Course on Variation and Acquisition

1. Introduction: Variation and I-language

• Labov, William. (1969)Contraction, Deletion, and Inherent Variability of the English Copula Language, Vol. 45, No. 4. , pp. 715-762.
• Yang (2002, Chapter 1)
• Legate & Yang (2002)
• Yang (2012)

2. The phonemic inventory

• Werker, Janet F. and Richard C. Tees. 1999. INFLUENCES ON INFANT SPEECH PROCESSING: Toward a New Synthesis. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 50: 509-35
• Feldman et al. (2009)The Influence of Categories on Perception: Explaining the Perceptual Magnet Effect as Optimal Statistical Inference. Psychological Review. Vol. 116, No. 4, 752–782
• Johnson, Elizabeth K. (2012)Bootstrapping language: Are infant statisticians up to the job?. Draft.

3. Distributional learning

• Brent , Michael R.(1993)From Grammar to Lexicon: Unsupervised Learning of Lexical Syntax . Computational LinguisticVol 19, No.2. 245-262
• Reddington et al. (1996)Distributional Information: A Powerful Cue for Acquiring Syntactic Categories .COGNITIVE SCIENCE. Vol 22 (4): 425-46
• Gambell & Yang. (2006)
• Thompson, Susan P. and Elissa L. Newport. 2007. Statistical Learning of Syntax: The Role of Transitional ProbabilityLanguage Learning and Developent, 3 (1):1–42

4. Language and usage

• Shipley, Elizabeth F. et al. 1969. A study in the acquision of language: Free responses to commands. Language, 45(2):322-342
• Tomasello, Michael. (2000). The item-based nature of children's early syntactic development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4(4): 156-163
• Valian, Virginia. (2008) Abstract categories or limited-scope formulae? The case of children's determiners . Journal Child Language 35: 1–36.
• Yang, Charles. (2003)

5. Morphology and frequency

• Pinker, Steven. (1995)Why the child holded the baby rabbits: A case study in langauge acquisition. In: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Lila Gleitman and Mark Liberman (eds.): 107-133.
• Szagun, Gisela. (2001)Learning different regularities: the acquisition of noun plurals by German-speaking childre. First Language 21: 109-141
• Maratsos, Michael. (2000)More overregularizations after all : new data and discussion on Marcus, Pinker, Ullman, Hollander, Rosen & Xu. Journal of Child Language. 27 :183–212.
• Yang , Charles.(2002; Chapter 3)
• Lignos, Constantine. et al. (2010)Evidence for a Morphological Acquisition Model from Development Data. Ms.

6. Exceptions and productivity

• Berko, Jean. (1958)The child's learning of English Morphology.
• Halle, Morris. (1973)Prolegomena to a Theory of Word Formation. Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 1 , pp. 3-16
• Gropen, Jess. et al. (1989)The Learnability and Acquisition of the Dative Alternation in English. Language, Vol. 65, No. 2., 203-257
• Yang, Charles. (2005)
• Legate, Julie & Yang, Charles. (2012)

7. Parameter setting

• Wang, Qi. et al. (1992)Null subject versus null object: Some evidence from acquisition of Chinese and English. Language Acquisition, 2(3): 221-254
• Berwick, Robert & Partho Niyogi .(1996)Learning from Triggers. Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 27, No. 4 , pp. 605-622
• Yang(2002; Chapter 4)
• Legate & Yang (2008)
• Yang (2009)
• Sakas, William G. & Janet Dean Fodor. (2012)Disambiguating Syntactic Triggers. Language Acquisition, 19:2, 83-143

8. Variation and change

• Labov, William. (1989)The child as linguistic historian. Language Variation and Change, 1 (1989), 85-97.
• Kroch, Anthony. (2000)Syntactic Change. In: Handbook of Syntax, Mark Baltin & Chris Collins, (eds.), Blackwell.
• Yang (2002; Chapter 5)
• Yang(2009, ms)