Meeting times: Mondays 4-7pm, room CAS 330.

Professor. Paul Hagstrom, 718 Commonwealth Ave. (Dept. of Modern Foreign Languages & Literatures), Office 401B. Email: hagstrom@bu.edu (likely to get a quick response). Phone: 617-353-6220 (x3-6220). Office hours: M 11-12,T 3-4, R11-12pm.

Prerequisites. CAS LX 522 ("Syntax I"), or permission of the instructor.

Course goals. This course has a somewhat mixed focus: on one hand, we will be looking at recent issues in language acquisition from a theoretical perspective, gearing up for the BUCLD conference in November. On the other hand, we are going to spend a lot of time getting acquainted with computerized tools of use to the linguistic researcher. Therefore, not everything will be about acquisition, and not everything will be done on computers, but I hope to strike a reasonable balance.

Course Requirements. Completion of about 10 labs and homework assignments over the course of the semester, as well as weekly reading assignments and class discussion.

Email. Whenever feasible, homework (or project proposals, or final papers) can be emailed to me at hagstrom@bu.edu. Text-only is preferred, but you may also send PDF, RTF, or Microsoft Word files. Postscript and Word Perfect files are less welcome, and don't even bother sending TeX or LaTeX files. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just hand in a paper copy. Wherever email won't work for any reason (e.g., for tree diagrams), homework can be turned in at the beginning of class. Be aware that if you use any special fonts, I may not be able to read your homework--be sure you know how to "include" nonstandard fonts (or send it to me early, so I can let you know if I was unable to read it).

Late assignments. Late assignments will be accepted only by prior arrangement with me.

CAS Student Academic Conduct Code. It is essential that you read and adhere to the CAS Student Academic Conduct Code. In particular, several types of plagiarism (any attempt to represent the work of another as your own) are defined by this academic conduct code. A copy is available in CAS 105.

Textbooks. There is no textbook for this course, but readings will be assigned from journals and books.

Readings. This course will sometimes rely on outside readings from the linguistics literature (journal articles, manuscripts, and excerpts from books). These readings will be available in the hallway outside my office suite, in a folder labeled LX865. You may take the readings out for no more than an hour to make a personal photocopy, and then they should be returned to the folder so that others may photocopy them.