The acquisition of syntax by children

Aims

Aims

The module provides an opportunity to study in depth some of the most debated issues in generative approaches to Child Language Acquisition allowing students to understand why the same phenomenon may be analysed in a number of different ways.

In addition, the module aims to give students insight into issues with the collection of corpus data in child language syntax and to gain experience in the interpretation of such data.

Through reading, students will also gain some familiarity with experimental methods of data collection and there may be scope for Psycholinguistics students to design (and carry out) an experiment as part of their project.

Prerequisites

Prerequisites

• Psycholinguistics Students: Satisfactory completion of first term Introduction to Language Acquisition and Syntax.
• Linguistics/Syntax & Semantics Students: Satisfactory completion of first term Syntax or equivalent.
• Comparative Syntax and Semantics students: none.

Students taking this module will normally be taking it alongside either Syntactic Theory or Second Language Syntax. It is highly recommended that students at least audit Syntactic Theory.

Programme

Programme

Contact hours

Contact hours will vary between 2 and 3 hours per week. There will be a 90 minute weekly seminar, and in certain weeks this will be supplemented by practical sessions in the data lab, and in some others by tutorials.

You should also expected to spend around 8 hours a week reading papers and in relevant weeks, a similar amount conducting practical work on the computer using the CHILDES database.

Teaching programme

The seminars are reading-based and students will take responsibility in turn for reading and presenting the assigned papers to be discussed.

The module will look at children’s use of null subjects and the Continuity versus Maturation debate as well as other topical issues in the field.

Teaching materials

A list of required readings will be provided; these may vary according to the backgrounds of the students who enrol. The module reading will focus on the acquisition of syntactic knowledge in first language (L1) with bilingual acquisition considered only incidentally.

Assessment

Assessment

Formative work

• Formative assessment will focus on corpus searching and presentation of material in seminars.

Summative ssessment

• Summative assessment involves completion of a 5,000 word project which involves testing your choice of a theoretical hypothesis covered in the module. This is done usually by (collection and) analysis of corpus data but suitably qualified students may request permission to do this by designing and (potentially) executing a pilot experiment testing the hypothesis.