Objectives (Doelstelling)
Mastering a first language is one of the most striking achievements of human development. This course provides an introduction to theory, empirical findings, and research methods in the study of language acquisition. This course exists of three parts. After a general introduction into the field, we will focus on resp. the acquisition of sound structure, the acquisition of intonation and information structure, and the acquisition of syntax-semantics.
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Contents (Inhoud / Omschrijving)
Acquisition of sound structure. During the first year of life infants become increasingly sensitive to language-specific features of the sound system of their native language. In this part of the course we review segmental, phonotactic, and prosodic aspects of phonological acquisition, and examine the research paradigms used to investigate infant and child speech perception. The results from perception studies are compared to those from production studies. Production studies show that there is a continuum between babbling and early words in terms of motor skills, but cognitive factors come into play too as children build their phonological systems.
Acquisition of intonation. Acquisition of intonation entails adult-like competence in at least the following three aspects: the inventory of phonologically distinct contour types, the phonetic realisation of phonological contour types, and the use of intonation in everyday communication. We will focus on the development of adult-like inventory of pitch contours and the use of pitch contours in children learning intonation languages. Specifically, we will review prior work on the production of distinct pitch contours from babbling to the two-word stage and discuss new findings on children's inventory of pitch contours in the multi-word speech stage. Further, we will examine studies on infants' use of pitch contours to express different speech acts and emotions in interactions with adults and discuss recent work on young children's use of intonation to express information-structural concepts such as topic-focus and contrast. Moreover, we will discuss the role of intonational universals and input in intonational development. In addition, students will get hands-on experience with analysing and interpreting children's intonation.
The acquisition of grammatical competence and parsing. Studies investigating children's real-time language processing have until recently been rare in comparison to studies of children's production and ultimate interpretation of language. This is surprising given the arguably crucial role that processing mechanisms may play in language development. In this section of the course, the aim is to provide an overview on the topic of developmental psycholinguistics: focusing on first language acquisition and the development of grammatical processing mechanisms. We will examine research on first language acquisition and children's sentence processing, and ask what the relationship is between the development of grammatical competence and the development of processing mechanisms/strategies; how L1 parsing procedures develop; and how children process sentences in comparison to adults.
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Literature (Literatuur)
- Lecture notes
- Literature will be provided on Blackboard
Representative readings
Chen, A. (submitted). The phonetics of sentence-initial topic and focus in adult and child Dutch.
Fikkert, P. (2007). Acquiring phonology In: Paul de Lacy (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology, Cambridge University Press. 537-554.
Fodor, J. D. (1998). Parsing to Learn. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 27(3), 339-374.
Gerken, LouAnn (2002). 'Early sensitivity to linguistics form'. Annual Review of Language Acquisition 2: 1-36.
Galligan, R. (1987). Intonation with single words: purposive and grammatical use. Journal of Child Language, 14, 1-21.Guasti, M.-T. (2002). Language acquisition: The growth of language. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Tager-Flusberg, H. (1996). Putting words together: Morphology and syntax in the preschool years. In J. Berko Gleason (ed.). The development of language. (4th edition). Boston: Allyn and Bacon
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Teaching methods (Werkvormen)
Lectures, class discussion, student assignments, lab visits.
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Coördinerend docent
P. Fikkert, A. Chen
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Examination (Toetsingsvorm)
Assignments and research proposals
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Enrollment ( Inschrijving college )
via KISS/TIS till 5 working days before the start of the course Note this course is for CNS students only. Non-CNS students can contact Yvonne Schouten () or Arno Koning (). |
Extra information (Bijzonderheden)
February 2 - April 9, 2010, Tuesday and Thursday 13.45-15.30 Location: MPI 3.64
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