(Excerpt from: 2009/2010 McGill Undergraduate Calendar). This course will examine the human capacities that make the profound feat of language acquisition possible. Topics will include analyses of empirical, methodological, and theoretical issues in language acquisition and will draw upon evidence from the cognitive neuroscience, psycholinguistic, linguistic and philosophical literatures.

Instructor:  Staff

Prerequisite:  A course in Introductory Psychology and PSYC 340  or permission of instructor.

Content:  Despite vastly different cultural backgrounds and varying rearing environments, most children by age three and a half have acquired the basic elements of their native tongue. This course will examine the human capacities that make this profound feat possible. Cross-linguistic, cross-model data from hearing and deaf children acquiring spoken and signed languages (respectively) will be examined to establish the basic facts of language acquisition: children's milestones in the acquisition of phonology, morphology, early vocabulary, syntax, semantic knowledge, as well as their prelinguistic to linguistic communicative competence. Theoretical accounts of the data will be considered, including issues regarding the role of learning in language acquisition, the contributions of environmental factors such as children's social and communicative interactions with caretakers, the effects of modality on acquisition, the biological foundations of language, and current theories of mind in cognitive science regarding the representation of language in the brain.

Textbook:  To be announced.

Method:  Two lectures and one mandatory conference each week. The lectures focus on the major theoretical accounts of human language acquisition, including discussions of their relevance to central topics in Cognitive Science regarding the origin and representation of knowledge in the brain.  In the conferences, extensive and detailed lectures are given by the conference leader on the research methods employed in child language. Students read articles on methods in child language, and are provided with examples of such methods; in some cases, students are given a "hand-on" opportunity to analyze samples of child language using some of the most current methods in the field today.

Evaluation:  To be announced.

Supplemental:  A supplemental exam is available.