The course begins with an outline of issues such as the place of language in human cognition, monolingual and bilingual language development and developmental language disorders. Certain properties of typical first language acquisition are presented following the temporal order attested: pre-linguistic development (from birth to 12 months), lexical development (12 months >) and syntactic development (18 months >). Syntactic development concentrates on the earliest stage, i.e. the emergence and mastery of functional categories and a ‘late’ stage, i.e. complex syntax. This developmental pattern is then juxtaposed to language development in children with Specific Language Impairment and communication disorders (autism, pragmatic SLI).
