Child Language

This course is an overview of some key issues in first language acquisition. It charts children's language development from birth right through the school years. The emphasis of the course is on evaluating crosslinguistic data against current theoretical models of language acquisition. Topics include phonological; morphological; grammatical; semantic and pragmatic development. The course will also evaluate the influence of the environment on the child's language development by examining studies on input and research on differences in socialisation patterns across languages. Students will have the opportunity to work with real language data from a variety of languages.