Undergraduate - UnitATS2679 - Psycholinguistics and child language acquisition

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2014 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered, or view unit timetables.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Linguistics
Offered	Clayton Second semester 2014 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Anna Margetts

Notes

Previously coded LIN2430

Synopsis

This unit traces the development of child language from pre-speech to later stages of acquisition, including the development of communicative competence. It examines the development of the child's phonological, syntactic, morphological and semantic system and attempts to account for this development by considering various linguistic models and theories. The unit also investigates the comprehension and production of speech. Experimental evidence is examined in order to determine the psychological validity of the various models and theories which have been proposed to describe the process involved in comprehending and producing speech.

Outcomes

By the completion of this subject, students are expected to have developed

a critical understanding of the process of language acquisition and the various theories which have developed to account for this acquisition
a critical understanding of the mental processes of sentence comprehension and production and the various theories which have been developed to explain these processes.

More generally students are expected to develop

critical reading skills
analytic and interpretive skills in dealing with raw language data
the ability to assess evidence supporting various theories and thereby evaluate these theories
the ability to present logical, coherent arguments, both orally and in writing