Psycholinguistics: Aspects and paradigms

The state of psycholinguistics at the end of the century is not satisfying. One main reason is the dilemma of completeness and consistence: Language h as such a great variety of facets that on the one hand one can either recon struct it with a consistent theory, hereby reducing the richness of the top ic. Or on the other hand, if one wants to consider sufficingly the variety of facets, a consistent theory has to be abandoned. In the european traditi on (e.g. Wilhelm Wundt, Karl Buhler and Hans Hormann) the most possible com plete scope for language was intended at the expense of theoretical consist ence. In the anglo-saxon Post-Chomsky-Paradigm ruling at present, satisfyin g theoretical consistence is purchased by utmost impoverishment in topics. The dilemma of completeness and consistence is especially shown if psycholi nguists try to consider both, the mental operations of speech production an d speech reception as well as the use of language for communication. It wil l be argued how the processual as well as the communicative character of la nguage can be taken into consideration at the same time.