Language Acquisition
Studying human language acquisition, from birth throughout the lifespan
Language acquisition is a unique human capability, one that is realized under radically different circumstances--by pre-school children acquiring a single language or several languages simultaneously; by school-age children or adults learning a second language through instruction; and by individuals learning signed languages.
A theory of language acquisition must account for all of these types of normal acquisition, as well as impaired language learning. The research pursued in the Language Acquisition axis focuses on understanding the developmental processes of all aspects of language (i.e., syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, pragmatics and discourse) across multiple learner populations.
Experimental Questions:
- are the mental and neural representations that underlie mature and developing languages acquired in different contexts similar?
- does language impairment reflect anomalies of the normal developmental process or does it reflect unique, aberrant processes?
- are the biological predispositions that underlie monolingual acquisition operational to the same extent, over the same time course, and in the same way among bilingual or sign language learners?
- what is the specific developmental time-course of speech perception and production?
