Course Description
This course focuses on the process by which native speakers of a language acquire the ability to speak and understand that language. It covers some of the major results in the study of first-language acquisition, concentrating on morpho-syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The findings primarily come from English, but …
This course focuses on the process by which native speakers of a language acquire the ability to speak and understand that language. It covers some of the major results in the study of first-language acquisition, concentrating on morpho-syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The findings primarily come from English, but cross-linguistic differences in the phenomena of interest and corresponding differences in acquisition patterns are considered where appropriate. Of interest throughout is how these developmental data inform linguistic theory and/or learnability theory.
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![An infant in a high chair focuses her attention on a man sitting next to her.](/courses/24-949-language-acquisition-i-fall-2020/bb9bdcae9ef18d7f943edabec4a2d0d9_24-949f20.jpg)
Over the first few years of life, a child masters most of her native language—both its basic vocabulary and its grammatical rules—with ease and without formal instruction. (Photo courtesy of Roland Li on Flickr. License: CC BY-NC-SA.)