LING 355 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Null Result, Language Acquisition Device, Deep Structure And Surface Structure

• School: McGill University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 355
• Professor: Guilherme Garcia

Document Summary

Thus far: l1 acquisition (from prosody to syntax; theoretical frameworks; ug) Most of this course is on l1 acquisition. L1 and l2 acquisition are very similar and study basically the same things. Transfer and access are the most important topics in l2 acquisition. These are the two dimensions you would investigate. If so, you are quite constrained: l3 acquisition. It"s interesting to look at this multilingual context for several reasons. It"s one of the best ways to look at l2 acquisition more clearly, because you can isolate what is coming from where. Examine whether language learning is cumulative or categorical . This goes back to the critical period discussion. You learn a language, and you there is this idea that your l1 is essentially different from your l2, and the main reason for this is you are past your critical period. Cognitively speaking, you"re more limited after the critical period.