THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND THE MIND

1.  Background Of LRH (Language Relativity Hypothesis)

Language relativity hypothesis is a hypothesis about the relationship between mind, language, and culture. Where those three things have a very close relationship. This hypothesis is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The linkage between language and thought lies in the fact that the language affects the human perspective of reality, and to influence the minds of people who use the language.

Because of the relationship between those three things, then come the term relativity languages. Each language has a different way to describe the same things. Language has created an own system to describe something. And the system cannot be measured or cannot be equated with each other. One can draw a conclusion on something outside itself by its language. Because the language of relativity is closely linked with language, thought, and culture.

According to the Sapir-Whorf, there is no language in common very dominant in expressing a same reality, because there is a relationship between language and thought, or it can be said that the language affects the mind.

The influence of language on thought can occur through a habit and through the formal aspects of language, such as grammar and lexicon. According to the Sapir-Whorf there are nothing two same languages to represent the same thing. Such differences cause a difference in capturing and expressing a reality. Relativity language to see that the existing categories in the language is the basis of mental activity, such as categorization, memory, and decision making. In the speed of a person's use of language in response to the meaning of the word as well as speed in saying it is different.

2. Research Problems 

  Based on the statement above, the following sentences below are the research of problems is : 

How speed of people to response and express something in the use of language?

DISCUSSION

Talking about speed to respond and reveal something very dependent on the mental lexicon. Different languages have different mental lexicon. The point is that the lexicons of different languages can classify things in different ways. Mental lexicon can be likened to a warehouse where we store the goods. But this is not just any barn because it is not only the goods which are stored is unique, but also how complicated to set them.

Mental lexicon, often also called mental dictionary, has a system that allows us to get back the words quickly even though the words are stored at random with thousands of other words in our lexical memory. Although the mental lexicon has much in common with ordinary dictionary, which maintains a list of words, but still there is a significant difference between them. The differences are as follows:

1.      Mental Lexicon not only takes the advantage of the similarity of sounds, but there are other factors that must be considered as well. Mental Lexicon store the words that support a number of relationships with one another. Words with similar meanings or have a similar shape phonologically related to the mental lexicon, as can be seen in the speech fault.

For examples, someone who wants to say sympathy to use the word symphony music conductor of the word sympathy. Similarities shapes and semantic relationships these two words (symphony and conductor) play a role in this speech error. In addition, someone who wants to say kelapa is round and hard to say the kepala was round and hard. Similarities shapes and semantic relationships these two words (Kelapa and kepala) play a role in this speech error. Mental lexicon is a multidimensional network of words with all kinds of relationships between the two words: semantic relationship, phonological and morphological. Instead, the words in the dictionary only had one relationship, i.e alphabetical order. Ordering is based on orthographic similarity between the words.

2.      The contents of the mental lexicon is always changing. Unlike the ordinary dictionary to be remade to replace or add words, unlike the mental dictionary that at any time can increase his vocabulary, both from what is seen or heard.

For example: when a person walks in the market, and hear the word cosmos, initially people did not know what the cosmos, but after hearing people mention that word and see that what is meant is the cosmos turns out ricecooker brand, then people who previously did not know what it is cosmos directly store these words in the mental cosmos lexiconnya without having to wait for the next edition.

3.      Mental lexicon allows us to create words in accordance with the existing rules on the language.

For example       : words like, keles, cuss, jahara, lho, etc. That create by some group. It is different with ordinary dictionary that always have real word.

4.      Mental lexicon includes information that is much wider than regular dictionary that can also can see on how detailed our knowledge as speakers. The number of lexical entries in a dictionary is much more than the amount present in the human mind. Many words that are not known by most speakers. Adult English speakers who are well educated to know and 50,000 kinds of words even more, but the amount is far less than the English vocabulary as a whole, which consists of hundreds of thousands of vocabulary.

Mental lexicon stores information about the frequency of the words that is often encountered while the dictionary does not store the information. Usage Frequency of words indicate how many signs were found for each particular type of words in the corpus. For example, function as determiner words have higher frequencies, and possibly subsequent words are more often found in the English text is the word that is more commonly found than on the word ubiquitous. In addition, as well as conjunctions and, when, what, where, etc in the literature would be very easy to be accessed by the mental lexicon.

Language user has no limit on the number of frequencies to each word in the mental lexicon. A word to the relatively high occurrence easier to get back on a word with a relatively low frequency.

The way the standard used to determine the frequency effects are psychological research, namely the selection of lexical (lexical decision). The higher the frequency of the use of the word is, the shorter the time it takes to choose. In other words, the effect of frequency is correlated with the level of activation of the words in the mental lexicon.

Activation can be spread from one word that has a relationship with the word - the other words in the mental lexicon. The distance between one word with another word that indicates the closeness between the concept of the concept is concerned that the closer the distance, the closer the concept precisely, for example:

1)      Words calculate correlated with said calculation, calculable, calculator, calculus, etc.

2)      Word dock very close to the word doctor and dog.

3)      Word legal very close to the word illegal, illegality.

In this regard, the more vocabulary associated with each other, then the sooner the words in the mental lexicon accessed.

There are two ways to access the information linguistics, namely through the calculation (computation) and through storage (storage). If we use calculations, we first describe the complex words into it’s morphemes then get back in the morpheme meaning of our mental lexicon. Meanwhile, if we use the storage, the introduction of complex words are stored in our mental lexicon demonstrated by the concept of the appropriate word. Advantages of the use of methods of storage and regain speed word is shorter than the method of calculation, particularly for the words often used and has a high activation level. For example: when people say, transportation, wheeled two, Honda, beat, it will quickly access the mental lexicon the word target word that is the motor. Moreover, the word is a word that is often spoken, seen and heard, that it would be very helpful in the process of accessing the mental lexicon, however, for the words that we have never known before, the method of calculation may be more difficult.

Thus, the speed of a person to respond and reveal something very dependent on the processes in our mental lexicon, the more often the word was uttered and heard the sooner the process of accessing the mental lexicon for the word. Unlike the new words are heard will take a long time to respond and reveal. From this we can conclude that the mind affects the person's language, especially in the lexical decision. One's language was very influenced by the processes that occur in the mental lexicon.