psycholinguisticsn psycholinguisticadj
the study of (a) the mental processes that a person uses in producing and
understanding language, and (b) how humans learn language. Psycho-
linguistics includes the study of speech perception, the role of memory,
concepts and other processes in language use, and how social and psycho-
logical factors affect the use of language.
psychometricsn
1 A branch of psychology concerned with measurement.
2 The application of the principles of mathematics and statistics to the
analysis of data.
psychomotor domainn
see domain^3
pull-out programmen
in English-speaking countries, a programme for limited English
proficient students in which students are placed in a regular classroom
but are “pulled out” for instruction in English for part of the day. Usually
no native language instruction is provided and the goal is for the student to
learn English through ESL instruction and submersion (see submersion
education).
punctual–non-punctual distinctionn
a distinction is sometimes made between verbs which refer to actions that
occur briefly and only once (punctual), for example:
She kicked the burglar down the stairs.
and verbs which refer to repeated actions or actions /states which take place
or exist over a period of time (non-punctual), for example:
She sold flowers at the market.
Verbs referring to a state, such as seem,like,know (see static-dynamic)
are, by nature, non-punctual but many other verbs can be used either punc-
tually or non-punctually, for example:
Look! He waved to me just now. (punctual use)
The branches of the trees were waving in the breeze. (non-punctual use)
It has been claimed (see bioprogram hypothesis) that in situations where
a creolechanges to the standard language (see post-creole continuum),
verbs used punctually are more likely to be marked for past tense than verbs
used non-punctually. Similar patterns have been found in investigations of
second language acquisition, such as a large-scale investigation into English
language acquisition which was carried out in Singapore. When the speech
of speakers of Singapore English was analyzed in detail, it was found that
punctual–non-punctual distinction