Spring 2011
Undergraduate coursesLanguage Acquisition
The course surveys basic theoretical and methodological issues in the field of first language acquisition, focusing primarily on typical development and secondarily on developmental language disorders. Topics covered: -The logical problem of language acquisition -Innateness and modularity -The course of language acquisition -Acquisition of phonology -Acquisition of morphology -Acquisition of the Lexicon -Acquisition of syntax -Acquisition of semantics/pragmatics -Atypical language development and language disorders |
Graduate coursesIssues on Language Acquisition
The course focuses on the acquisition of syntax, exploring theoretical and methodological issues primarily within the Principles and Parameters Approach (Chomsky, 1981, 1995). Topics covered: -Theoretical approaches to language acquisition -Innateness and modularity -Methodological issues in the study of child language -Acquisition of early phrase structure -Acquisition of finiteness and functional categories -Acquisition of passives and anticausatives -Acquisition of wh-movement (wh-questions and relative clauses) -Acquisition of binding and anaphora |
Fall 2010
Undergraduate coursesPsycholinguistics / Neurolinguistics
The course is meant as a basic introduction into the fields of psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. It focuses on the psychological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language, as well as on the neural mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. Topics covered: -The biological basis of language -Sentence processing -Language breakdown (developmental and acquired language disorders) -Neuroimaging |