This course is a linguistic exploration into adult second language acquisition. We begin with a brief overview of child first language development and attempt to understand a version of Plato's Problem --how is it that language learners know so much about their language given so little? But adult language development is not as successful. Here we are faced with a version of Orwell's Problem --how is it that most adult learners seem to know so little about an L2 when exposed to so much?

We will focus on four major issues in (adult) second language acquisition: 1) the effect of age on acquisition; 2) the availability of Universal Grammar to adult learners; 3) the sources of variation in language attainment; and 4) modularity and language learning.

registered students should to to http://courses.gmu.edu for a syllabus and more class information