Speech as psycholinguistic notion

Speech is one of the most complex forms of the highest psychological functions. The speech activity (SA) is characterized with the polysemy, the multilevel structure, the mobility and the communication with the rest psychological functions. An implementation of the speech activity is provided with the range of complex psychological mechanisms at all phases (levels) of its realization. These mechanisms were and they still are subjects of study for many psychologists and psycholinguists (74, 81, 95, 98, etc.). The most complete characterization of psychological mechanisms of speech activity (SA) is presented in researches of a national psycholinguistic school (“school by V.A. Artemov - N. I. Zhinkin - I.A. Zimnaya”). In researches by N.I. Zhinkin and I.A. Zimnaya, the holistic scientific concept of psychological mechanisms (PMs) of speech activity is presented. According to this concept, the main PMs of speech activity are: the comprehension mechanism of mnemonic arrangement of SA (first of all it’s the mechanism of speech memory), also the mechanism of the predictive analysis and speech synthesis (the mechanism of the speech prediction or, what’s the same, the prediction of speech). The most complete variant of this concept is reviewed in researches by I.A. Zimnaya, which is titled “Linguistic psychology of speech activity”.

The most important mechanism of SA undoubtedly is the comprehension mechanism. This mechanism provides intellectual analysis as from the content side of speech (first of all) so the structural arrangement and language processing. The comprehension mechanism is implemented through analytic-synthetic activity of cerebral cortex, by basing on recruitment of all essential mental activities and operations (comparison, matching, general conclusion, grading, analysis and synthesis). First of all the subject of speech (reflected in SA with fragment, occurrence, event of surrounding reality) is to be comprehended. On basis of the mechanism, motives and purposes of speech communication are realized in full measure, orientation in condition of speech activity happens (particularly, complex overall analysis of speech communication situations). It’s impossible to implement planning and programming of speech activity without recruitment of this mechanism. Due to the operation of this mechanism, the control of speech activity processing and its outcomes takes plece.

No less important function is given to the “mnemonic mechanism” in realization of speech activity, including mechanism of speech memory. It also provides all aspects of speech activity, including and “the content aspect” of speech and the aspect of language processing. Reflection of its subject in speech – one or other fragments of surrounding reality - is impossible without actualization of knowledge and conceptions, which are existed in the memory, about the surrounding part of the world. Like this it’s impossible without actualization of image-conceptions, existing in consciousness, about signs of language and rules of its application in the process of speech communication. Both items are provided by the operational mechanisms of permanent memory. For example, processes of actualization and appropriate use of statements of the active vocabulary in speech. Besides that, here is other functions speech memory:

– actualization of knowledge and conceptions about realization approaches of speech activity (first of all, about ways of realization of speech communication);

– knowledge of social rules (“norms”) of speech communication in different situations of SA realization;

– actualization and applying traditionally well-established for this language norms and rules of speech statements (orthoepic, grammatical, stylistic, orthographic items, used in writing speech), appropriate to the “language norms” definition;

– actualization (“retrieving from memory”) of speech, language and social “etalons” of those units and items, from which appropriate aspects of speech activity are piled up (for example, etalons of standard sound image of separate words and word combinations, “grammatical” etalons of word-forms, speech-motive ethalons, which are necessary for the process of speech realization due to pronunciation plan, etc.).

No less important role in SA realization is given to the processes of short-time operational memory. The process of direct generation (creation) and perceptions of any speech statements, the realization of actions, piling up this process and operations, are not possible without keeping in memory of all components, creating this statement (during the period of its generation and analysis).

The psychological mechanism of “anticipatory analysis and synthesis” (speech predicting) became the subject of an active study in the national psycholinguistics only in the 70 years of the XX century. However the predicting mechanism of speech activity is not yet studied sufficiently up to the present time.

According to the opinion of A.A. Leontev an action of this mechanism can be described from the view point of “heuristic principle” as arrangement of speech activity. According to this principle speech activity must foresee the link, in which the strategy choice of speech attitude would be done, also admit different handling ways by making statements at individual stages of speech generation (perception). Thereupon the important thing is application of theory of psycho-physiologic arrangement of movement (“models of future”), created by N.A. Bernstein.

While considering appearance and realization of an arbitrary movement, N.A. Bernstein conceive its sequence in the following stages:

1) perception and estimation of a situation;

2) defining outcomes of a situation as a result of activity;

3) what ought to be done to come to this outcome

4) what way it should be accomplished by (last two stages piles up the programming of the given task solution).

Obviously, “to extrapolate” the future (the second stage) brain must be able not only to reflect existing, but to construct a model of a future situation (“the model of desirable future”). It differs from “the model of present time”: “There are two categories (forms) of perceptible world constructing in brains, which exist as a kind of unity. These models are: the model of past-present time, or become time, and the model of the forthcoming time. The second one crossflows as a continuous stream into the first one., they sufficiently differ from each other First of all the first model is unique and categorical whereas the second one can rely only on extrapolation with either probability measure.”. An outcome is picked up out of possible predictable outcome, and an action is programmed with only reference to the outcome. The notion which N.A. Bernstein denoted with the “extrapolation” definition, nowadays defined as “probabilistic forecasting” of the highest nerve activity in psychology and physiology.

So, SA in all its kinds is provided by means of complex mechanism of the human nerve activity. Processes of comprehensions, keeping in memory, advance reflection serve as internal mechanisms, which are necessary to realize an activity of the primary operating mechanism of speech, which is defined by N.I. Zhinkin as an unity of two links - the mechanism of words composition out of elements and composition of phrase-announcements out of words. Psychological and speech mechanisms are complex multilink formation, each of whose links are tightly related with others.