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INX 199
Breaking the Code: How Children Learn Language
Fall 2005-Spring 2006
General Information
Course Overview
One of the most complex things you'll ever learn is mastered before
you even enter school -- your native language. How do young children
crack this intricate code that maps sounds to meanings, enabling them
to communicate with almost adult proficiency by the age of five? Is
such an ability uniquely human? Why is this ability critical to our
sense of humanity and sense of self? In this course, we'll explore
these and other questions about the essential human capacity to learn
language. In addition to examining evidence from philosophical
arguments and psychological experiments, we'll also consider less
conventional sources, such as attempts to teach language to apes,
theories of language evolution, and studies of language creation (as
in "twin language" or pidgins). We'll investigate how computer
simulations of language acquisition can shed light on the questions we
raise, and what the limits of language learning by computer can tell
us about the human ability to learn language.
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