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  2. NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities
  3. Master in Teaching of Portuguese and a Foreign Language in the 3rd Cycle of Elementary Education and in Secondary Education, specialisation in German, or Spanish, or French, or English
  4. Área de Especialização em Francês
  5. Language Acquisition and Language Impairment

Language Acquisition and Language Impairment

Objectives

a) Deepen knowledge on theoretical models of language acquisition and properties of linguistic development in different grammar components.
b) Develop the ability to reflect on how data from typical and atypical language development provide evidence for the modularity of the grammatical system and for the discussion of theoretical hypotheses on the functioning of language.
c) Develop the ability to reflect on how linguistic theoretical hypotheses enable a better characterization of language disorders.
d) Develop the ability to compare the acquisition of different structures in different languages and in different populations, and identify common and specific processes of language development.
e) Identify child language disorders and clinical markers for child language impairment.

General characterization

Code

722131101

Credits

10.0

Responsible teacher

Maria Fernandes Homem de Sousa Lobo Gonçalves

Hours

Weekly - 3

Total - 280

Teaching language

Portuguese

Prerequisites

Available soon

Bibliography

  • Bishop, D. & L. Leonard (eds.) 2000. Speech and Language Impairments in Children. Causes, Characteristics, Intervention and Outcome. London/New York: Psychology Press;
  • Fletcher, P. & B. MacWhinney (eds.) 1995. The Handbook of Child Language. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers;
  • Freitas, M. J. & A.L. Santos, orgs. 2017. A aquisição de língua materna e não materna. Questões gerais e dados do Português. Textbooks in Language Sciences. Berlim: Language Science Press. http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/160;
  • Goodluck, H. 1991. Language Acquisition. A Linguistic Introduction. Oxford/Cambridge: Blackwell;
  • Guasti, M.T. 2017. Language Acquisition. The Growth of Grammar. Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2ª edição;
  • Lust, B. 2006. Child Language. Acquisition and Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press;
  • Lust, B & C. Foley (eds.). 2004. First Language Acquisition. The Essential Readings. Blackwell Publishing;
  • Schwartz, R.G. (ed.) 2009. Handbook 

Teaching method

Classes include a theoretical and a practical component, with explanatory classes, child data analysis and discussion of scientific papers.

Evaluation method

A review of a scientific paper.(30%), Analysis of child data.(30%), Final exercise with research questions that cover different topics of the seminar.(40%)

Subject matter

Different topics related to language acquisition, contrasting typical and atypical populations, will be explored. Topics include:
1. Review of the main theoretical models of language acquisition and of the way they consider the role of the input and individual internal mechanisms;
2. Identification of the developmental stages in typically developing children in different grammar components (phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics-pragmatics;
3. Child language disorders:
3.1. Typology;
3.2. Characterization of Language-Specific Disorder;
3.4 Possible clinical markers and crosslinguistic differences;
3.3. Modular development of language components and selectivity of the impaired structures;
3.5. Comparing the acquisition of specific structures in different populations (developmental language disorder, autism, Down syndrome), in the morphosyntactic and pragmatic domains.