UPDATED: Reading for M 10/22: Jackendoff, Chap. 9; Lenhoff et al. 1997

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The following readings were originally assigned for Friday 10/19, but since we are running about a day behind schedule, they should now be completed for next Monday 10/22 (the latter reading can be downloaded from the “Readings” section of this website):

  1. Chapter 9 of the Jackendoff book Patterns in the Mind, and
  2. Lenhoff, Howard M., Paul P. Wang, Frank Greenberg & Ursula Bellugi. 1997. Williams Syndrome and the brain. Scientific American 277(6): 68-73.

Information Regarding In-Class Quiz #2 and Office Hours

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Your second in-class quiz will be on Friday, October 12.  The basic format of the quiz will be just like the first one:  a handful of short-essay responses, requiring a paragraph or so of discussion, as well as a longer essay response.  It will cover the following topics, which we have encountered in class and in our readings:

  • knowledge of English sound patterns (phonology)
  • knowledge of English sentence patterns (syntax)
  • empiricist vs. nativist views of language acquisition, and the “poverty of the stimulus” argument
  • the structure of Universal Grammar (our topic for next Tuesday, Oct. 9 and Wednesday, Oct. 10)

Just as before, you won’t be responsible for memorizing some of the very specific facts that have been introduced in class (for instance, the exact form of our English phrase structure rules), but you should understand the larger conclusions regarding our knowledge of language and its acquisition that these facts served to illustrate (for instance, the importance of structural ambiguity and recursion).

Note:  since our discussion of English sound patterns (phonology) occurred some time ago, it will receive relatively little attention on the quiz, in comparison to our more recent class topics.

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

Finally, since next week’s holiday schedule obliterates my regular Tuesday office hours (for scheduling purposes, there will be no Tuesday next week), I will be holding make-up office hours on Thursday, October 11, from 4-6pm.

Readings for W 10/3 & F 10/5: Anderson & Lightfoot (1999); Chomsky excerpts

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For Wednesday 10/3 and Friday 10/5, please read the following (both can be downloaded from the “Readings” section of this website):

1.  Anderson, Stephen R. & David W. Lightfoot. 1999. The human language faculty as an organ. Annual Review of Physiology 62: 697-722.

Note:  Parts of this article assume a level of linguistic expertise that you will not have.  In particular, the sections entitled “The Nature of Grammars” and “Back to the Puzzles” (pgs. 703-709) contain some rather technical discussion, and should be skipped.  Also, the final section, entitled “The Organic Basis of Language” (pgs. 715-718), may be skimmed, as our later course readings will cover those topics in greater detail.

2.  Excerpts from Chomsky, Noam. 1988. Language and Politics.  (Carlos P. Otero, ed.) Montreal: Black Rose Books.

Note:  In fact, the title of the book is rather misleading:  it is a collection of interviews that Chomsky has given over the years, covering a wide range of topics (both linguistic and political).  All of the excerpts that you will read have to do with his views concerning children’s capacities for learning language, and why some aspects of this capacity must be innate.

Because the Anderson & Lightfoot reading is somewhat more difficult than our other readings for this semester, I’ve gone ahead and posted both of these readings a bit earlier than usual.

Reading for M 9/17: Pullum (1999)

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For next Monday (9/17), please read the following article, which can be downloaded from the “Readings” section of this website:

Pullum, Geoffrey K. 1999. African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with mistakes. In R. Wheeler (ed.) The Workings of Language, 39-58. Wesport, CT: Praeger.

Reading for F 9/14: Simon (1980); Language Myths #12

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For this Friday (9/14), please complete the following reading assignments:

1. Simon, John. 1980. ‘The Corruption of English’. In L. Michaels and C. Ricks (eds), The State of the Language, 35-42. Berkeley: University of California Press.

2. Milroy, Lesley. 1998. “Myth #12: Bad Grammar is Slovenly’. In L. Bauer and P. Trudgill (eds), Language Myths, 94-102. London: Penguin Books.

(Both readings are available as PDFs from the “Readings” section of this website.)