Word Classes in Psycholinguistics

Ibbotson, Paul (2023). Word Classes in Psycholinguistics. In: van Lier, Eva ed. The Oxford Handbook of Word Classes. Oxford University Press, pp. 899–909.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198852889.013.39

Abstract

Psycholinguistics is concerned with how word classes are produced, comprehended, and acquired by the mind and brain. To that end, psycholinguists attempt to show not only that theoretical frameworks adequately describe word classes, but they are also predictive of how people use them. This chapter discusses word classes as a specific solution to a general problem of behavioural prediction; the extent to which word classes are different from other linguistic and non-linguistic classes; the representational structure of word classes and how they are constructed in development; how thought shapes word classes and word classes are shaped by thought; and finally how word classes have been used as a test case for the universality or otherwise of linguistic categories themselves. The conclusion is that, while the utility of forming a word class remains universal—behavioural prediction—and the processes that form them psychologically similar, the content of those classes is best understood as an invitation to share a perspective on something meaningful and specific to the culture from which language emerges.