As I’ve mentioned in this week’s class meetings, your first midterm exam will be next Wednesday, October 13.  (Note that we’ve postponed the exam one day from the original schedule, which had the midterm occurring on Tuesday, October 12.  Since I didn’t hear any objections to this postponement over email, I’m assuming that everyone is fine with it.)

The exam will cover all of the material from our readings and lectures, up to and including this Friday’s class meeting.  However, the majority of the questions will address our more recent material:  nature vs. nurture (empiricism vs. nativism) in language learning; the “poverty of the stimulus” argument for innate knowledge of language; Universal Grammar, principles, and parameters; and the stages of language development in children.  The exam will consist of several very-short answer questions (just a few sentences should be enough to answer each of these), as well as a longer, essay-style question.