Language Development

Lesson Videos:

• • Lesson 1: Language Development - The Goals (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 2: Nature and Nurture in Linguistics (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 3: What is a Grammar? (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 4: Explaining Language Universals (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 5: Learning Mechanisms (for slides click here)

External Content

• • External Content 1: Clip from the PBS Documentary Evolution, episode 4, The Mind's Big Bang about the birth of Nicaraguan Sign Language

  • External Content 2: Nicaraguan Sign Language - Language Stories episode 11 (by Lindsay Williams)

  • External Content 3: I, Claudia: In the Deaf Community of Nicaragua (produced by John Michalczyk, 2005)

Readings:

• Fromkin et al. (2003): Chapter 1 - What is Language?

• Gerken (2009): Chapter 1 - Introduction

Discussion Prompt: Unit 1

Practice Problems: Unit 1

Lesson Videos:

• • Lesson 6: Hearing language before you're born? (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 7: Contingent Sucking Rate Experimental Paradigm (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 8: High Amplitude Sucking Experimental Paradigm (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 9: Categorical Speech Perception in Infants (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 10: Deciding Which Distinctions Matter

Linguistics Tutorial Videos:

• • Tutorial 1: What's there to learn about intonation?

  • Tutorial 2: Phonetic Variables 1: Voice Onset Time

  • Tutorial 3: Phonetic Variables 2: Formant Frequencies

  • Tutorial 4: (optional) Building a Set of Minimal Pairs

External Content:

• • External Content 4: Sucking Rate Demonstration, 'Babies Learn Language in the Womb' (posted by I-Labs UW)

  • External Content 5: Visual Habituation Demonstration from 'What Babies can Do: An Activity-Based Guide to Infant Development '(produced/directed by: Stevens & Vishton, 2009)

  • External Content 6: Conditioned Head Turn Demonstration from the Discovery Channel 'The Baby Human' (Spidell et al. 2003)

  • External Content 7: Three Procedures for Investigating Infant Speech (produced by Jusczyk's Lab in 1999)

  • External Content 8: Bilingual and monolingual baby brains differ in response to language (posted by I-Labs UW)

  • External Content 9: Intro to Phonology: Phonemes and Allophones (by NativLang)

  • External Content 10: (optional) How to Test Language in Babies (by The Ling Space)

  • External Content 11: (optional) The Conditioned Head Turn Task (produced by the Infant Studies Centre at UBC)

Readings:

• • Gerken (2009): Chapter 3 - Phonological Perception

  • Language Files 2.5 (12th Ed.) - Suprasegmental Features

  • Language Files 2.6 (12th Ed.) - Acoustic Phonetics

  • Bergelson & Swingley (2013) - The acquisition of abstract words by young infants (Intro and Methods)

  • Werker & Tees (1984) - Cross-Language Speech Perception... (for homework assignment)

  • (optional) Language Files 3.2 (12th Ed.) - Phonemes and Allophones

  • (optional) DeCasper & Fifer (1980) - Of Human Bonding

  • (optional) Volumanos & Werker (2007) - Listening to Language at Birth

Other Resources:

• • Cheat Sheet for Reading Experimental Papers

Discussion Prompt: Unit 2

Practice Problems: Unit 2

Video Lessons:

• • Lesson 11: A Tour of the Vocal Tract (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 12: The Ways to Make the Sounds of Speech (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 13: What is the IPA? (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 14: The IPA Vowels (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 15: The IPA Consonants (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 16: Vocal Tract Development (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 17: Babbling (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 18: How do early words differ from adult pronunciations? (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 19: Why do kids pronounce things wrong? (for slides click here)

Linguistics Video Tutorials

• • Tutorial 5: How to check IPA transcriptions (for slides click here)

External Content:

• • External Content 12: (optional) IPA & Phonetics: Vowels (by NativLang)

Readings:

• • Language Files 2.1-2.3 (12th ed.)

  • Gerken (2009): Chapter 4 - Phonological Production

  • Krcmar & Lin (2007): Can toddlers learn vocabulary from television (for homework assignment)

  • (optional) Hoff (1997): Chapter 4 - Phonological Development: Learning the Sounds of Language

Discussion Prompt: Unit 3

Practice Problems: Unit 3

Video Lessons:

• • Lesson 20: Mixing up meanings in early words (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 21: Building a Vocabulary: The Numbers (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 22: Children's Strategies for Word-Learning (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 23: Early Production of Sentences (for slides click here)

Readings:

• • Hoff (1997): Chapter 5 - Lexical Development: Learning Words

  • Hoff (1997): Chapter 6 (pg. 169-179) - The Development of Syntax and Morphology...

  • Fromkin et al. (2003): pg. 363-367 - The Acquisition of Syntax

  • Krcmar & Lin (2007): Can toddlers learn vocabulary from television (for homework assignment)

  • (optional) Language Files 5.1-5.4 (12th edition)

Discussion Prompt: Unit 4

Practice Problems: Unit 4

Video Lessons:

• • Lesson 24: Syntactic Constituents (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 25: Syntactic Categories (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 26: Basic Morphology (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 27: Children's Understanding of Morphology (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 28: Learning to Negate Sentences in English (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 29: Learning to Ask Questions (for slides click here)

Readings:

• • Hoff (1997): Chapter 6 part 2 (pg. 178-203)

  • Language Files 5.3 & 5.4

  • Genesee, Nicoladis, and Paradis (1995) - Language Differentiation in early bilingual development

Discussion Prompt: Unit 5

Practice Problems: Unit 5

Video Lessons:

• • Lesson 30: Encouraging Active Bilingualism (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 31: Bilingual Language Development (for slides click here)

External Content:

• • External Content 13: Baby Reading and Manual Babbling: The Bear Hug (posted by Handspeak: Sign Language Online)

  • External Content 15: Why is Language so Hard for Autistic Children? (a TedMed talk by Joy Hirsch)

Readings:

• • Genesee & Nicoladis (2007): Bilingual First Language Acquisition

  • Meier (2016): Sign Language Acquisition

  • Language Files 1.5 (12th ed.): Language Modality

  • Hoff (1997): Chapter 11 (pg. 329-339)

  • Genesee, Nicoladis, and Paradis (1995) - Language Differentiation in early bilingual development (for homework)

Discussion Prompt: Unit 6

Practice Problems: Unit 6

Video Lessons:

• • Lesson 32: Infant-Directed Speech (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 33: The "30-million Word Gap" (for slides click here)

  • Lesson 34: Drawing it together (for slides click here)

External Content

• • External Content 16: Vocal Fries: Mind the Gap (July 2, 2018)

Readings:

• • Nation (date?): A Brief Critique of Hart and Risley (click here)

  • Gerken (2009): pg. 206-213 (The Critical Period)

Homework Paper-Summary Options:

• • Allen & Crago (1996) - Early passive acquisition in Inuktitut

  • Arias-Trejo et al. (2014) - Early comprehension of the Spanish plural

  • Caselli et al. (1999) - A comparison of the transition from first words to grammar in English and Italian

  • Polka & Werker (1994) - Developmental Changes in Perception in Nonnative Vowel Contrasts

  • Yeung & Werker (2013) - Lip movements affect infants' audiovisual speech perception

Discussion Prompt: Unit 7

Practice Problems: Unit 7

In addition to the resources above, I have four homework assignments (with answer sheets) and a take-home final exam. I've chosen not to post direct links to these on this page, but if you are curious about any of these assignments, shoot me an email and I can send you a link!