LINGUISTICS 170
Psycholinguistics

Course Rationale and Objectives

The ability to use language is considered unique to humans. In many ways, our ability for language is surprisingly robust - it can survive even when other cognitive abilities fail, and develop in children even with poor language input. However, it can also be quite fragile - even a small stroke (in the wrong place) can severely impair language function, and several developmental disorders negatively affect language ability. Language is a very important aspect of our daily lives. It is the primary way in which we are able to communicate very complex, multi-dimensional ideas and make them fit into a string of sounds that unfold over time.

How do we accomplish this feat? How do we convey our thoughts in this way? How are we able to take a string of sounds and get meaning from them? How do we develop this ability? What happens in people who fail to acquire this ability, or lose it due to injury? Psycholinguistics concerns itself with all of the these questions and more.

This course is intended as an introduction to the field of psycholinguistics. As such, it covers many topics, including how children acquire language, how adults are able to both produce and comprehend language, how second languages are learned, the neurological basis of language, and different disorders that affect language.

At the end of this course you should be able to critically read popular media reporting of language research as well as feel confident reading about and discussing many issues that are relevant in child development, second language learning, linguistics, and psychology. You should also have an understanding of how science in this field is conducted: how questions are formed, experiments designed and data interpreted.

Course Requirements and Policies

There will be two in-class, closed-book exams which will cover material from the lectures and assigned readings. Each of these exams will be 35% of your grade. The first exam, the midterm, will cover the first half of the course. The second exam, the final, will be non-cumulative - it will only cover the material after the midterm. There will be two homework assignments (10% each) that will be given out in class.The final 10% of your grade will come from the completion of 4 hours of experimental participation in Experimetrix or an additional homework assignment that will be due on the last class. Please talk to me by the end of week 4 in order to do the homework assignment instead of Experimetrix credit.

With the exception of the first class, readings should be done BEFORE the class that they are assigned for. This will allow you to be better prepared for class and to ask questions about the readings during the class that covers the same topic. We are covering an entire field of study in a mere 10 weeks, and so the pace of the course must be fairly brisk. Please do not fall behind in the readings. If you are having trouble keeping up, please speak with me sooner rather than later.

Cheating on the exams or homework will result in no credit for the exam/homework in question, and you will be referred to your dean for disciplinary action. This is university policy and there will be no exceptions. PLEASE NOTE: If you hand in an exam or homework that resembles an exam or homework handed in by anyone else in this class or in previous classes like this one, that constitutes cheating. Therefore, all written work must be your own and no one else's. Cheating undermines the value of everyone's education, and you should know that I feel very strongly about this issue and that I will handle all cases of cheating accordingly. I truly hope there will be no cause to discuss this issue any further this quarter, but if there is, I will strictly adhere to the policy outlined in this paragraph without exception.

Course Readings

There is a required textbook for this course:

Gleason and Ratner (Eds.) Psycholinguistics. Harcourt Brace College Publishers, NY 1993.

This text is available at the bookstore and will be referred to as "GR" in the syllabus. There will be additional readings assigned as the course progresses - these readings will be available on (e)reserve at the library.

Syllabus

Week	Date	Topic	Assigments
1	Tuesday, 3/29	Introduction	GR: Chapter 1
	Thursday, 3/31	Speech Perception	GR: Chapter 3
2	Tuesday, 4/5	Written Language Perception	GR: Chapter 9
	Thursday, 4/7	The Lexicon I	GR: Chapter 4 Stroop Assignment Handed out
3	Tuesday, 4/12	The Lexicon II	TBA
	Thursday, 4/14	No Class
4	Tuesday, 4/19	Sentence Processing	GR: Chapter 5 STROOP ASSIGNMENT DUE
	Thursday, 4/21	Sentence Processing
5	Tuesday, 4/26	Sentence Processing	TBA
	Thursday, 4/28	Putting Sentences Together: Discourse processing	GR: Chapter 6
6	Tuesday, 5/3	MIDTERM	MIDTERM
	Thursday, 5/5	Language Production Speech Errors Phonological Encoding	GR: Chapter 7
7	Tuesday, 5/10	Language Production Sentence Level Dialogue Discourse	Bock (1995) Sentence production: From mind to mouth. Ch. 6 in Speech, Language, and Communication.
	Thursday, 5/12	First Language Acquisition	GR: Chapter 8
8	Tuesday, 5/17	Bilingual Language Acquisition	Houwer (1995) Bilingual Language Acquisition. Ch. 8 in The Handbook of Child Language.
	Thursday, 5/19	Language-related developmental disorders: SLI, Autism, Williams Syndrome	SPEECH ERROR ASSIGNMENT DUE
9	Tuesday, 5/24	Second Language Acquisition	GR: Chapter 10
	Thursday, 5/26	Second Language Acquisition American Sign Language	TBA
10	Tuesday, 5/31	Language and the Brain	GR: Chapter 2
	Thursday, 6/2	Language Breakdowns
Finals