home | LG505 (SLI) | LG510 (Foundations) | LG514 (Minimalist Syntax I) | LG620 (First Language Acquisition)
Course timetable: Fridays 9-11, weeks 16-25, room 3.008
Teacher: Prof. Andrew Radford
Telephone: (01206 87) 2215
Office: 4.132
Office hours: Wednesdays 1-2 and Fridays 11-12
E-mail: radford@essex.ac.uk
Course website: http://courses.essex.ac.uk/lg/lg620
This module looks at a number of models of how one- and two-year-old (normally developing) children learn to combine words together to form sentences (focussing mainly on the acquisition of English by monolingual and bilingual children). We begin by outlining Chomsky's claim that acquisition is guided by innate Language Faculty incorporating principles of Universal Grammar/UG, and we look at evidence that UG principles operate in child grammars. We go on to look at the parameter-setting model of acquisition, under which the main syntactic learning task faced by young children is that of setting parameters -- e.g. determining whether English is a language (like Italian) which allows omission of subject pronouns or not: we pay particular attention to research by Nina Hyams suggesting that English children may initially misanalyse English as a null-subject language like Italian. We then examine the nature of the earliest multiword structures produced by one-year-olds, presenting the structure-building model (developed by Andrew Radford and Harald Clahsen, among others) under which children are said to start out by producing simple structures which contain fewer 'layers' of structure than their adult counterparts (and in particular lack certain function words), and gradually add additional 'layers' of structure containing function words to build more complex structures. We go on to contrast this with Luigi Rizzi's truncation model, under which children are said to optionally truncate sentences by omitting one or more of the topmost layers of structure, giving rise inter alia to the omission of subjects in sentences like Want ice-cream = 'I want ice-cream'. We then turn to look at Ken Wexler's Optional Infinitives model, under which young children are said to go through a stage in which they alternate (e.g. in reply to a question like Where did you go after school?)between producing finite clauses like I went home and infinitive clauses like Me go home. We then turn to look at the grammatical development of bilingual children, asking the key question of whether a child who is bilingual in (say) Spanish and English initially develops a single hybrid (Spanglish) grammar for the two languages (so producing sentences which are a mixture of Spanish and English), or whether there is evidence that bilingual children from the outset develop separate grammars for each of the languages they are acquiring: we shall compare and contrast the Single System Hypothesis originally developed by Volterra and Taeschner with the Separate Development Hypothesis developed by Paradis and Genessee (among others). We will also look at how data from a set of transcripts of the speech production of a two-year-old English-German bilingual boy provide us with interesting evidence about the nature of (especially parameter-setting in) bilingual acquisition.
LG620 has three main goals. The first is to familiarise you with the grammatical characteristics of the speech production of young monolingual and bilingual children (particularly those acquiring English as their native language). The second is to provide an introduction to a number of linguistic models of children's acquisition of syntax, and to offer a critical perspective on relevant research. The third is show you how to undertake a small-scale piece of empirical research on children's grammatical development, analysing small corpora of monolingual and bilingual acquisition data and using your findings to evaluate competing models of acquisition.. The expected learning outcomes (for students who attend all the classes and complete all the required reading, preparation and assessed work) is that (by the end of the course) you will be familiar with the grammatical characteristics of the speech production of monolingual and bilingual children, have an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of some of the key research works in monolingual and bilingual acquisition, and be able to do a small-scale piece of empirical research designed to evaluate one or more competing accounts of acquisition.
In advance of the class each week, I will prepare a course text which outlines the particular model to be covered in the relevant week, together with a set of questions about the material to be discussed in class. The questions are designed to guide you towards a critical evaluation of the model, by getting you to think about whether (and if so how) particular kinds of structures which children produce can be accommodated within the model, and what developmental or theoretical shortcomings the model may have. You can download the relevant text material from the course website (whose address is given at the beginning of this outline). In class, I will teach from a set of overhead transparencies (OHPs) which will also be available for you to download from the course website. You are expected to attend all the classes: the University requires me to keep a record of class attendance.
This module is assessed by a single assignment of 3,000 words in length (±10%) which should be handed in to the Departmental Graduate Office (room 4.305) by 4pm on Monday 19th April. In accordance with the regulations set out in the departmental graduate Guidelines booklet, work which is longer than the maximum prescribed length (or shorter than the minimum) will be penalised by 3 marks per 500 words or part thereof: to avoid falling foul of length restrictions, you should indicate the length of the main text of your assignment -- including footnotes but excluding the list of references and any appendices -- at the end (e.g. 2,976 words). Late work is penalised in accordance with departmental regulations: a fixed penalty of 1 mark per (whole or part) working day is imposed, where a working day is defined as a weekday during which the University is officially open. If you need to ask for an extension to the deadline, refer to the relevant regulations on page 26 of the departmental graduate Guidelines booklet.
For your assignment for LG620, you can choose to do any one of the following:
(i) a critical evaluation of a range of recent research into some aspect of the grammatical development of monolingual or bilingual children (e.g. the acquisition of case, or tense, or agreement, or negation, or questions etc.)
(ii) a critical review of any one of the models of (monolingual or bilingual) acquisition discussed in the module
(iii) an original piece of empirical research presenting an analysis of one or more aspects of the grammatical development of a young (monolingual or bilingual) child, using either data collected by you, or data from the CHILDES data-base, or a set of data made available to you by me (on request).
It is useful to structure your assignment clearly into (half a dozen or so) numbered sections, so that the way it is organised is immediately apparent to the reader (This will also force you to think more carefully about how to organise the presentation of your work).
Your written assignment will be assessed according to criteria including:
In the last two weeks of the course (weeks 24 and 25), there will be no classes, but instead I will arrange individual tutorials with you. The purpose of these is so that you can discuss your assignment with me: if you so wish, you can email me a one-page outline a week in advance of the tutorial, and I will then give you written feedback in it (as well as discussing it with you individually in your tutorial).
University regulations prescribe penalties for cheating (including marks penalties and in extreme cases expulsion from the University). Advice on avoiding plagiarism can be found in the departmental graduate handbook. There is also a University website which is intended to help students understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it, and which gives the relevant university regulations. The address is: http://www.Essex.ac.uk/plagiarism.
For background on monolingual acquisition, you can dip into the following (all very technical in parts):
For background on bilingual acquisition, look at any of the following: