Ling 197a: Language Acquisition and Development

**front cover of Landau and Gleitman 1988 "Language and Experience: Evidence from the Blind Child"**
"Look up!"

Introduction

Linguistics is the science of human linguistic competence. Since we cannot observe knowledge directly, theoretical linguists collect language data, look for patterns, and propose formal theories of language knowledge that might explain why the data looks the way it does.

Psycholinguistics is a subfield of both lingusitics and psychology that studies how language learning, production, processing, and use proceed in the minds of language users. Psycholinguistics uses observation of natural linguistic behavior and experimental methods, in which people's behavior reveals the cognitive processes underlying it.

In this course, we will look at the language acquisition in children, examining their learning of the phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of their native languages, and considering the central debates in the theory of language acquisition.
Welcome to the course!

Requirements

There are several types of required assignments:
• Assigned readings - all readings will be made available on LATTE or as link from course webpage. Read them for the date they're listed under.
• Questions for assigned readings - as homework, prepare questions to be used during class discussion, and post them on LATTE forums before class
• Two quizzes (mini-midterms) - these will be take-home open-book quizzes, checking your understanding of the basic concepts covered.
• Term research project, culminating in a presentation at a mini-conference at the end of the term, and in a term paper.
  The nature of the term project is flexible: you will do a literature review and critique, and then either propose experiments investigating a particular point in language acquisition, or analyse data already collected and transcribed by someone else (the web is a good resource), or collect and analyse pilot data with adults or children.

There will also be a community-engaged learning component in this course, where you may volunteer to tutor and hang out with residents (children or adults) at the Prospect Terrace housing project.
By way of this interaction, you will not only be doing a good deed, but will also be able to observe first-language acquisition, bilingual language acquisition, and second language acquisition in action - and, who knows, it may even help you with your project!

Grading:

Class participation & attendance:	15% - obligatory to qualify for a grade
In-class presentation of assigned readings	30% (15% each)
Quizzes	20% (10% each)
Presentation at the mini-conference	15%
Final paper (including project readings summary)	20%

Schedule of classes

Part One: Big picture: what is the problem of language acquisition?
Tuesday, 1/15 Nature vs nurture, introduction
Slides: [pdf]

Friday, 1/18 The logical problem of language acquisition
Slides: [pdf]

Read:
• Gleitman and Newport 1995
• Pinker 1995

Part Two: Acquisition of Phonetics and Phonology
Tuesday, 1/22 Language acquisition in utero
Handout: [pdf]

Read:
• Lecanuet 1998

Read:
• Miller 1991
• Maye, Werker, and Gerken 2002

Read:
• Jusczyk 1999
• Ingram 1979

Read:
• Markman 1994 (Emily Fishman) [handout]
• Bloom 2001 (Anna Hutt Fredman)

Tuesday, 2/5 Debates in noun/word learning

Read:
• Bloom 2001
• responses to Bloom 2001, and his responses to the responses

Read:
• Gleitman 1990 (Sophia Malamud) [handout]
• Pinker 1994 (Daniel Baron)

Read:
• Fisher, Hall, Rakowitz, and Gleitman 1994 (Anne Blackstock-Bernstein)

Read:
• Pinker 1995b (Drew Lefebvre)
• Yang 2000

Part Five: Acquiring syntax - various approaches
Tuesday, 2/26 Argument structure and verb learning
First quiz due

Read:
• Pinker 1987

Read:
• Cartwright and Brent 1997 (Mike Prager)
• Tomasello 2000 (Sofya Dayn)

Read: [handout]
• Fisher 2002 (a reply to Tomasello 2000)
• Saffran, Aslin, Newport 1996

Part Six: Sentence processing and sensitivity to structure
Friday, 3/7 Sentence processing in adults and children

Read:
• Tanenhaus and Trueswell 1995 [handout]

Read:
• Trueswell, Sekerina, Hill and Logrip 1999[handout for this and next]
• Meroni and Crain 2003 [handout for this and previous]
• Crain and Nakayama 1987 (William Kalish)

Part Seven: Bilingualism and second language acquisition
Friday, 3/14

Read:
• Bhatia and Ritchie 1999, p.578 to p.614 (Sofya Dayn)
• Omaggio-Hadley 2001 (guest lecture on SLA by Irina Dubinina)

Read:
• Crain and Lillo-Martin 1999 (William Kalish)

Read:
• deSwart 1998 (Sophia Malamud) Outline: [pdf]
• Lidz and Musolino 2002

Read:
• Gualmini 2004 (Anna Hutt Fredman)
• Lidz et al. 2004

Read:
• Hurewitz, Papafragou, Gleitman & Gelman 2006

Read:
• Papafragou, Cassidy, and Gleitman (to appear) (Anne Blackstock-Bernstein)

Read:
• background: Horn 2004: Implicature. Handbook of Pragmatics, Horn et al eds. Oxford: Blackwell (Sophia Malamud)
• Papafragou and Musolino 2003 (Emily Fishman)

Part Eight: Possibilities in acquisition
Friday, 4/11 Pidgins and Creoles

Read:
• Goldin-Meadow and Mylander 1998 (Drew Lefebvre)
• Senghas and Coppola 2001 (Mike Prager)

Read: (all three paper presented by Daniel Baron)
• Newman, Bavalier, Corina, Jezzard, and Neville 2002
• Bavalier and Neville 2002
• Newport 2002

Read:
• DeKeyster 2000
• Bialystock 2002

(if time) Read: (otherwise, spillover)
• Hudson, Kam, and Newport 2005 (Sophia Malamud)

Mini-Conference
Thursday, May 1, probably at 11am, location TBA

Final papers are due by noon on Wednesday, May 7