activity (as their main structural components); speech units - both pronunciation and at the same time “semantic” units of the process of RD implementation.