Seminar on Language Acquisition(Beckman/Culicover)                              
Spring 2009, Tu Th 1.30-3.18. Room TBA                                          
12583-6; 5 credit hours                                                         

The seminar will address current research on language acquisition with the      
following questions in mind.                                 

1.  What is actually happening in the course of language acquisition?           
2.  How is our interpretation of what is happening affected by theoretical  
positions about the end product, the initial state, and the developmental
path?                                                                           
3.  What are the relationships in development among knowledge structures in    
different domains?                                                   
4.  What experimental methods and analytical tools can be brought to bear on    
the question of what the language learner does and does not know at any         
point in time?                                                                  
5.  What are currently the best accounts of linguistic development in the  
various traditional descriptive domains (phonetics, phonology, morphology,
syntax, semantics)? What assumptions do these accounts make about the end
product, the initial state, and the developmental path?                         

In addition to reading and discussing key articles, participants will be        
expected to carry out joint projects, using CHILDES databases and other         
comparable resources. A perspective will be encouraged that to the extent       
possible integrates data from more than one descriptive domain and compares     
data from more than one language.