Conference: GALANA 2016 - Input Variation and Language Acquisition

语言是人类独有的财产。儿童能够习得一种、两种或多种语言，这取决于他们接受的输入；在美国和世界各地，许多人在一生中不断学习新的语言。研究语言习得的语言学家以生成语言学理论为指导，研究语言是如何在人类头脑中表现出来的，儿童是如何获得这些心理表征的，双语或第二语言学习者的不同语言是如何相互影响的，以及在存在发育障碍的情况下，语言习得是如何进行的。除了促进我们对人类思维如何工作以及学习如何进行的理解，语言习得的研究对识字发展、外语教学以及语言障碍的识别和治疗等领域都有实际意义。第七届语言习得生成方法北美会议将于2016年9月8日至10日在伊利诺伊大学香槟分校举行，聚集了从生成角度研究语言习得的知名研究人员和初级学者。会议将讨论第一和第二语言习得如何进行的核心问题，并将举行一次特别会议，重点讨论输入变量的作用。特别会议将研究语言习得如何受到不同儿童和家庭以及不同方言之间语言输入差异的影响。说不标准方言的儿童有被错误识别为语言障碍的风险，从理论上对输入中的方言变异进行研究在识别语言障碍方面具有很强的实用价值。会议将邀请五位在语法现象的第一和第二语言习得方面有专长的著名研究人员进行演讲，并就两位特别会议的演讲者而言，语言障碍和方言变异。会议鼓励广泛参与：所有五位受邀演讲者都是女性，会议为研究生和博士后学者讲演者提供旅行奖励。会议精选论文将以会议论文集的形式出版。

Language is a unique property of human beings. Children are capable of acquiring one, two, or multiple languages, depending on the input that they receive; in the U.S. and around the world, many people continue to learn new languages throughout their lives. Linguists whose work on language acquisition is guided by generative linguistic theory examine how languages are represented in the human mind, how these mental representations are acquired by children, how the different languages of a bilingual or a second language learner influence each other, and how language acquisition proceeds in the presence of developmental disabilities. In addition to advancing our understanding of how the human mind works and how learning proceeds, research on language acquisition has practical implications for such fields as literacy development, foreign language instruction, and the identification and treatment of language disorders.The 7th Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition--North America conference, to be held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on September 8-10, 2016, brings together established researchers and junior scholars who work on language acquisition from the generative prospective. The conference will address core questions on how first and second language acquisition proceeds, and will feature a special session focusing on the role of input variation. The special session will examine how language acquisition is affected by differences in language input across individual children and families, as well as across dialects. Children who speak non-standard dialects are at risk for being misidentified as having a language disorder, and theoretically informed study of dialectal variation in the input has strong practical value in identifying language disorders. The conference will feature five invited talks by prominent researchers with expertise in first and second language acquisition of grammatical phenomena, and, in the case of the two special session speakers, language disorders and dialectal variation. The conference encourages broad participation: all five invited speakers are women, and the conference provides travel awards to graduate student and post-doctoral scholar presenters. Selected papers from the conference will be published in a proceedings volume.