University of Houston
Modern and Classical Languages Department
First Language Acquisition
SPAN 6395 - Spring 2005
GENERAL INFORMATION:
Instructor: Dr. M. Emma Ticio
Sessions: Mondays and Wednesdays 4:00pm-5:30pm
Room: 303-AH
Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays 3:00pm-4:00pm (435AH), and by appointment.
Phone: (713) 743-3054
E-mail: mticio@uh.edu
TEXTBOOK:
This course does not have a particular textbook. The instructor will select chapters of some books and
papers to be used in the class. See the attached readings list.
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
The course will start with an introduction to the basic concepts and theories of first language
acquisition consisting of the main arguments and facts that a theory of first language acquisition should
explain. After that brief introduction to the field and to the basic research questions, key studies of Child
Spanish focusing on syntactic issues from a generative perspective will be discussed. The course will be a
mixture of lectures and presentations. Student participation is expected in the form of discussions and
presentations.
GOALS:
1.
2.
3.
To introduce basic concepts of first language acquisition as applied to the study of the Spanish
language.
To provide fundamental background into the studies of Child Spanish to students of Spanish,
Bilingual education or Spanish Linguistics.
To familiarize students with the field of first language acquisition.
STUDENTS’ RESPONSIBILITIES:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Attendance to scheduled sessions, and active participation in discussions
Read all the papers to be discussed in the classroom
Presentations
Midterm Exam
Final Project
GRADING SYSTEM:
Attendance/Participation
Oral Presentations
Midterm Exam
Final Project
10%
30%
30%
30%
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University of Houston Grading Scale
A
AB+
B
94-100
90-93
87-89
84-86
BC+
C
C-
80-83
77-79
74-76
70-73
D+
D
DF
67-69
64-66
60-63
below 60
1. ATTENDANCE/PARTICIPATION



Student athletes, band members and members of other university organizations should bring a
letter from their supervisor or specific department at the beginning of the semester indicating the
dates they will miss class.
Tardiness: Your instructor will deny admission to students who arrive 15 minutes late.
You are responsible for contacting other classmates to obtain any information discussed in the
event of class missed.
2. PRESENTATIONS: The oral presentation(s) will consist of presentation(s) of recent research on the
field. The papers will be selected from the list of readings that will be distributed at the beginning of
the semester. A final oral presentation on the research or review paper will be also needed. The
grade will be determined based on the presentation, handout and question/answer period.
3. EXAM: There will be a midterm exam in this course. The approximate date is indicated in the
tentative daily schedule. Students requiring special testing procedures must provide documentation
to the instructor the first week of classes.
4. PROJECT: You may choose one of the following options for your term paper:
A. Propose a longitudinal research or experiment in one of the topics discussed in the course.
OR
B. Write a critical review on a paper from the literature. The paper will be selected from the list of
readings that will be distributed at the beginning of the semester.
In any case, the paper should be around 10-12 pages (minimum word count: 3000-4000 words),
including diagrams and references. It should consist of:
- the description of the construction, category, parameter that is at issue
- the common analysis in generative terms
- the principles it is supposed to support
- the typological spread of the construction, parameter, etc..
- a statement of the problem
- acquisition data
- critical notes on solving the problem
- possible conclusions
- a list of publications (that have been referred to by year and page)
SOME IMPORTANT CLASS POLICIES:



You must provide written documentation for any absence before a make-up exam is given. No
make-up work will be considered without written, justifiable documentation for your absence.
Students who require special accommodations for religious holidays should make arrangements
with their instructor the first week of classes.
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



Violations of the Code of Conduct will not be tolerated. This means that all assignments and exams
must be your own work. Any violation of this policy will result in expulsion from the class, and
implementation of sanctions as stated in the Student Code of Conduct.
All cellular phones must be turned off during class time. If your phone rings during class, you will
lose the participation grade for that day.
No Extra Credit is available for this course.
TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE:
Week 1 (January 19 (Wednesday)): Course Introduction: Syllabus, Course Expectations, etc.
Week 2: (January 24 (Monday) & January 26 (Wednesday)): Main properties of First Language Acquisition
Reading Assignment for week 2: Crain & Lillo-Martin (1999: 6-9), Guasti (2002: 1-5).
Week 3: (January 31 (Monday) & February 2 (Wednesday)): Main theories of First Language Acquisition
Reading Assignment for week 3: Radford (2004): chapters 1-6; Guasti (2002: 6-19).
Week 4: (February 7 (Monday) & February 9 (Wednesday)): The Acquisition of Phonology
Reading Assignment for week 4: Guasti (2002): chapter 2.
Week 5: (February 14 (Monday) & February 16 (Wednesday)): The acquisition of Lexicon
Reading Assignment for week 5: Guasti (2002): chapter 3.
 February 14, 2005 last day to drop without a grade.
 February 16, 2005 Students presentations schedule will be distributed
Week 6: (February 21 (Monday) & February 23 (Wednesday)): The acquisition of Syntax
Reading Assignment for week 6: TBA
Week 7: (February 28 (Monday) & March 2 (Wednesday)): The acquisition of Semantics
Reading Assignment for week 7: TBA
Week 8: (March 7 (Monday) & March 9 (Wednesday)): Review/ Professional Methods & Exam.
No Reading Assignment
 March 9, 2005 (Wednesday): Midterm Exam
Week 9: (March 14-March20): Spring Holiday!!
Week 10: (March 21, 2005 (Monday) & March 23, 2005 (Wednesday)): Students present papers.
Reading Assignment for week 10: TBA (papers to be presented during the week).
Week 11: (March 28, 2005 (Monday) & March 30, 2005 (Wednesday)): Students present papers.
Reading Assignment for week 11: TBA (papers to be presented during the week).
Week 12: (April 4, 2005 (Monday) & April 6, 2005 (Wednesday)): Students present papers
Reading Assignment for week 12: TBA (papers to be presented during the week).
Week 13: (April 11, 2005 (Monday) & April 13, 2005 (Wednesday)): Students present papers
Reading Assignment for week 13: TBA (papers to be presented during the week).
Week 14-Week 16: (April 18 (Monday) to May 2 (Monday)): Students present their research
No Reading Assignment.
 Term Papers must be emailed (as word or pdf documents) by May 6, 2005. 
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University of Houston
Modern and Classical Languages Department
First Language Acquisition
SPAN 6395 - Spring 2005
Dr. Ticio
SOME BASIC REFERENCES:
Chomsky, N. (1959) ‘A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior’ in Language, 35, No. 1, 26-58.
Crain, S., & Lillo-Martin, D. (1999) An Introduction to Linguistic Theory and Language Acquisition.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Guasti, M.T. (2002) Language Acquisition. The Growth of Grammar, Cambridge Mass./London: MIT
Press.
MacWhinney, B. (1991) The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Lenneberg, E. (1967) Biological Foundations of Language. John Wiley & Sons
Lopez Ornat, S. (1994) La adquisición de la lengua española. Madrid: Siglo XXI.
Pinker, S. (1994) The Language instinct. New York: HarperCollins.
Radford, A. (2004) Children’s English: A Principles-and-Parameters Perspective. Ms. University of
Essex.
Slobin, D. I. (ed.) (1985-1997) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR PRESENTATION PAPERS:
Bel, A. (2001) ‘Sujetos nulos y Sujetos explícitos en las gramáticas iniciales del castellano y el catalán’ in
Revista Española de Lingüística, 31, 2, págs. 537-561.
Bel, A. (2003) ‘The syntax of subjects in the acquisition of Spanish and Catalan’ in Probus, 15 1–17.
Clahsen H., F. Aveledo & I. Roca (2002) ‘The Development of Regular and Irregular Verb Inflection in
Spanish Child Language’ in Journal of Child Language 29: 591-622.
Eisenchlas, S. (2003) ‘Clitics in child Spanish’ in First Language, 23(2), 193–211.
Ezeizabarrena, M. J. (1997) ‘Morfemas de concordancia con el sujeto y con los objetos en el castellano
infantil’ in Perez-Leroux, A. T. & W. R. Glass (eds.) Contemporary Perspectives on the Acquisition of
Spanish, Volume I, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 21-36.
Fujino, H. & T. Sano (2000) ‘Some Notes on the Null Object Phenomenon in Child Spanish’ in BUCLD
24, 308-318.
Grinstead, J. (1995) ‘The emergence of nominative Case Assignment in Child Catalan and Spanish’ in
BUCLD 19, 216-227.
Grinstead, J. (1997) ‘Negation and independent morphological development’ in A. Schwegler, B. TRanel
and M. Uribe-Etxebarría (eds.) Romance Linguistics: Theoretical perspectives. Selected papers from
the 27th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Irvine, 97-110.
Grinstead, J. (2001) "Wh- Movement in Child Catalan." Issues in Applied Linguistics, 12.1
Grinstead, J. (2004) ‘Subjects and interface delay in child Spanish and Catalan’ in Language 80, 40-72.
Gualmini, A., L. Meroni and S. Crain (2003) “An asymmetric Universal in Child Language’ in University
of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 12, 72-91.
Legendre, G.; P. Hagstrom; A. Vainikka and M. Todorova (2002) ‘Partial Constraint Ordering in Child
French Syntax’ in Language Acquisition, 10(3), 189–227
López-Ornat, S. (1997) ‘What lies in between a pre-grammatical and a grammatical representation?
Evidence on Nominal and Verbal Form-Function Mappings in Spanish from 1;7 to 2;1’ in PerezLeroux, A. T. & W. R. Glass (eds.) Contemporary Perspectives on the Acquisition of Spanish, Volume
I, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 3-20.
Lopez-Ornat, S. (2003) ‘Learning Earliest Grammar: Evidence of Grammar Variation in Speech before 22
months’ in Linguistic Theory and Language Development in Hispanic Languages: Papers from the 5 th.
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Hispanic Linguistics Symposium and the 4th. Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and
Portuguese. F. Ordoñez and S. Montrul (eds.). Cascadilla Press. Somerville, MA.
Marrero, V. and C. Aguirre (2003) ‘Plural Acquisition and Development in Spanish’ in Linguistic Theory
and Language Development in Hispanic Languages: Papers from the 5 th. Hispanic Linguistics
Symposium and the 4th. Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese. F. Ordoñez and S.
Montrul (eds.). Cascadilla Press. Somerville, MA.
Perez-Leroux, A. T. et al. (2002) ‘The Development of Inalienable Possession in English and Spanish’ in
R. Bok-Bennema, B. Hollebrandse, B. Kampers-Manhe & P. Sleeman (eds.) Romance Languages &
Linguistic Theory, Amsterdam, John Benjamins.
Perez-Leroux, A. T. et al. (2003) ‘Learning definite determiners: genericity and definiteness in English and
Spanish’ in Proceedings of the 2003 Boston University Conference on Language Development,
Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Miller, K. and C. Schmitt (2004) ‘The Interpretation of Indefinites and Bare Singulars in Spanish Child
Language’ in Cascadilla Proceedings Project
Menuzzi, S. (2002) ‘The acquisition of passives in English and Brazilian Portuguese: regularities despite
the input’ in Proceedings of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition, J. Costa and M. J.
Freitas (eds.), Associacão Portuguesa de Linguística, Lisboa.
Minkoff, S. (2003) ‘Syntax and Epistemology in Guatemalan Children’s Spanish: The Case of NonConsciousness and Non-Coreference’ in Language Acquisition, 11(1), 33–62
Snyder, W., A. Senghas and K. Inman (2001) Agreement Morphology and the Acquisition of Noun-Drop
in Spanish, Language Acquisition, 9(2), 157–173
Torrens, V. and K. Wexler (1996) ‘Clitic Doubling in Early Spanish’ in BUCLD 20, 780-791.
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