Annotation
The course is based on an extensive literature review of L1 acquisition with a focus on language discrimination, phonetic acquisition of speech sounds and prosody, and word acquisition in the first year of life. Students will be challenged to re-think some mainstream assumptions and theories that are constantly implicitly or explicitly referred to in the infant literature. What does it mean to be a universal listener? Where does this concept come from? Are theories of language discrimination, such as rhythmic theory (Nazzi et al., 1998) and native language acquisition hypothesis (Nazzi et al., 2000) as well as the theory of early word segmentation called the rhythmic segmentation hypothesis (Nazzi et al., 2006) well-grounded and empirically verified? Based on selected readings, students will discuss contributions and limitations of these theories and hypotheses.
The course is intended primarily for MA-level students in the disciplines of phonetics and linguistics, but also psychology, speech therapy, and others. The course is given in English.