M. A. I english P. C3 & C6 Modern Linguistics title pmd

6) 
Psycholinguistics : 
Traditionally we all believed that the language we speak has a direct 
connection with our mind as our mind responds to everything we speak and 
everything we do. Psychology is the science of mind and Linguistics is the 
science of language. The combination of the two is psycholinguistics. The 
founders of modern psycholinguistics like Broca and Wernicke speak about 
different speech disorders in their work. The famous linguists like Leonard 
Bloomfield, Ferdinand de Saussure, John Mead and Franz Boas were 
regular students of Wundt’s psychology lecture as Wundt elaborated the 
relationship between mind and language. This enabled these modern 
linguists to elaborate the complex system of communication and the 
simultaneous mental processes.
Many twentieth century psychologists put forth the theories of 
language learning. Though the behaviourists and cognitive psychologists 
differ in their theories of language learning, they ultimately speak about the 
language learning process only. Edward Sapir, J.F. Skinner, Noam Chomsky 
and other speak about language learning processes. Chomsky is the only 
linguist but he speaks about LAD (Language Acquisition Device) which is an 
innate ability of a learner which enables him to process the linguistic data and 
create his own sentences using it.
Study of linguistics is incomplete without taking into account the 
theoretical preliminaries in psychology and vice versa. We all are familiar with 
the psychological counselling treatment. Here, the patient is allowed or 

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encouraged to express himself so that his mind acquires normal conditions. 
The intrinsic relationship between language and psychology attracts many 
linguists to psychology and vice versa.
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