LSA.220 | Acquiring Phonological Representations in the Mental Lexicon

Paula Fikkert
MW 4:50-6:30
location: 56-114
course web site: http://lsa.dlp.mit.edu/Class/220

In this course the central question will be: What does a child need to acquire to master the phonology of his or her language? We will discuss how a child builds up various aspects of an abstract phonological system: segmental contrasts, syllable structure, stress, morphophonological alternations and phonological representations to be stored in the mental lexicon. Acquisition data from various languages will be discussed and compared, among others Dutch, German, English, French and Portuguese. We will review evidence from both language perception and production.