First Language Acquisition

Catalog description

Starting before they are even born, most children acquire language with tremendous ease in a very short period of time. It is a remarkable achievement, usually taken for granted unless something goes awry. This course focuses on the acquisition of a first language in infancy and childhood by highlighting issues in various areas of linguistic analysis: sounds, word and sentence meaning, word order and language use in various communicative contexts. We will also focus on different theories that try to account for the cognitive and linguistic processes that together result in first language acquisition as well as atypical language development from which much is learned about the process of first language acquisition. Of benefit and interest to all academic majors, this course is particularly relevant to students in the areas of linguistics, education, autism studies, psychology and health-related areas including speech therapy/speech language pathology.