Reading for W 11/14 & F 11/16: Jackendoff, Chap. 11; OPTIONAL: Hickok et al. 2001, Sacks 2005

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For this Wednesday 11/14 and Friday 11/16, please read the following (the latter two can be downloaded from the “Readings” section of this website):

  1. Chapter 11 of the Jackendoff book Patterns in the Mind
  2. Optional: Hickok, Gregory, Ursula Bellugi & Edward S. Klima. 2001. Sign language in the brain. Scientific American 284(6): 58-65.
  3. Optional:  Sacks, Oliver. 2005, Oct. 31. Recalled to life. The New Yorker.

As indicated above, the second and third readings are optional.  They are both quite interesting and informative, however, and so I highly recommend that you read them if you have some time.

The article by Hickok et al. describes recent advances in our understanding of how the linguistic abilities of deaf signers are realized in the brain; those of you with an interest in neuropsychology or neuroscience will likely enjoy this reading.

The final article by Oliver Sacks provides a moving account of the sorts of disruptions to everyday life that can arise when an individual’s language abilities are affected by traumatic brain injury.

Phoneme Restoration Effect Demonstrations

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If you’d like to listen again to our demonstrations of the “phoneme restoration effect” from class (or if you missed them the first time around), you can find links to the sound files at this page:

Warren Perception Lab:  Auditory Demonstrations

We listened to the files entitled “Temporal Induction of Speech: Single Phonemic Restoration” and Temporal Induction of Speech:  Multiple Phonemic Restorations”.  As you can see, there are many other demonstrations to be found at that webpage, so if you have some time, poke around a bit…they are all quite interesting.

Reading for M 11/5 & W 11/7: Whitney 1998, Ch. 7 (pgs. 203-222), plus additional excerpt

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For next Monday 11/5 and Wednesday 11/7, please read pgs. 203-222 of the following book chapter, which can be downloaded from the Readings section of this website:

Whitney, Paul. 1998. The Psychology of Language, Chapter 7 (‘Sentence Processing’).

I’ve also uploaded a very short excerpt from an earlier chapter of this book, where the author defines the terms semantic priming and lexical decision, which appear in your assigned reading from Chapter 7.  You should read this short excerpt *first*.

Monday (10/31) Class Cancelled; Quiz Postponed to Friday

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As you undoubtedly know, our class meeting for this morning has been cancelled.

In light of this cancellation, I have decided to postpone our in-class quiz until this Friday, Nov. 2.  This way, you will still have a chance in Wednesday’s class to ask any study questions.  So, our updated schedule for this week is:

Wed. 10/31:  Pidgins & Creoles (orig. scheduled for Mon. 10/29)
Reading:  Bickerton (1983)

Fri. 11/2:  In-class quiz #3 (orig. scheduled for Wed. 10/31)

Obviously, this delay will affect our schedule for the upcoming weeks as well; I will let you know about these changes shortly.

Note: I have updated the previous post concerning this week’s quiz with some additional information. Please read on below for updates concerning the quiz’s format and topics.

(UPDATED) Information Regarding In-Class Quiz #3

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Your third in-class quiz will be on Wednesday, October 31  Friday, November 2.   The quiz will consist of several short-answer responses (more than on your previous quizzes); there will be no longer, essay-style response this time.

The quiz will cover the following topics, which we have encountered in class and in our readings:

The normal course of language development:

  • early stages:  kids know more than they say
  • later stages:  acquisition of rules, overgeneralization errors

Language learning vs. language growth:

  • genetic impairments and language development
  • critical period in language development
  • development of signed languages (topic for Friday, Oct. 26) (see below)
  • pidgin and creole languages (topic for Wednesday, Oct. 31)

Just as before, you won’t be responsible for memorizing some of the very specific facts that have been introduced in class, but you should understand the larger conclusions regarding language development that we’ve drawn from these facts.

Note:  Since there was no handout from Friday’s guest lecture on signed languages, and since we ran out of time during our discussion of signed language development, there will be no questions that exclusively address that material on the quiz.  However, you are still welcome to cite evidence from signed languages when answering any of the more-general questions regarding language development.

Note:  Wednesday’s lecture material on pidgins vs. creole languages will be on the quiz.  Specifically, you will be responsible for any of the material that we manage to explicitly cover in Wednesday’s class meeting.

Note:  Extra copies of all the class handouts can be found in the mailbox outside of my office door (621 Commonwealth Avenue, #110).

 

Reading for F 10/26: Jackendoff, Ch. 7, Ch. 10 (126-130); Optional: Senghas et al. 2004

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For this Friday 10/26, please read the following:

  1. Chapter 7 of the Jackendoff book Patterns in the Mind
  2. pgs. 126-130 of Chapter 10 of the Jackendoff book

I have also posted the following optional reading at the “Readings” section of this website:

Senghas, Ann, Sotaro Kita & Asli Özyürek. 2004. Children creating core properties of language: Evidence from an emerging sign language in Nicaragua. Science 305: 1779-1782.

The Senghas et al. article describes certain features of Nicaraguan Sign Language, a signed language which has been “created from scratch” in recent years.  Next Monday, we will look at other such cases in which languages are “created from scratch”.

Reading for W 10/24: Newport 2002; Optional: Gould & Marler 1987

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For Wednesday, 10/24, please read the following article, which may be downloaded from the “Readings” section of this website:

Newport, Elissa L. 2002. Critical periods in language development. In Lynn Nadel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, 737-740. London: Macmillan.

I have also made the following optional reading available for download:

Gould, James L. & Peter Marler. 1987. Learning by instinct. Scientific American 256(1): 74-85.

The Gould & Marler reading discusses certain examples of how animals acquire complex abilities (particularly, how bees acquire the ability to forage for food, and how songbirds acquire the ability to correctly produce the characteristic song(s) of their species).  These case studies are interesting because,  as we have hypothesized for human language development, the acquisition processes appear (i) to involve a complex interplay of innate knowledge/ability and experience, (ii) to be genetically triggered, and (iii) to depend upon a “critical” period for their proper development.  Although we might not have time to properly discuss these examples in class, I highly recommend that you read the article nonetheless:  it is accessibly written, and it provides an illuminating, complementary perspective on some of our current course themes.