psycholinguistics Q I read in this morning's NY Times that Victoria Fromkin, an internationally renowed psycholinguist and professor emerita at UCLA, died January 19. Prof. Fromkin recorded and systematized errors in verbal communication - slips of the tongue, mishearings, and other types - (among persons speaking American English). She deduced from the patterns she found how language is organized in the mind. (Note: the MIND, not the brain. As you surely have imagined by now, they are not the same thing.) Prof. Fromkin was the co-author of "An Introduction to Language" (Harcourt Brace). The book, now in its sixth edition, is regarded as the seminal undergraduate textbook in the field of psycholinguistics. I wonder if language is organized in the mind in the same way for oral communication as for written, for correspondence that is written in long-hand as for that written by typing, including e-mail? I wonder if psycholinguists are any better at psychology than psychologists are? That would not be hard to be. At least the psycholinguists, if Prof. Fromkin is to be believed, have meaningful data. Psycholinguists are surely much rarer birds than psycholigists. It seems likely then that most psycholinguists are such because of interests independent of their own psychoses and psycholinguistic isuues. This would put them, I think, statistically far above the average psychologist on the scale of reliability from worms to chimpanzees to Richard Feynman. I suppose I should have included snakes, public relations experts, politicians, religious leaders, and birds in that spectrum? I wonder if psycholinguists are studying written communication, by old ways like handwriting and typing directly on a piece of paper and new ways like typing on to a monitor screen? I wonder if they would be interested in studying blather? Blather is surely psycho. Yet, as we all know, the errors in communication through it are very rare. Right? So rare that maybe blather would be of no interest to psycholinguists, because they would need to wait too long to obtain statistically meaningful data about erors. Don't you hate it when you think you might be statistically insignificant because you make too few mistakes in communicating with others? I did write that blatherers are psychotic, didn't I? Okay, have fun even if you do need to go to work tomorrow. Copr. 2000 000130 ... camille psycholinguists... lovers of language? psycho....taking language beyond the norm...? statistics i don't understand, because the variance is so vast... i gauge writes by the rhythm of heartbeat..however so many varied writes beat a different tune and i can enjoy all of them...can they actually be metered? people's ideas, and thoughts interest me to the highest extent...these cannot be placed on a statistical chart as the art of language is beautiful and varied. Each individuals rhythm (history)plays a different melody. :o) giggling just my blather... i blather on and on on :o) hope i didn't bore ya. um... think i'll go out and make a snow angel... 000130 ... . . 050209 what's it to you? who go blather from