psycholinguistics
- "Psycholinguists study how word meaning, sentence meaning, and discourse meaning are computed and represented in the mind. They study how complex words and sentences are composed in speech and how they are broken down into their constituents in the acts of listening and reading. In short, psycholinguists seek to understand how language is done. . .
"In general, psycholinguistic studies have revealed that many of the concepts employed in the analysis of sound structure, word structure, and sentence structure also play a role in language processing. However, an account of language processing also requires that we understand how these linguistic concepts interact with other aspects of human processing to enable language production and comprehension."
(William O'Grady, et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001)
- "Psycholinguistics . . . draws on ideas and knowledge from a number of associated areas, such as phonetics, semantics and pure linguistics. There is a constant exchange of information between psycholinguists and those working in neurolinguistics, who study how language is represented in the brain. There are also close links with studies in artificial intelligence. Indeed, much of the early interest in language processing derived from the AI goals of designing computer programs that can turn speech into writing and programs that can recognize the human voice."