***Apologies for multiple postings***

(1) Reminder of the Cognitive Area Seminar this week

(2) Journal Blitz in Thomson House at 5pm on Friday (after the Cognitive Area Seminar)

(1) Reminder of the Cognitive Area Seminar this week:

Functional Morphemes and Early Language Acquisition Rushen Shi Université du Québec à Montréal

One classic observation in the field of child language is that children's early speech production is telegraphic, lacking functional morphemes (such as determiners, auxiliaries, tense endings, etc.). This is consistent with the view that functional morphemes are absent in infants' early knowledge. In this talk I will present empirical evidence against this view. I will show that infants in fact begin to process functional items from birth. They start encoding and representing functional elements and their structural relations in phrases and sentences long before they can produce these elements. I will discuss recent evidence that functional items bootstrap various acquisition tasks. These findings have implications for theories of language acquisition and for the debate concerning nature versus nurture in development.

Friday, March 27th, 15h30-17h00 Stewart Biology Building, W7/21

(2) After the talk, we will gather in Thomson House for the last Journal Blitz of the semester; join us to tell us about an article you have read recently, hear about what others have read, and discuss (over drinks and nachos).

The seminar and Journal Blitz is open to students, faculty, post-docs, and whoever else who is interested.

Please forward this message to your students and other interested parties.

Esther

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