Theoretical Grammar

A.A. Leontyev, defines the subject matter of psycholinguistics as the relationship between language system 
and linguistic competence. What is meant, scholars no longer focus on language as a system, but they also 
analyze the person’s ability to use the linguistic units and structures more effectively. 
 
PSYCHOLINGUISTIC FACTORS 
Psycholinguistics focuses on the speaking individual. Therefore, 
I. the human factor is extremely important in defining psycholinguistics as an independent discipline. It is not 
the product of speaking, that is of greatest importance, it is also the speaking person, with all of its strengths, 
weaknesses, creative abilities and disturbances. It is interesting to study the differences between women’s and 
men’s speech, for example. Men and women are sure to speak differently, because their personalities are not the 
same. Children’s speech is something to be studied too. It can hardly be denied that teenagers speak somewhat 
differently from senior adults. The speaker’s personality type as well as his current emotional state can’t but 
affect the choice of language structures. 
II. Another thing is the situation factor. If we look at any text more or less carefully, we will see that all the 
parameters of the communicative speech situations are somehow reflected in it. We can basically determine 
where and when this or that conversation takes place. 
III. Experimental factor is important too. The experiment is generally recognized as the leading method of 
psychology. The experiment helps to create an artificial situation, allowing the speaker to resort to special 
linguistic devices, those that are of special interest to the scholar. On the other hand, the experimental situation 
may cause the speaker to exercise certain linguistic abilities, so that the scholar may determine whether the 
latter are well developed, underdeveloped or impaired. Tests are extremely popular in psycholinguistic studies.
IV. The abnormal factor 

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Linguistics has always been a normocentric discipline. It means that linguists have analyzed “correct” texts 
only. It has never been clear what is to be done with “wrong” texts. Stories derived by illiterate people, 
foreigners or mentally sick individuals were merely defined as “incorrect’ and, therefore, not considered worth 
studying at all. However, those texts do exist, so something must be done with them. The term “wrong” is not a 
very lucky one, because it adds nothing to the understanding of what those texts are actually like and what are 
the mechanisms that bring them into being. It was the Russian academician L.V. Scherba that suggested the 
term “negative speech material”, including everything that does not meet the existing norms and standards. 
Here are some genres or types of the text that L.V. Scherba considers negative: