Courses

Presession Courses (July 1-3) | Regular Session (July 5-27)

The course registration system is now open, so you can now add or drop regular session courses or change the grading basis for these courses. It is no longer possible to change your presession course selection.

All regular and presession courses are listed below. For an overview of the schedule of courses, go here. Courses representing our core computational linguistics offerings are also listed here.

Note: LSA.373 Introduction to Morphology will now be taught by Jim Blevins.

Note: The following courses are now CLOSED for enrollment:

• LSA.107P Introduction to Prosodic Labeling (Venditti)
• LSA.110P Python Programming for Linguists (Bird/Klein)
• LSA.111P Statistics for Linguists A (Wolff)
• LSA.112P Statistics for Linguists B (Gahl)
• LSA.114P Transcribing Spoken Interaction (Englebretson)
• LSA.115P UNIX for Linguists/Using Corpora (Roland)
• LSA.116P Using CHILDES (Snyder)
• LSA.117P Using Praat (Scarborough)
• LSA.313 Corpus Methods for Phonetics and Phonology (Shih)
• LSA.319 Field Methods in Linguistics (Mithun)
• LSA.320 Field Semantics and Semantic Typology (Bohnemeyer)
• LSA.325 Introduction to Computational Linguistics (Bird/Klein)
• LSA.346 Quantitative Corpus Linguistics: A Practical Introduction with R (Gries)
• LSA.351 Speech Perception and Production in Infancy: A Dynamic Systems Approach (Vihman/DePaolis)
• LSA.359 The Parametric Approach to Child Language (Snyder)
• LSA.363 Using Free-View Eye-tracking to Study Spoken Language (Tanenhaus/Trueswell)

Regular Session (July 5-27)

• LSA.301 | 

  An Introduction to Experimental Syntax and Semantics

  Elsi Kaiser, Jeffrey T. Runner (M/TH 8-9:45 AM, Location: Art2)

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  This course provides an introduction to experimental methods that can be used to investigate questions that are relevant for linguistic theory, in particular syntax, semantics and the syntax/semantics interface. We will discuss a range of methodologies, including self-paced reading, visual world eye-tracking, magnitude estimation and questionnaires. After completing the class, students will be able to understand and critically evaluate research that uses various experimental methods, and will be able to start designing their own experiments. In addition to its methodological side, this course highlights the importance of making sure that linguistic theories are firmly grounded in data. We will discuss topics such as anaphor resolution, ellipsis and quantifier scope in order to illustrate how experimental methods can complement existing work; for example, by shedding light on areas where stable judgments have traditionally been difficult to obtain, and by allowing us to investigate the time course of real-time language processing. Whenever possible, we will complement lectures and discussions with in-class demonstrations of different methods.

  Course Areas: Experimental Methods, Morphology/Syntax, Psycholinguistics, Quantitative Methods, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of syntax; some knowledge of semantics and statistics would be helpful but is not required.

• LSA.302 | 

  Analytic Bias in Phonology

  Colin Wilson, Donca Steriade (M/TH 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: 30-102 )

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  This course investigates the role that analytic bias plays in phonological learning. Analytic bias is motivated by cases in which native speakers converge on a particular generalization in spite of the fact that other generalizations are equally consistent with the input data. The first part of the course is devoted to demonstrating that such cases exist, with evidence drawn from many sources: in-depth studies of particular natural-language phenomena; loanword phonology; assessment of the productivity of natural processes; studies of alliteration and other poetic devices; and experiments that test learning and extension of novel patterns. The second part of the course focuses on the problem of instantiating analytic biases in formal models of the language learner. We explore several forms that the analytic bias for phonology could take: a universal constraint set; preferences for certain rankings; a method of projecting constraints from substantive maps; and/or preferences for simple and accurate generalizations.

  Course Areas: Phonetics/Phonology, Psycholinguistics

  Prerequisites: A previous course in phonology

• LSA.303 | 

  Articulatory Phonology (CLOSED)

  Marianne Pouplier (M/TH 8-9:45 AM)

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  Articulatory phonology is a model that seeks to understand the principled relationship between phonological utterance planning and articulation. The approach builds on the hypothesis that mental representation of word form is grounded in the articulatory actions (gestures) we perform in the vocal tract when producing speech. The course will provide an introduction to the basic ideas of the gestural framework and also discuss the current developments of the model. We will explore the gestural view of the relationship between phonetic substance and phonological representations on the basis of different areas, such as the assembly of gestures into segments and syllables, assimilation, as well as speech errors. The course will also include an introduction to experimental methods for measuring articulation.

  Course Areas: Phonetics/Phonology

  Prerequisites: Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology.

• LSA.304 | 

  Basis and Boundaries of Unaccusativity

  Artemis Alexiadou (M/TH 10:15-12 PM, Location: 460-426)

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  How the meanings of the verbs relate to the syntactic structures in which these verbs appear is a question of considerable importance for linguistic theory, and the research in this area focuses on verbal/diathesis alternations, i.e. alternations in the expression of verbal arguments. In addition, the connections between syntax and morphological patterns, especially to the extent that these reflect structural alternations, are becoming increasingly important for our understanding of the division of labour among grammatical components.

  This course investigates two phenomena that qualify as representatives of the syntax-morphology connection and are sensitive to properties of argument structure and/or verbal alternations. These are:
  (i) the presence of special (voice) morphology on intransitive counterparts of alternating verbs (anti-causatives), standardly taken to be unaccusatives,
  (ii) auxiliary selection in Perfect formation (HAVE vs. BE), standardly splitting intransitive verbs into two groups, unergatives (selecting HAVE) vs. unaccusatives (selecting BE).

  The systematic distribution as well as the gaps in the distribution of these properties will be investigated from a cross-linguistic perspective. With respect to (i) I will show that voice morphology does not always effect syntactic alternation whenever it appears. In the passive, there is effectively valency reduction. In the anticausative, however, this cannot be the case. If anticausative verbs are fundamentally intransitive (Marantz 1997), then there is simply no way that voice morphology can be an instance of valency reduction. Concerning (ii), I will focus on the history of English, showing that at least for Old English, the BE perfects have a different semantic and syntactic structures from the HAVE perfects, thus questioning the status of auxiliary selection as a diagnostic for unaccusativity.

  The course will follow a lecture/discussion format and will be taught at an intermediate level.

  Course Areas: Morphology/Syntax, Language Change, Language Variation

  Prerequisites: Basic knowledge in syntax and morphology.

• LSA.305 | 

  Causation in the Mind and in Language

  Phillip Wolff (M/TH 8-9:45 AM, Location: Education 130)

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  This course will cover theories of causation from the psychological, philosophical, computer science, and linguistic literatures. It will also examine the potential implications of these theories for the meaning of causal expressions and for theories of argument realization. The course will emphasize recent developments in computer science and psychology on Bayesian network models, counterfactual reasoning, and force dynamics. In addition, the course will cover various behavioral and statistical techniques that can be used to explore the semantics of causal expressions (e.g., multi-dimensional scaling). The course will follow a lecture/discussion format and will be taught at an introductory level.

  Course Areas: Quantitative Methods, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: There are no prerequisites beyond a basic course in linguistics and/or psychology and a willingness to learn simple probability theory.

• LSA.306 | 

  Lecture Series: Computational Linguistics in Industry

  Dan Jurafsky, Christopher Manning (T/F 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: Cordura 100)

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  Lecture series on industry applications of computational linguistics, natural language processing, and speech and dialogue processing. Lectures will be given by industry professionals. You will have a chance to hear what computational linguists are doing in industry, the problems they get to work on, and their advice on how you should prepare yourself if you're interested in computational linguistics in industry.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics

  Prerequisites: Recommended but not required: concurrent enrollment in other computational linguistics course(s).

• LSA.307 | 

  Computational Lexical Semantics

  Martha Palmer (M/TH 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: Art2)

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  One of the great challenges of Natural Language Processing is the multitude of choices that language gives us for expressing the same thing in different ways, whether we are considering translations into other languages, or simply paraphrases within the same language. In this course we will examine several different styles of semantic representation that have been proposed by different researchers, often with the goal of creating a more abstract representation that could match several different paraphrases or even translations. We will investigate the inherent difficulties in defining these representations as well as their potential utility in different types of NLP applications. We will explore in particular the use of annotated data and machine learning techniques as an increasingly popular approach to building and making use of both shallow and deep semantic representations, and will also discuss briefly the allure of applying machine learning techniques to text without annotations.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: Undergraduate Semantics and a familiarity with and interest in Natural Language Processing.

• LSA.308 | 

  Computational Psycholinguistics

  Roger Levy (T/F 10:15-12 PM, Location: 460-126)

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  Psycholinguistics and computational linguistics have had a long-standing close association. This course examines how the models and algorithms developed in computational linguistics can be put to use in understanding empirical data derived from psycholinguistic experimentation, and ultimately help develop a theory of how knowledge of language is deployed in the process of language use. The course focuses primarily on language comprehension, covering both lexical and sentence-level processing. Major themes of the course---explicit processing models, serial versus parallel architectures, and top-down versus bottom-up information---are reiterated throughout. Special emphasis will be placed on quantitative models, which have revolutionized computational linguistics and are increasingly recognized to play an important role in human language processing as well. Finally, the course will touch on the implications of new models in computational psycholinguistics for other subfields of linguistics, as well as for cognitive science more broadly.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Psycholinguistics

  Prerequisites: Familiarity with syntactic theory, probability theory, and basic foundations of computational linguistics or psycholinguistics

  Required Presession Courses: Mathematics Refresher for Computational Linguistics

• LSA.309 | 

  Constraint-Based Generative Syntax

  Ash Asudeh, Ida Toivonen(T/F 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: Cordura 100)

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  This course examines points of convergence and divergence within constraint-based, lexicalist theories of syntax (particularly Lexical Functional Grammar and Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar) and between these theories and modern transformational grammar (particularly the Minimalist Program in Principles and Parameters Theory). Our aim is an honest assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches to generative grammar, hopefully with lively and substantial discussion. Students' skills in constraint-based syntactic analysis will be developed through problem sets. We will consider various empirical phenomena and their theoretical consequences, higher-level theoretical issues, and the analytic consequences of grammatical architecture. Examples of higher-level issues are modularity, movement, empty categories, constructions, the syntax-semantics interface, locality, and linearization. Relevant empirical phenomena include head-argument relations (e.g. agreement, case), local dependencies (e.g., raising, control), and unbounded dependencies.

  Course Areas: Morphology/Syntax

  Prerequisites: At least an introductory syntax class; deep knowledge of constraint-based theories is not required.

• LSA.310 | 

  Constructing Constructions

  Adele Goldberg, Michael Tomasello (M/TH 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: 320-105)

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  This course examines language acquisition as a process of acquiring constructions. It emphasizes the commonalities among words, idioms and more abstract syntactic patterns in that all are pairings of form and function. This emphasis allows us to draw many parallels between language and other cognitive processes such as categorization, parallels that in turn raise the issue of whether language may emerge from a combination of general cognitive abilities, without requiring a unique language faculty. We will also ask: what is the origin of symbolic communication? Why do we have language while other primates do not? How do children generalize beyond what they hear in order to learn their rich and complex knowledge of language? How can the generalizations that exist across languages be explained?

  Week 1: Introduction; the origin of symbols (Goldberg/Tomasello)
  Week 2: The ontogeny of language: basic facts (Tomasello)
  Week 3: Processes of language acquisition (Tomasello/Goldberg)
  Week 4: Generalizations (Goldberg)

  Course Areas: Language Acquisition, Semantics/Pragmatics, Psycholinguistics

• LSA.311 | 

  Context-Sensitive Methods in Lexical and Discourse Meaning

  Nicholas Asher, James Pustejovsky (M/TH 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: 160-332)

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  In this course, we focus on the interaction of lexical semantics with discourse semantics. Specifically, we will explore the integration of Generative Lexicon (GL) and Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) processes, along with both the problems and advantages that such an integration brings to semantic theory. Both GL and SDRT are reactions to theories of the lexicon and discourse update that fail to account adequately for a wide variety of phenomena having to do with the pragmatics/semantics interface. What earlier theories lack is an account of how the "composition" of new information in context could in fact alter the information as well as the elements in the context, in ways not predictable within a framework countenancing only operations like lambda conversion or merge. GL and SDRT make this the core of their approach to meaning. Broadly speaking, context-sensitive approaches to both lexical composition and discourse interpretation have a common view about meaning, some of the same formal tools, and some of the same problems. In the first part of the course, we concentrate on the theoretical mechanisms of GL and SDRT, and then on their interaction at an analytical level. In the second part of the course, we turn to recent work on the integration of analytical and probabilistic approaches to modeling discourse structure, using the resources outlined in the first part of the course.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Discourse, Empirical Methods, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of formal compositional semantics operations and linguistic theory; familiarity with dynamic logic, type theory, and probability is desirable.

• LSA.312 | 

  Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse Particles

  David Beaver (M/TH 10:15-12 PM, Location: Art2)

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  This course is concerned with information structure and discourse structure, looked at primarily through the lens of a single focus particle, the exclusive "only", and its kin. Its kin include other exclusives (in English: "just", "merely"), as well as additives ("too", "also", "even"), and some cousins such as particularizers ("for example", "in particular"), downtoners ("at most", "sorta"), intensifiers ("really", "totally"). The course will cover: (1) various approaches to the interpretation of intonation and other types of information packaging found cross-linguistically, including Alternative Semantics and Structured Semantics, (2) pragmatic analyses of selected focus particles, including accounts based on discourse structure, and (3) discussion of the inference patterns associated with exclusives and selected other particles, and how those inference patterns relate to focus and discourse.

  This course will be coordinated with LSA.314: Dimensions of Meaning and with LSA.374: Conversational Inference.

  Course Areas: Discourse, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: Some background in formal semantics and pragmatics, and no fear of Greek letters.

• LSA.313 | 

  Corpus Methods for Phonetics and Phonology (CLOSED)

  Chilin Shih (T/F 3:45-5:30 PM)

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  Corpus methods allow us to investigate large amounts of language data efficiently and to test linguistic hypotheses objectively. This course introduces corpus methods and modeling concepts for phonetics and phonology with a hands-on, project-oriented approach. The lectures will cover fundamentals of speech analysis, modeling concepts, experimental design and data management. The lab work starts with an annotated speech corpus and goes through steps using automated procedures to extract such acoustic features as duration, f0 or formant values, build a data matrix, and test models. This is an advanced level course where some knowledge of phonetics and phonology is assumed, though no prior experience in programming or modeling is required.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Phonetics/Phonology, Quantitative Methods

  Prerequisites: Introduction to phonetics Introduction to phonology

• LSA.314 | 

  Dimensions of Meaning

  Christopher Potts (T/F 8-9:45 AM, Location: 320-105, except 7/27 when class meets in 300-300)

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  In general, theories of linguistic meaning lead us to expect that each syntactic phrase will have at most one meaning. Karttunen and Peters, in their 1979 paper 'Conventional implicature', rejected this one-dimensionality. Since then, multidimensional theories have come to play a dominant role: for example, in alternative semantics, in certain theories of pragmatics, and in studies of conventional implicature. In this course, we will define a variety of multidimensional systems. Some keep the dimensions rigidly separated, whereas others allow complex interactions. For some the multidimensionality is limited to the logic of composition, whereas for others it runs much deeper. We will explore the virtues and vices of these approaches, critically examining their linguistic motivation and paying special attention to how they can inform the theory of information structure and its interactions with semantics.

  This course will be coordinated with LSA.312: Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse Particles and LSA.374: Conversational Inference.

  Course Areas: Discourse, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: Students should be experienced with compositional semantics and formal pragmatics.

• LSA.315 | 

  Events: Modification, Aspect and Lexical Meaning

  Cleo Condoravdi, Hana Filip (T/F 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: 530-127)

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  This course sets out with an examination of the role of events in accounting for inferential properties of modification. It presents a model of the logic of modification following the neo-Davidsonian mode of composition but reworking the Davidsonian framework. The approach is shown to accord with more intuitively appealing notions of event individuation and to afford a uniform treatment of individual-denoting and quantificational arguments/modifiers, a standard semantics for negation, and a relatively straightforward account of stacked temporal modifiers. The exploration of the role of events in aspectual composition, in other types of telicity phenomena, and in lexical meaning motivates a novel approach to telicity which correlates event structure with the grammar of measurement and scalar semantics. The focus will be on extending the empirical domain to data that have so far not been (easily) tractable within any single proposal, on cross-linguistic variation in the expression of telicity, and its relation to perfective and imperfective aspect.

  Course Areas: Semantics/Pragmatics, Morphology/Syntax (some connections to Language Variation and Psycholinguistics)

  Prerequisites: Introduction to formal semantics.

• LSA.316 | 

  Evolutionary Phonology

  Juliette Blevins (M/TH 10:15-12 PM, Location: 460-126)

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  This course explores the nature of sound patterns and sound change in human language over the last 7,000-8,000 years. It seeks to explain why genetically unrelated languages around the world often show similar sound patterns, and why other sound patterns are extremely rare. A central focus is the locus of explanation in phonology: are recurrent sound patterns best explained in synchronic or diachronic terms, and what is the locus of phonetic explanation? Some of the topics to be covered include: the distribution of laryngeal features; vowel loss; consonant epenthesis; geminate evolution and distribution; and syllable structure and weight contrasts.

  Course Areas: Phonetics/Phonology, Historical Linguistics, Language Change

  Prerequisites: Introduction to phonetics; Introduction to phonology.

• LSA.317 | 

  Experimental Phonology

  Keith Johnson, John Ohala (T/F 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: Art2)

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  In this course we will guide students through a set of five experiments. These hands-on experiments are "greatest hits" in our introductory phonetics and laboratory phonology courses and provide students with hands on experiences with speech production and perception that will surprise and delight them, and will also color their view of language sound systems forever. The major part of the course will consist of case studies and some training in the methods of the experimental approach to phonology. This will involve a brief review of speech articulation, acoustics, and perception and an introduction to some of classic experimental methods as they apply to phonological questions. The course will have relevance to both the theory and practice of phonology. What phonologists claim or believe may be valid or not. Until the claims are rigorously tested, they remain just a collection of assumptions or guesses. Experiments constitute a formal trial where competing claims - one of which may be the 'null hypothesis' - can be evaluated on the basis of evidence which is gathered in a way that is free from the bias or influence of the experimenter and can be replicated by others. The history of experimental phonology goes back more than a century to Meringer and Meyer, Rousselot, Sapir, and many others. Teaching experimental phonology involves both philosophy or attitude and practical methodology. The basic philosophical element is DOUBT. The hands-on experiments that we guide students through in this course will fuel their thinking about phonology and shape their approach to both phonetic and phonological theory.

  Course Areas: Empirical Methods, Experimental Methods, Phonetics/Phonology, Psycholinguistics, Quantitative Methods

  Prerequisites: Introductory courses in phonetics and phonology

  Required Presession Courses: Using Praat

• LSA.318 | 

  Experimental Sociolinguistics

  Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (T/F 8-9:45 AM, Location: 460-020)

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  This course will introduce students to methodological tools for sociolinguistic experiments and the kinds of sociolinguistic questions that can be usefully addressed through experimental methods. We will begin with the existing literatures in sociolinguistics which employ experimental approaches, including those from related fields such as psycholinguistics, phonetics and language and social psychology, then expand from this knowledge and generate new ideas as a group.

  The course will assume a basic familiarity with the goals and common methods of sociolinguistic research, but no knowledge of experimental design or statistics. By the end of the course, students will understand the fundamentals of experimental design and concerns specific to experimental sociolinguistics. There will be only a rudimentary discussion of statistical techniques.

  The course will be conducted as a seminar, focused on gathering and evaluating methodological techniques. Each student will prepare a detailed research plan on a topic of their choosing.

  Course Areas: Empirical Methods, Experimental Methods, Language Variation, Sociolinguistics

  Prerequisites: Introductory sociolinguistics course.

• LSA.319 | 

  Field Methods in Linguistics (CLOSED)

  Marianne Mithun (M/TH 3:45-5:30 PM)

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  Good linguistic theory is based on a deep understanding of how languages actually work, of the systems of systems that comprise grammatical structure and the ways they interact. Some of the most interesting contributions come out of an appreciation for the ways languages can vary. Particularly at this time in history, it is important that we work to document languages in as open-ended way as possible, not just answering the questions we already know enough to ask, but also working with speakers to create a record that will provide a resource for future linguists, communities, and descendants of speakers in ways we may be unable to imagine. This will be a hands-on course, in which students learn to work with a speaker of a lesser known language to uncover as much as possible about the language: both basic typological features and the kinds of features that make it special. The class and speaker(s) will work as a team during regular class meetings on techniques for elicitation, documentation and analysis. In addition, each student will have the opportunity to work individually with the speaker.

  Course Areas: Field Methods, Empirical Methods, Phonetics/Phonology, Morphology/Syntax, Discourse

  Prerequisites: Students enrolling in the class will be expected to have solid knowledge of basic phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax, and an interest in discovering something new.

• LSA.320 | 

  Field Semantics and Semantic Typology (CLOSED)

  Jürgen Bohnemeyer (T/F 10:15-12 PM, Location: Cordura 100)

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  The goal of this course is to familiarize beginning graduate students theoretically and practically with the approach to semantic typology developed at the Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics. Semantic typology, the cross-linguistic study of linguistic categorization, opens up a new empirical window on the language-cognition interface. It requires the collection and analysis of primary data from a wide variety of typologically diverse languages. We will discuss theoretical and methodological prerequisites and review key studies in the domain of spatial (locative predications; spatial frames of reference) and temporal semantics (linguistic segmentation of motion events and causal chains). Part of the course is dedicated to training in methods for collecting and analyzing semantic data in field research. This will include hands-on experience with a battery of different elicitation tools. This part is designed to be useful to students interested in any form of field research on problems of linguistic meaning.

  Course Areas: Field Methods, Language Variation, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: Theoretical knowledge and analytical skills as conveyed in beginning-graduate-level classes in syntax and semantics.

• LSA.321 | 

  How People Refer: Knowledge, Use, and On-line Processing

  Jennifer E. Arnold, Jeanette K. Gundel (M/TH 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: Sequoia 200)

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  Referring forms (e.g. 'she' , 'that', 'the restaurant') are basic to human language. We will examine theories of reference and their empirical foundations, with attention to the following questions: (1) How does reference succeed, given that the conceptual/descriptive information encoded in a phrase typically underdetermines the intended referent? (2) How does linguistic knowledge, i.e. information encoded in the linguistic form, interact with other cognitive factors that influence language production and comprehension? (3) How is information integrated from multiple sources during rapid, on-line reference comprehension? (4) How are referential expressions chosen in real time? (5) What factors influence cognitive status/accessibility - e.g., what brings an entity into focus of attention? (6) To what extent does the ability to refer and interpret reference depend on theory of mind? These questions will be addressed with data from a variety of languages. obtained utilizing diverse methodologies (corpus analysis, laboratory experiments, and judgments of constructed examples).

  Course Areas: Discourse, Psycholinguistics, Semantics/Pragmatics, Empirical Methods, Experimental Methodologies

  Prerequisites: An Introduction to Linguistics

• LSA.322 | 

  Statistical Grammar Induction

  Dan Klein (M/TH 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: Art2)

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  This course will present an overview of statistical methods for learning grammar from data. We will start with an introduction to probabilistic models of syntax, considering both their adequacy as linguistic models and their place in language processing systems. We will then discuss how such models can be learned from data. On one extreme, one can learn grammars from fully parsed corpora (very highly specified data which would be unavailable to a human learner). On the other extreme, one can learn grammars from entirely unlabeled streams of words (in some ways a harder task than human learners face). In both cases, surprising amounts of linguistic structure can be induced. We will discuss various attempts at grammar learning systems, why they have variously succeeded or failed, and how they relate to classical learnability arguments.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Empirical Methods, Language Acquisition, Morphology/Syntax

  Prerequisites: The course will assume basic knowledge of probability and statistics, as well as some familiarity with basic parsing methods.

• LSA.323 | 

  Information Structure and Word Order Variation

  Betty J. Birner, Gregory Ward (T/F 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: 380-380Y)

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  The field of information structure is inherently intersubdisciplinary, drawing together research in syntax, pragmatics, semantics, prosody, and corpus linguistics to ask fundamental questions about the effects of word order on linguistic meaning and vice versa. Thus, this course will cross the boundaries of traditional subfields in order to address the relationship between intentionality and structure, and between linguistic form and meaning. Discussion will focus on noncanonical constructions in English, in order to help students become familiar with the field and with its methods, but attention will also be given to languages other than English. Students will be expected to engage in corpus-based research on a construction of their choice in a language of their choice, and the course will end with a round-table discussion of the students' research projects, with an eye toward the development of broad generalizations regarding information-structural principles that hold across phenomena and across languages.

  Course Areas: Discourse, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: Any introductory survey of linguistics.

• LSA.325 | 

  Introduction to Computational Linguistics (CLOSED)

  Steven Bird, Ewan Klein, Edward Loper(M/TH 1:30-3:15 PM)

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  This course is an introduction to the principal methods and theories in computational linguistics. Topics to be covered include: tokenization, tagging, chunking, grammars, parsing, and semantics. More specialized topics may be added if time is available. The course will have an empirical focus and a strong reliance on annotated linguistic corpora. Laboratory sessions will give participants hands-on experience in writing programs to manipulate and analyze linguistic data, including annotated corpora and language documentation, using the Python programming language and the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK). Assessment will involve completion of some programming tasks. This course will also be of interest to instructors who are considering adoption of NLTK.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Empirical Methods

  Required Presession Courses: Python Programming for Linguists (waived for participants who are already experienced in Python)

• LSA.326 | 

  Introduction to Metrics

  Kristin Hanson (T/F 10:15-12 PM, Location: 460-426)

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  This course will provide an introduction to the study of poetic meter as a linguistic form. While meters have been being described for as long as languages have, traditional descriptions often fall short of the generative goal of fully expressing what a poet must know to distinguish metrical from unmetrical lines, and how that knowledge relates to language more generally. Here, as an example, lectures will trace the major findings and issues emerging from generative descriptions of the modern English metrical tradition, including formalizing its constraints on syllable count, stress and alignment using the resources of universal grammar; explaining their suitability for English and their historical development from both native and borrowed forms; modeling variation across individual styles and aesthetic effects; and negotiating the special perils of deriving formal generalizations from artistic creations. At the same time, a series of assignments will allow students to develop a description of the practice of a poet of their own choosing in any language. The course should equip students not only to explore metrics in its own right but also to incorporate metrical arguments into analyses of other linguistic subsystems in a theoretically informed way.

  Course Areas: Empirical methods, Phonetics/Phonology

  Prerequisites: One course in phonology and one in syntax, including some exposure to metrical phonology.

• LSA.327 | 

  Introduction to Phonological Theory

  Joe Pater (M/TH 10:15-12 PM, Location: 160-332)

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  This course is an introduction to phonological theory and analysis, aimed at beginning graduate students as well as upper level undergraduates. The course will be roughly divided into two parts. Part 1 examines the role of phonological constraints in constructing a restrictive theory of prosodic phonology (syllable structure, stress). Part 2 discusses the role of constraints and derivations in accounting for segmental processes (e.g. consonant and vowel assimilation). The aim is to acquaint students with the goals and methods of current phonological theory, with a primary focus on Optimality Theory, along with a consideration of alternatives. Students will develop their understanding of theoretical issues through confrontation with empirical problems in the form of frequent problem sets.

  Course Areas: Phonetics/Phonology

  Prerequisites: Students will be expected to be familiar with phonetic transcription, with the articulatory features of the phones, and to have a basic understanding of how a phonological system accounts for alternations and other phonological generalizations. That is, they should have completed an undergraduate-level phonetics and phonology course, or its equivalent.

• LSA.328 | 

  Introduction to Semantics

  Maribel Romero (T/F 8-9:45 AM, Location: Art2)

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  This course is an introduction to formal semantics with a cognitive science slant. It introduces the components and formal mechanisms underlying meaning in human language (80% of the material) and uses them as a partial window on the human mind, its psychological development and adult cognitive processes (20%). In the formal semantics part, the goal is to define a mathematical procedure that will combine the meaning of words to yield the meaning of complex sentences, covering predicate-argument relations, modifiers, quantification and pronouns, intensionality, and implicatures. In the cognitive science part, topics include what kinds of concepts a noun or a determiner can encode; how semantic ambiguities are processed psychologically; the development of a theory of mind; and scalar implicatures in child language.

  Course Areas: Semantics/Pragmatics, Psycholinguistics

  Prerequisites: Some familiarity with elementary syntax

• LSA.329 | 

  Introduction to Sociolinguistics

  Walt Wolfram (M/TH 8-9:45 AM, Location: 260-113)

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  The course introduces students to the social context and role of language in understanding issues central to the observation, description, and explanation of language structure and language variation. The effect of both language-internal constraints (e.g. phonological, syntactic) and language-external constraints (e.g. regional, status, ethnic, gender, stylistic) are considered in the examination of orderly sociolinguistic heterogeneity. Topics related to sociolinguistic data collection, analysis, description, and explanation in field-initiated studies are discussed, including both macro- and micro-perspectives. Students will be exposed to a broad empirical base of data on regional, social, and ethnic language variation, with particular reference to American English. The instructor will often use a case study approach based on current research experience. A special feature of the course will be the consideration of a community-based collaborative model for applying sociolinguistic information to language-related social and educational problems and for disseminating information about linguistic diversity to the public.

  Course Areas: Sociolinguistics, Language Variation

• LSA.330 | 

  Issues in Language Classification: Traditional and Alternative Perspectives

  Philip Baldi (T/F 8-9:45 AM, Location: 460-126)

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  This course investigates approaches to the genetic classification of languages. Genetic classifications are typically formulated in terms of "family trees" designed to portray the shared genetic material among related languages descended from a common ancestor. The course considers a variety of methods which have been used to identify language families, and to determine their internal makeup (subgrouping), i.e. to draw the family trees. It confronts issues relating to methodological strategies, such as the role of phonological correspondences, shared grammatical patterns, and the role of vocabulary lists. Consideration is given to the traditional comparative method, mass comparison and other techniques leading to long-range macrogroupings. There is also a section which assesses the role of archaeology/geography, mathematics, and genetics, all of which have influenced current thinking on language classification. Finally there is a discussion of convergence theory, which argues for the formation of language families through the merging of cultures and languages over time. The structure of the course is lecture/discussion, with in-class problem solving. Students will have the opportunity to take a final exam or write a paper.

  Course Areas: Historical Linguistics

  Prerequisites: Introductory historical linguistics or linguistic anthropology, or an equivalent course

• LSA.331 | 

  Language Acquisition Methodologies and Practices: How They Alter the Pursuit of the Scientific Study of Language

  Suzanne Flynn, Barbara Lust, María Blume, Yuchin Chien, Kenneth Drozd, Cristina Dye, Claire Foley (T/F 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: 360-361-JK)

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  The study of language acquisition today requires collaborative and interdisciplinary research based on reliable and replicable cross-linguistic data sets. Collecting and creating these sets is a complex process involving not only the participant subjects but also audio-visual resources and associated technologies including cyberinfrastructure. In addition, they require making syntax, semantics, phonology and pragmatics accessible and relating these domains to various other areas of cognitive science. In this class we will explore how to motivate and create these data sets by exploring a range of experimental hypotheses and methodologies for first and multiple language acquisition across the human lifespan. We will also consider how both to analyze the data and relate the results to theoretical issues in linguistics and beyond. The development and use of a Virtual Center for Language Acquisition will be introduced. Students will be asked to create mini-projects and conduct field research in a test of a task and linguistic hypothesis for language acquisition research.

  Course Areas: Empirical Methods, Experimental Methods, Language Acquisition, Morphology/Syntax, Phonetics/Phonology, Psycholinguistics, Quantitative methods, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: Minimal: Students should have some familiarity with formal linguistic theory. An introductory knowledge is adequate. Students should also have some experience or familiarity with first or bilingual language acquisition. If students are unsure about their backgrounds for this class, please talk with one of the instructors.

• LSA.332 | 

  Language and Body: The Material Side of Language

  Herbert H. Clark, Daniel Casasanto (M/TH 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: Art 4 on Thursdays, Gates B12 on Mondays)

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  Linguistic theories tend to focus on the vocal side of language - the voice and its uses. But language also has its material side, as people deploy their bodies - both physically and conceptually - as they speak. Physically, people place and orient their bodies and other objects, and use their hands, head, body, and voice for pointing, iconic, and emblematic gestures. Conceptually, people appear to mentally simulate bodily actions when thinking and talking about them, and even when thinking and talking about abstract concepts. In this course, we survey several main threads in the material side of language. We examine how traditional theories of communication and of mental representation change when language users are seen as situated in a physical and social environment, and not as talking heads. Evidence will be drawn from psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and human-computer interaction.

  Course Areas: Psycholinguistics, Semantics/Pragmatics, Empirical Methods

• LSA.333 | 

  Language and Identity

  Mary Bucholtz, Kira Hall (T/F 10:15-12 PM, Location: Art2)

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  The concept of identity--the social positioning of self and other--has long informed sociolinguistic research. However, many early studies took social groupings as analytic givens rather than as part of what was to be discovered empirically. In more recent work, researchers have begun to focus on identity not as the explanation for sociolinguistic patterning but as a social phenomenon requiring explanation in its own right. This perspective shifts the research focus from taken-for-granted categorizations and social groupings to an explicit examination of identity as an intersubjectively negotiated social action achieved in large part through language. Through lectures, discussions, and data sessions, the course addresses a range of recent perspectives on identity in order to provide students with the necessary skills and knowledge to undertake original research in this growing area of sociolinguistics. The course explores four themes: indexicality and ideology; categorization and cultural positions; stances and styles; and practices and performances.

  Course Areas: Discourse, Empirical Methods, Language Variation, Sociolinguistics

  Prerequisites: A previous course in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and/or socially oriented discourse analysis is preferred but not required.

• LSA.334 | 

  Language and Prehistory

  James A. Fox (T/F 10:15-12 PM, Location: 360-361-JK)

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  Lecture/seminar on the use of linguistic data for making inferences about the history and prehistory of human speech communities. Major issues discussed include: linguistic phylogenies and problems arising from their correlation with archaeological data; the reconstruction of ancient proto-vocabulary and inferences therefrom to the culture of the speakers; the recognition of ancient dialect areas that may have cross-cut eventually-diverging speech communities and confused the phylogeny of the family (as in the Indo-European centum-satem isoglosses); the reconstruction of proto-homelands and ancient migration, with special attention to the roles of agriculture, pastoral nomadism, and warfare in the diffusion of languages; the identification of stratigraphic layers of borrowing in accumulated vocabulary, sorting out the contributions of common descent, convergence, and contact; comparison of linguistic with genetic phylogenies, including use of computational methods; and finally, issues arising from recent proposals for massive linguistic super-families presupposing greater time depth than many historical linguists feel that linguistics can handle. The course is relevant for an understanding of the deep historical context of language change, and especially for anyone interested in emerging syntheses of linguistic, archaeological, and genetic interpretations of human prehistory. Emphasis on case studies. A portion of each class session will be devoted to discussion and hands-on activities.

  Course Areas: Historical Linguistics, Language Change, Language Variation, Sociolinguistics

  Prerequisites: The course follows naturally on any introductory course in language change (historical linguistics), but does not presuppose one; the emphasis is not on language change per se, but on what language change can tell us about the history and prehistory of people. Thus a previous course in historical linguistics generally or in the history of a particular language or language family would be helpful but not required.

• LSA.335 | 

  Language and Thought

  Lera Boroditsky (T/F 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: Art2)

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  Do people who speak different languages think differently? Does learning new languages change the way you think? Do polyglots think differently when speaking different languages? Are some thoughts unthinkable without language? This course examines the many interrelationships between language and thought. The course topics will bring together ideas and findings from cognitive, developmental, and cultural psychology, as well as linguistics, anthropology, ethology, and neuroscience.

  Course Areas: Empirical Methods, Experimental Methods, Language Acquisition, Language Change, Language Variation, Psycholinguistics, Semantics/Pragmatics

• LSA.336 | 

  Language Change Across the Lifespan

  Gillian Sankoff (M/TH 8-9:45 AM, Location: 460-426)

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  The course focuses on language change (both in the historical sense and as experienced by individual speakers), and on how to model their relationship. Language change implies variation (though not the reverse), and necessarily involves diffusion. As an innovation diffuses, its path is structured by the social structure of the community; its effects on individual grammars are conditioned by grammatical systems already in place, and by the life stage of speakers. Lifespan change in the monolingual context will be the central topic, with attention also to research from dialect and language contact relating to the critical period. We will review inferences from age distributions in synchronic sociolinguistic research, but deal mainly with longitudinal studies, especially panel studies that follow speakers across time. Several data sets, mainly from the work of Sankoff and colleagues on Montreal French, will form the basis for practice problems; a range of possible topics will be suggested for final papers and for future research of class members.

  Course Areas: Sociolinguistics, Language Change, Language Variation, Historical Linguistics, Language Acquisition, Quantitative Methods

  Prerequisites: No specific prerequisites, though this should not be anyone's first course in linguistics. Some background in sociolinguistics would be useful, but not essential.

• LSA.337 | 

  Language Change in Progress

  Gregory R. Guy (T/F 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: 360-361-JK)

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  Description: This course examines the dynamic course of language change as it happens, and related problems of data and theory. Much linguistic theorizing about language change focuses on the endpoints of change: the supposedly stable states before and after the change. But in a speech community, there are always transition periods when old and new forms are simultaneously present, diffusing through the language and through the community; synchronically, change appears as linguistic variation. This raises descriptive and theoretical issues for linguistics. What are the social and linguistic pathways by which an innovation spreads? What theoretical models are adequate for representing the real time course of change? We will consider issues such as discrete vs. gradual models of change, real vs. apparent time, the stability of individuals during the course of a change, constraints on change, functional and formal explanations, and the implications of change for theories of grammar. This is a lecture-style course, beyond the introductory level.

  Course Areas: Language Change, Language Variation, Historical Linguistics, Sociolinguistics

  Prerequisites: Basic courses in syntax and phonology; some familiarity with historical linguistics and sociolinguistics.

• LSA.338 | 

  Languages of the Caucasus: Theoretical Challenges and New Empirical Data

  Alice C. Harris, Maria Polinsky (T/F 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: 160-332)

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  This course highlights theoretical innovations in morphology and syntax, motivated by data from three little-known language families of the Caucasus. Introducing the course, we survey some of the unusual features of these languages, such as extraordinarily large consonant inventories and extensive consonant clusters. Agreement phenomena include multiple marking of agreement, which presents a challenge to theories of identity avoidance and of feature discharge, and long distance agreement (LDA), where the matrix verb agrees with a constituent in its complement clause. LDA is shown to be subject to a series of strong grammatical constraints. Order of elements: Agreement clitics that occur inside morphemes in Udi challenge Lexical Integrity, theories of clitics, and theories of morpheme order. Word orders in some languages are not readily analyzed in terms of hierarchical phrase structure, and findings concerning order in these languages have interesting implications for theories of scrambling and ellipsis. Classificatory phenomena include morphological classification of nouns (gender) and of verbs. This has implications for general issues of categorization, acquisition of classes, and diachronic change in class systems.

  Course Areas: Discourse, Field Methods, Historical Linguistics, Morphology/Syntax

  Prerequisites: A course in syntax. Recommended: a course in morphology, basic knowledge of complex phonological systems

• LSA.339 | 

  Meaning in Discourse: Psycholinguistic Theory and Empirical Methods

  Gail McKoon, Richard Gerrig (T/F 8-9:45 AM, Location: Education 206)

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  The goal of this course is to explore psycholinguistic theories of how readers and listeners represent the meanings of extended discourse. Starting in the 1970's, researchers developed a repertory of methods that allowed them to assess the psychological reality of different types of representations for sentences and larger units of discourse. The current theoretical view is that much of comprehension is the result of passive, automatic, global memory retrieval processes. An important aspect of these contemporary theories is that they apply broadly across circumstances of language use and not only to instances of text comprehension. The course will be introductory with a lecture style. Across the class meetings, questions about meaning will be interleaved with examples of experimental methods that are relevant to each particular question. This analysis of methods will allow us to provide students with a firm understanding of the origins and prospects for psycholinguistic theories of meaning in discourse.

  Course Areas: Discourse, Empirical Methods, Experimental Methods, Psycholinguistics, Semantics/Pragmatics

• LSA.340 | 

  Methods in Language Documentation

  K. David Harrison, Nick Thieberger (M/Th 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: 460-126)

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  This hands-on course will present current methods for recording language material in the field and will include the following topics:

  • What to collect and how to collect it.
  • Elicitation techniques.
  • Establishing yourself in a speech community.
  • Recording, digitizing, and editing video.
  • Corpus management and metadata.
  • Workflows, knowing what tool to use for what application.
  • Transcribing, annotating and aligning texts with recordings.
  • Databases and lexicons.
  • Databases, XML, and archiving of linguistic data. Students can bring their own data to the class or use sample data that will be provided.

  Course Areas: Field Methods, Empirical Methods, Linguistic Anthropology

  Prerequisites: Students should have a good level of computer literacy and either some experience in linguistic fieldwork or an intention to conduct fieldwork in future. They should have an understanding of or strong interest in the place of language documentation in recent linguistic theory and practice. We will start from the premise that new technological aids and a more acute awareness of language endangerment have combined with existing linguistic methodology to create a new approach best characterized as language documentation. A central tenet of this approach is the primacy of data, and hence the importance of optimal recording methods, standard metadata descriptions, and the development of a workflow that uses standard tools with multiple potential outputs (text collections, multimedia presentations, archival objects and so on).

• LSA.341 | 

  Paraphrase and Usage

  Annie Zaenen, Catherine O'Connor, Thomas Wasow (M/TH 10:15-12 PM, Education 334)

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  Studies of grammatical alternations--variant ways of expressing the same proposition-- give rise to questions about why speakers choose one alternant over another. The recent availability of annotated corpora has made possible a new approach to investigating choice within alternations such as active/passive, dative, genitive, or dislocation constructions, among others. Current studies reveal correlations between construction choice and such factors as length or syntactic weight, information status, animacy, semantics of the relevant phrasal head, and predictability. Such studies may shed light on issues such as the theoretical significance of probabilistic variations in linguistic form, the nature of information structure constraints on syntactic form, and the role of processing constraints in grammatical change. We will present current work on this topic in lecture format; several problem sets will give students hands-on experience with at least one major corpus and several analytical tools currently in use. Related research focusing on lexical variants will be covered in LSA.376, Choosing a variant: Unfree variation.

  Course Areas: Empirical Methods, Language Variation, Morphology/Syntax

  Prerequisites: At least one course in syntax. A course in semantics would also be useful, but is not required.

• LSA.342 | 

  Pattern-based Models of Lexical Knowledge

  Farrell Ackerman, Jim Blevins, Fermín Moscoso del Prado Martín, Michael Tomasello (T/F 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: 160-315)

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  This course examines a number of mutually-reinforcing perspectives on the role that lexical exemplars and general pattern-matching processes play in systems of lexical and morphological knowledge. The course is designed to span a number of traditional boundaries to highlight the recent convergence of traditional models of morphological structure, usage-based theories of lexical acquisition and information-theoretic approaches to lexical processing. The first part of the course will introduce students to traditional analyses of morphological systems in which the form variation within a language is represented by means of sets of exemplary patterns. The second part introduces usage-based models of lexical acquisition and highlights the role that individual constructions and word tokens play in lexical islands. The third part summarizes the evidence for effects of inflectional and derivational paradigms on word recognition response latencies and explains how psycholinguistic evidence for the influence of lexical and morphemic paradigms on human lexical processing argues in favor of experience-based models of the mental lexicon. In addition, this component of the course will introduce the statistical tools that are used for characterizing these effects and for drawing consequences about the underlying system of knowledge.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Morphology/Syntax, Language Acquisition, Empirical Methods, Experimental Methods

  Prerequisites: Introduction to morphology; Introduction to syntax.

• LSA.343 | 

  Precision Grammar Implementation for Linguistic Hypothesis Testing

  Emily M. Bender, Dan Flickinger, Stephan Oepen (T/F 10:15-12 PM, Location: 460-021)

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  Precision grammar implementation is the practice of encoding linguistic constraints in ever larger, machine-readable grammar fragments and testing those fragments against hand-constructed test suites as well as naturally occurring text. By using the machine to compare the grammar to the data, grammar engineers are able to test their hypotheses against thousands of sentences in mere minutes, test their analyses of different phenomena for consistency, and test their hypotheses against corpus data that goes beyond the carefully selected examples needed in analyses of particular linguistic phenomena. This class combines lectures and hands-on laboratory sessions to explore the methodology and implications of precision grammar implementation, including basic grammar engineering techniques; treebank annotation, using the English Resource Grammar and other existing large resource grammars; test suite development in the context of multilingual grammar engineering; and machine translation as an application for precision grammars.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Empirical Methods, Morphology/Syntax

  Prerequisites: Familiarity with formal syntax and basic computer use. No programming experience required.

  Required Presession Courses: Introduction to HPSG

• LSA.344 | 

  Processing Accounts for Island Constraints

  Robert Kluender, Ivan A. Sag (M/TH 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: 460-126)

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  Generative grammarians have assumed that the biological endowment for language (Universal Grammar) is responsible for the reduced acceptability of many complex sentence patterns involving filler-gap dependencies. Recent experimental results, however, suggest that processing effects have a significant, previously unappreciated role to play in explaining island effects. This course surveys the state of the art in this research area, arguing for a recalibration of the data upon which grammatical analysis is based, and a reassessment of the balance between competence and performance in the explanation of island effects.

  Course Areas: Morphology/Syntax, Psycholinguistics, Empirical Methods, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: Some background in syntactic theory. Some familiarity with experimental design (in order to evaluate the results of linguistic experiments critically) would be helpful.

• LSA.345 | 

  Pronunciation Variation and Psycholinguistics

  Susanne Gahl (T/F 8-9:45 AM, Location: 460-021)

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  Supposed homophones such as 'lapse' and 'laps' may sound subtly different. For that matter, one and the same word may sound slightly different each time it is produced. Such pronunciation variation turns out to be a useful window into the processes underlying language production and comprehension. This is an intermediate-level course in which we discuss practical tools and theoretical background for current linguistic and psycholinguistic research on pronunciation. The course will be a combination of lectures and hands-on practice in quantitative analysis of corpora of spontaneous and experimentally-elicited speech.

  Discussion will include the following topics:

  • Effects of morphological and syntactic structure on pronunciation.
  • Effects of usage frequency and probability.
  • Sources of pronunciation variation: Stages in lexical production; Production difficulties; Speaker-controlled vs. automatic sources of variation; Discourse-level factors; Information-theoretic accounts of variation.
  • Listeners' use of subphonemic information in comprehension.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Discourse, Empirical Methods, Experimental Methods, Language Change, Language Variation Morphology/Syntax, Phonetics/Phonology, Psycholinguistics, Quantitative Methods, Sociolinguistics

  Prerequisites: An introductory course in Phonetics.

  Required Presession Courses: Statistics for Linguists [A] (or equivalent experience)

• LSA.346 | 

  Quantitative Corpus Linguistics: A practical introduction with R (CLOSED)

  Stefan Th. Gries (M/TH 8-9:45 AM)

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  This course is a hands-on introduction to how to perform quantitative corpus-linguistic analyses with the open source software tool R. It has three parts. The first is a short general introduction to corpus linguistics as a discipline. The second and largest part introduces fundamentals of the open source programming language R: data structures as well as input and output, string/character operations as well as regular expressions, and some elementary programming. The participants then write their own small R scripts to process different corpora to generate various kinds of frequency lists and concordances, as well as an excursus concerning how to handle corpora with more complex kinds of annotation. The third part provides a brief introduction to some fundamental aspects of statistical analysis with R. The participants do simple distributional tests to evaluate the kinds of corpus-linguistic data obtained in the second part of the course.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Empirical Methods, Quantitative Methods

• LSA.347 | 

  Rethinking Linguistic Competence

  Joan Bresnan (T/F 10:15-12 PM, Location: 320-105, except for 7/27 when class meets in 300-300)

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  Current theories of human language are widely based on the simplifying assumptions that knowledge of language is characterized by a static, categorical system of grammar for which grammaticality judgments offer the richest source of evidence. This idealization has been fruitful, but it ultimately underestimates human language capacities. Speakers of a language have powerful predictive capabilities that enable them to anticipate the linguistic choices of others by instantaneously weighing multiple sources of information. Linguistic manipulations that raise or lower probability can be shown to influence grammaticality judgments. These facts support an alternative view of linguistic competence as inherently variable and stochastic in nature, rather than categorical and algebraic. Even in the adult individual, grammar is a highly plastic cognitive system sensitively tuned to the probabilities of the environment. This course will trace several lines of evidence for this rethinking of linguistic competence in the domain of syntax.

  Course Areas: Morphology/Syntax, Empirical Methods

• LSA.348 | 

  Social Theory and Variation

  Penelope Eckert, Miyako Inoue (M/TH 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: Education 128)

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  This course explores key social and cultural concepts that have been critically shaping contemporary sociolinguistic theory. The sociolinguistic literature invokes concepts such as "power," "class," "agency," "identity," "gender," "linguistic market," "social network," "social constructionism," "practice," and "performativity" with increasing regularity, but generally without realizing their potential. Each session of the course will focus on a particular concept or set of concepts, and engage in a set of readings on debates and issues around it both within and beyond sociolinguistics. While these are rather familiar interdisciplinary terms used widely in sociolinguistics today, this intensive course offers in-depth reviews and encourages the participants to think about an informed theoretical model for their research.

  Course Areas: Language Variation, Sociolinguistics

  Prerequisites: The course presupposes some familiarity with sociolinguistics, but does not assume much knowledge of social theory.

• LSA.349 | 

  Sociolinguistic Approaches to Style: Assets, Limitations, and New Directions

  John R. Rickford, Ed Finegan (T/F 3:45-5:30 PM, 460-126)

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  Style has been central to the study of language variation and change from the inception of modern sociolinguistics, and it has been the focus of various theoretical models, including attention paid to speech, audience design, and functionally motivated situational variation (Eckert and Rickford, Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, 2001). However, despite the insights of these and other models, they each fall short in some way. In this seminar we will discuss critically the assets and limitations of existing models, but also explore the kinds of new questions expanded models of style should encompass, such as the limits of agency and conscious control, clustering (or not) between lexical, phonological, morphosyntactic and paralinguistic features, individual vs. group styles (and "dialects"), syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions, style vs. group vs. genre. Participants should come prepared to share fresh data, challenging questions and new ideas.

  Course Areas: Sociolinguistics, Language Variation (and to a lesser extent, Language Change, Empirical Methods, Quantitative Methods)

  Prerequisites: Students wishing to take this course should be graduate students or advanced undergraduates who have a solid grasp of the fundamentals of linguistics and have taken at least one introductory course in sociolinguistics. They should preferably have done or be doing some research on style or on some aspect of sociolinguistic variation that could be reconceptualized as stylistic variation or yield questions and insights for the study of style.

• LSA.351 | 

  Speech Perception and Production in Infancy: A Dynamic Systems Approach to Phonological Development (CLOSED)

  Marilyn Vihman, Rory A. DePaolis (T/F 10:15-12 PM)

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  This course will explore ways of applying dynamic systems theory to the issue of emergent systematicity in early phonological development. We will draw on both observational and experimental data from several languages to introduce new approaches to currently debated questions, e.g., with what knowledge, if any, does the child begin? How and when do speech perception and vocal production become linked? How does the emerging ability to produce and represent words interact with prosodic development? how can the child gain knowledge of linguistic structure? what learning mechanism(s) could account for both similarities and differences in early word production across languages? A dynamic process involving recurrent cycles of implicit and explicit learning will be proposed. The course will not be introductory, but will not assume knowledge of specific experimental procedures or theoretical models. We will encourage discussion, and there will be some opportunity for hands-on analysis of early word data.

  Course Areas: Experimental Methods, Language Acquisition, Phonetics/Phonology, Psycholinguistics

  Prerequisites: Basic phonetics and introduction to phonological theory or language acquisition.

• LSA.352 | 

  Speech Recognition and Synthesis

  Dan Jurafsky (M/TH 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: 160-319)

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  Introduction to automatic speech recognition and speech synthesis. In speech recognition we will learn key algorithms in the noisy channel paradigm, focusing on the standard 3-state Hidden Markov Model (HMM), including the Viterbi decoding algorithm and the Baum-Welch training algorithm. We will also learn about representations of the acoustic signal like MFCC coefficients, and the use of Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) and context-dependent triphones for acoustic modeling. Finally, we will cover N-gram language modeling and perplexity. In speech synthesis we will focus on concatenative synthesis, covering text normalization, grapheme-to-phoneme conversion, prosodic modeling, and waveform synthesis. We will also give a brief overview of other speech processing tasks, such as speaker and language ID and the use of forced alignment for automatic phonetic labeling. Course will involve lectures and programming homeworks.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Phonetics/Phonology

  Prerequisites: Strictly Required: Programming ability, a class in Phonetics, and some probability theory [the probability theory can be acquired from presession Math Refresher course] Recommended: any basic intro to computational linguistics, or intro to artificial intelligence

  Required Presession Courses: Mathematics Refresher for Computational Linguistics or equivalent

• LSA.353 | 

  Spoken Dialogue Systems

  Julia Hirschberg (T/F 10:15-12 PM, Location: Sequoia 200)

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  The course will discuss current issues in spoken dialogue systems, including the modeling of human-human behavior such as turn-taking, grounding, timing, lexical entrainment, feedback, and clarification strategies; automatic speech act identification, error detection and correction strategies; and the technologies supporting such systems and how we evaluate them. Examples will be drawn from commercial and research spoken dialogue systems. This course is suitable for all levels and will be conducted as lecture/discussion.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Discourse

• LSA.354 | 

  Statistical Parsing

  Christopher Manning (T/F 8-9:45 AM, Hewlett 101)

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  Over the last decade, statistical parsing has transformed our ability to produce automatic, high-accuracy parses of arbitrary human language text. This course aims to teach from the basics up to the state-of-the-art in this domain. It will begin by reviewing the phenomena that motivated statistical approaches to parsing, context-free grammars (CFGs), and probabilistic CFGs. Next it will present basic parsing algorithms, concentrating on generalized CKY and A* parsing algorithms, and discuss treebanks, their design and nature, and the methods of building and evaluating parsers based on them. The course will then turn to the well-known and successful Collins and Charniak generative parsing models of the late 1990s, and discuss issues such as smoothing, head lexicalization, engineering for efficiency, and what kinds of information parsers use and need. Finally, we will turn to discriminative methods of parsing, and discuss both parse re-ranking techniques and the direct construction of discriminative parsers.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Empirical Methods Quantitative Methods

  Prerequisites: Basic familiarity with notions of probability theory. Reasonable competence with mathematical notation. A developed sense of algorithmic thinking, such as from a CS algorithms course.

• LSA.355 | 

  The Acquisition of Meaning

  Eve V. Clark (T/F 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: Hewlett 102, except 7/17 when class meets in Education 128)

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  Children acquire meaning in conversational interaction: in this course, we will look at evidence for some of the major factors that appear to underlie young children's meaning acquisition, from prior cognitive development and conceptual categories to pragmatic inferences in context from what adults say. We will look at evidence from observational data on adult-child exchanges and from word-learning experiments; at the role of theory-of-mind development, and at how pragmatic principles could further the process of acquisition. The goal will be to design studies to follow up on questions and issues raised in class.

  Course Areas: Language Acquisition

  Prerequisites: Background in language acquisition, psycholinguistics, or cognitive development.

• LSA.356 | 

  The Amphichronic Program: Historical and Synchronic Explanation

  Paul Kiparsky (T/F 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: 160-319)

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  When logically possible features of grammar are systematically unattested, does the explanation lie in structural or functional constraints on language design, or in the diachronic processes that shape languages? Structuralism and historicism (nineteenth-century as well as modern) have answered this question in opposite ways. This course takes it as a topic for empirical investigation. It presents evidence for a specific division of labor between synchronic and historical explanation which allocates a non-trivial part of the burden to each. A principled distinction is drawn between true universals, which constrain change, and typological generalizations, which are themselves the result of historical change. The evidence is drawn from morphosyntactic, morphological, and phonological change, and focuses on structure-dependent changes. These include the rise of new phonological contrasts in sound change, phonological, morphological and morphosyntactic contrast preservation effects, blocking/deblocking effects in paradigmatic subsystems and their syntactic consequences, and the role of implicational universals in constraining change.

  Course Areas: Empirical Methods, Historical Linguistics, Language Change, Morphology/Syntax, Phonetics/Phonology

• LSA.357 | 

  The Historical Linguistics of Aboriginal Australia

  Claire Bowern (M/TH 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: 260-216)

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  This class will be an intermediate/advanced course in historical linguistics, concentrating on the indigenous languages of Australia. There has been much recent debate on the applicability of traditional models to these languages. There are claims that these languages exhibit patterns of change which are unparalleled elsewhere in the world, and cannot be modeled by methods developed for languages in other parts of the world. On the other hand, there is a growing body of literature which supports the claim that Australian languages do not constitute a special case of language change. In this class, we will examine this debate from a variety of perspectives. In the first part of the course, we will examine the empirical basis for the assumption that theories of language change are not applicable to Australia. We will discuss examples of sound change, morphological change, and syntactic change. Following this part of the course, we will move to an examination of more general questions of language and prehistory, including always of modeling language change and the relationship between linguistic and nonlinguistic data in research into the past. In summary, this class will explore the history and structure Australian languages, and will further use these ideas as a starting point for discussions of wider issues in language change.

  Course Areas: Historical Linguistics, Language Change

  Prerequisites: Required: an introductory course in historical linguistics or language change Strongly recommended: a course in syntax (of any kind), a course in phonology

• LSA.358 | 

  The Indo-Iranian Homeland and Migrations Puzzle: Correlating Linguistic and Textual Evidence with Archaeology

  Asko Parpola (M/TH 10:15-12 PM, Location: 260-216)

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  This course deals with a topic that is currently hotly debated, especially in India, but also in America. Recent books by Edwin Bryant and Laurie Patton present the two competing hypotheses, but do not take a clear stand for one view or the other: Were the speakers of Aryan languages indigenous to India or did they come from outside the subcontinent? These lectures aim at providing detailed argumentation for the latter standpoint, with the following schedule.

  1. Can archaeology be used for reconstructing linguistic prehistory? Methodological considerations.
  2. The homeland of Proto-Indo-European.
  3. The homeland of Proto-Aryan (Proto-Indo-Iranian).
  4. The split into the "Indo-Aryan" and "Iranian" branches and the earliest migrations.
  5. The coming of Old Indo-Aryan to India.
  6. The coming of Old Iranian to Greater Iran.

  At each step the principal linguistic, textual and religious data on the one hand, and the archaeological evidence on the other hand will be outlined, mapping out the geographical spread and genealogical and contact relationships.

  Course Areas: Historical Linguistics

  Prerequisites: A course in historical or Indo-European linguistics is recommended but not required.

• LSA.359 | 

  The Parametric Approach to Child Language (CLOSED)

  William Snyder (M/TH 3:45-5:30 PM)

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  Linguistic theory aims to specify the range of grammars permitted by the human language faculty, and thereby to specify the child's "hypothesis space" during language acquisition. This course shows, step by step, how to use acquisitional data to test a claim about grammatical variation. The text is the instructor's own book, Child Language: The Parametric Approach, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2007. The book covers a number of methodologies, but the course will focus on statistical hypothesis-testing using longitudinal corpora of spontaneous speech. The students in the course will each conduct an individual project using data from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES), which includes corpora for a range of languages. Students will learn how to use correlation analysis and distributional statistics to analyze group data, as well as non-distributional methods that are appropriate for use in single-child case-studies.

  Course Areas: Language Acquisition, Experimental Methods, Quantitative Methods

  Prerequisites: A decent grounding in syntax and/or phonology. Algebra-level mathematics. Basic computer skills in a Mac or PC environment.

  Required Presession Courses: Using CHILDES

• LSA.360 | 

  The Phonological Status of Morphologically Complex Words

  Kie Zuraw (M/TH 3:45-5:30 PM, Education 208)

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  A word's morphological structure influences its phonological behavior, including alternations, stress assignment, and subjectability to phonotactic restrictions. Accounts of this influence have invoked boundary symbols, derivational interleaving of phonology and morphology, prosodic structure, and the possibility that some morphologically complex words are represented in the lexicon as monomorphemic. We will explore how distributional factors--word frequency, affix frequency, etc.--influence whether (part of) a word behaves as simple or complex. Students will investigate corpora, including optionally corpora of their own choosing. We will look at models of competition between whole-word and decomposed lexical access routes (e.g., Baayen & Hay's), and explore how the outcome of processing could become fossilized in listed pronunciations. We will also ask whether distributional facts alone account for the phonological behavior of morphologically complex words, or if phonological structure--e.g., prosodic words, boundary symbols--is needed. The course should be suitable for students at all levels.

  Course Areas: Phonetics/Phonology, Empirical Methods

  Prerequisites: A previous course in phonology. Basic Unix skills would be helpful, but can be picked up in the course.

• LSA.361 | 

  The Physiology of P (Preposition, Postposition, Particle)

  Peter Svenonius (T/F 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: 160-326)

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  Languages vary according to how many adpositions they have and how they are used. That is about all that everyone who has worked on adpositions agrees on; the category P has been characterized as lexical, functional, or some mix of the two; it has been analyzed as essentially verbal, essentially nominal, and as everything in between; it has been inserted by transformation and it has been decomposed into myriad subcategories. I show how adpositions provide a valuable window into the degree and nature of cross-linguistic variation. For instance, so-called 'local' cases with meanings like 'into' and 'out of' are functionally equivalent to adpositions; how does this functional equivalence translate structurally? That is, what is the difference between a language with an adposition meaning 'into' and one with a case meaning 'into'? Such questions and their answers shed much light on the nature of universal grammar.

  Course Areas: Morphology/Syntax

  Prerequisites: A basic background in linguistics will be presupposed.

• LSA.362 | 

  The Poverty of the Stimulus, Machine Learning and Language Acquisition

  Shalom Lappin, Alexander Clark (M/TH 10:15-12 PM, Sequoia 200)

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  Poverty of the stimulus arguments (PSA) have been used to motivate the claim that a domain-specific language faculty is required to account for the facts of first language acquisition. In this course we will investigate both sides of this debate. We will briefly look at the origins and philosophical/methodological issues associated with this debate, and the nativist proposals for resolving this "logical problem". We will then take up the psychological and computational arguments against PSA. We will study the issues from an interdisciplinary perspective, turning to relevant work in linguistics, psychology, mathematics and computer science that can help in clarifying the questions we are considering. A main focus of the course will be recent work in unsupervised machine learning for grammar induction and the acquisition of other types of linguistic knowledge. This research has yielded promising results in a variety of areas for learning from unannotated corpora under stringent conditions imposed by positive evidence and relatively weak bias models. We will also look at the formal, mathematical variants of PSAs, some derived from Gold's seminal 1967 paper, and examine their validity in the light of current computational theories of learning.

  Course Areas: Language Acquisition, Computational Linguistics

  Prerequisites: There are no technical prerequisites, but the course assumes an elementary knowledge of logic, probability, and very simple formal language theory (e.g. the Chomsky hierarchy). Everyone is welcome to attend the course, and most of the material will be accessible even to people with only basic formal and computational background.

• LSA.363 | 

  Using Free-view Eye-tracking to Study Spoken Language (CLOSED)

  Michael Tanenhaus, John Trueswell (M/TH 10:15-12 PM)

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  In this course we review the burgeoning literature on the use of eye movements to study spoken language comprehension. We highlight some of the seminal studies and examine how this visual world approach to studying language processing can be used to address issues in spoken word recognition, parsing, reference resolution and interactive conversation. We consider some of the methodological issues that come to the fore when psycholinguists use eye movements to examine spoken language comprehension, including issues of data analysis. We also provide students with hands-on experience designing and analyzing visual world experiments in a laboratory setting using a portable eye-tracker. Each student in the class will be expected to propose and motivate an experimental study on a topic of interest. The design will be discussed and critiqued in a mini-conference at the end of the class. Evaluation will be based upon presentations in class and a short paper based on the proposed experiment.

  Course Areas: Empirical Methods, Experimental Methods, Language Acquisition, Psycholinguistics

• LSA.364 | 

  Variation in Interaction

  Norma Mendoza-Denton(M/TH 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: 160-326)

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  This course addresses a central but often overlooked feature of linguistic variation: it unfolds in the course of interaction, often in conversational interaction. Most of our models for understanding variation use pooled language data that allows us to look at the overall emergent statistical patterns, but their very aggregation obscures the implementation of linguistic choices as they unfold moment-to-moment. Statistically-emergent categories can then be understood not only as the epiphenomena of articulatory and perceptual constraints but as the summation of tiny interactional decision points over the course of many interactions. We will survey the literature and conduct analysis on phonetic and discourse processes present in data from talk-in-interaction, paying attention to sociophonetics, voice quality, gesture, and breathing, with a particular emphasis on understanding the social as well as the linguistic drives in variation.

  Course Areas: Discourse, Empirical Methods, Field Methods, Language Variation, Phonetics/Phonology, Sociolinguistics

  Prerequisites: There are no prerequisites for the class, though a prior or concurrent course in phonetics would be helpful. Participants may wish to bring digital tape recording devices (video or audio) to collect data for local data adventures.

• LSA.365 | 

  Variation in Optimality Theory

  Arto Anttila (M/TH 8-9:45 AM, Location: Education 206)

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  Language is variable and changing, but not random or chaotic. The observation that languages have grammatical structure that may surface invariantly/categorically or variably/gradiently is not new, but it is only recently that this point has come into focus in formal linguistics, especially in Optimality Theory. This course lays out the central ideas behind current optimality-theoretic work on variation and gradience. Starting from phonology, the course explores variable and gradient phenomena and draws out their consequences for grammatical theory. The topics include variation in expression (phonological variation, gradient phonotactics, variation in morpheme selection and word order) as well as variation in interpretation (semantic ambiguity, partial blocking). The emphasis is on the empirical evaluation of theoretical proposals in the light of various kinds of data, including annotated corpora, sociolinguistic and dialectological fieldwork data, psycholinguistic experiments, and native speaker intuitions. The course presupposes some familiarity with Optimality Theory and involves hands-on analysis practice.

  Course Areas: Language Variation, Phonetics/Phonology, Morphology/Syntax, Semantics/Pragmatics

• LSA.366 | 

  Word Frequency and Lexical Diffusion

  Betty S. Phillips (T/F 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: 260-216)

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  An introduction to word frequency effects in the diffusion of sound change through the lexicon. We will discuss evidence of frequency effects on historical sound changes to evaluate positions on lexical diffusion (such as Labov 1994) and on models of phonology. Specifically, we will look at the lexical diffusion of both abrupt and gradual changes, how lexical diffusion interacts with word class, the difference between lexical diffusion and analogy and borrowing, and issues that touch on lexical diffusion, such as apparent time effects, child language, age of acquisition, discourse strategies, and salience. Students will be encouraged to investigate frequency effects in languages of their own choosing and how frequency effects are dealt with in other models of phonology.

  Course Areas: Historical Linguistics, Language Change

  Prerequisites: One course in phonetics, phonology, historical linguistics, or a graduate introduction to linguistics.

• LSA.367 | 

  Working Memory and Informational Constraints in Language Processing

  Edward Gibson, Evelina Fedorenko (T/F 1:30-3:15 PM, Sequoia 200)

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  This course will be a lecture course investigating the relationship between working memory and informational constraints in language processing. Anyone with an interest in working memory in cognition and how it applies in language processing is welcome to attend. Throughout the course, we will be drawing upon various kinds of evidence including behavioral and ERP experiments, computational modeling, and corpus studies. We will first present and discuss a number of competing theories of how working memory constrains language comprehension in both unambiguous sentence complexity and ambiguity resolution, cross-linguistically. Second, we will discuss informational constraints (e.g., plausibility, animacy, syntax) and their interaction, as well as the relationship between working memory and these informational constraints. We will then go on to discuss the question of domain-specificity as it relates to working memory and language processing. Finally, we will discuss the available evidence for the neural structures underlying the working memory system and languages comprehension.

  Course Areas: Empirical Methods, Experimental Methods, Psycholinguistics, small amounts of Discourse, Pragmatics

  Required Presession Courses: Statistics for Linguists A, Experimental Design for Linguists

• LSA.368 | 

  An Introduction to Computational Semantics: Working with Discourse Representation Theory

  Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos (M/TH 10:15-12 PM, Location: 250-252A)

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  This is an introductory course in computational semantics for natural language. It focuses on building and performing inference with Discourse Representation Structures (DRSs). In particular, it shows how to build DRSs computationally, and how to use a logical inference architecture to carry out linguistically interesting work. We will work with DRSs in which reference to events is possible, and within this setting we shall give a uniform treatment of binding theory (reflexive and anaphoric pronouns) and presupposition. Throughout the course we will emphasize the interdependence between semantic construction and inference, and we will show how our approach can be combined with robust parsing methods. Ideally, students attending this course will have some familiarity with predicate logic, and know some basic syntax, but beyond that, the course is self-contained. In particular, we will be teaching Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) from scratch, and we will not be assuming that our students have any background in computational linguistics.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Discourse, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: This course is not particularly technical (we won't be delving deeply into implementation techniques or the underlying logical ideas). However some familiarity with first-order predicate logic would be useful, and students who feel comfortable thinking computationally are likely to get more out of the course.

• LSA.369 | 

  Writing Systems

  Richard Sproat (M/TH 8-9:45 AM, Location: 460-126)

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  This course introduces topics in the study of writing systems, an important area that tends to be neglected in modern linguistics. Topics covered will include:

  • a survey of writing systems with particular attention to what kind of linguistic information is encoded;
  • historical development and adaptation of writing systems to new languages;
  • decipherment, including a discussion of some supposed writing systems that probably aren't;
  • computational models of writing systems and the relation between writing and speech;
  • the effect of properties of writing systems on human reading, linguistic awareness and unconscious linguistic knowledge;
  • implications of writing systems for linguistic theory;
  • the relationship of writing systems to non-linguistic symbol systems.

  Students taking this course are expected to have a background in general linguistics including, especially, phonology. The course will be basically a lecture course, but will also include selected readings, which will be discussed in class.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Phonetics/Phonology, Psycholinguistics

  Prerequisites: General knowledge of linguistics, phonology. Some computational skills are a plus since depending upon the composition of the class some of the homeworks may involve programming.

• LSA.370 | 

  Minority Dialects and the Acquisition of Literacy

  William Labov, Anne Charity (M/TH 10:15-12, Location: 260-113)

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  This course examines critical issues in the acquisition of literacy for speakers of minority dialects of English, with the goal of applying linguistic knowledge to reverse reading failure. We will first provide an overview of those features of minority dialects that are most relevant to reading. The problem of how and when differences in inflectional morphology interfere with reading will be examined. Dialect differences in prosody will be studied with an eye to both cognitive and social implications. Phonology as a theory of exceptions will be applied to the problem of teaching graphemic/phonemic relations. We will focus on research with speakers of African-American English and Latino English, although implications for other dialects will be considered as well. Classroom practice and interaction with the schools will be discussed as an essential part of action-oriented research. Throughout the course we will highlight ways that we as linguists can contribute to literacy research and explore what can linguists do to help with the day-to-day process of learning to read in schools across the country.

• LSA.371 | 

  Introduction to Simulation as a Tool for the Study of Language

  Andy Wedel (T/F 8-9:45, Location: 160-319)

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  Simulation is a useful tool for investigation of pattern formation and propagation in complex systems. In particular, systems involving positive and negative feedback over multiple cycles can exhibit complex behavior which is difficult to predict with any certainty. In general, when we do not have enough information to understand the behavior of a system, we make hypotheses and test them by experiment. In doing so, we construct experimental methods that control as many variables as possible to focus on the current hypothesis. A simulation can serve as a controlled experiment for whether a system behavior can arise through the pathways provided. Just as with a 'wet' experiment, a simulation often cannot prove that a modeled system does or does not function in the hypothesized way, but it can prove that a particular mechanism of pattern formation is possible. Further, simulations and laboratory experiments bootstrap each other, each approach suggesting testable hypotheses for the other. The course will concentrate on two separate issues: first, simulation as a general experimental method -- simple simulations that function as a 'proof of concept' and more complex simulations that function as a working model of a real system. Second, we will look at language as a complex system: examples of linguistic phenomena that have been approached through simulation, including grammatical pattern formation within, and across generations; bootstrapping grammatical categories in acquisition; and sociolinguistic phenomena (e.g., slang cycles, dialect convergence/divergence). As part of the class, students will be introduced to established software packages for building simulations and will develop and test simple simulations of their own.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics, Empirical Methods, Language Acquisition, Language Change, Language Variation, Phonetics/Phonology

• LSA.372 | 

  Statistical Machine Translation

  Kevin Knight, Philip Resnik, Philipp Koehn (T/F 1:30-3:15 PM, Location: 460-126)

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  The statistical approach to machine translation provides a set of techniques for (1) automatically learning translation knowledge from bilingual data, and (2) applying that knowledge to translate previously-unseen sentences. When it was first introduced, statistical MT was far too slow and inaccurate to be useful -- it was an interesting lab experiment. Now, statistical MT significantly outperforms other methods in many language pairs and domains, at speeds permitting commercial applications like foreign news broadcast translation. What made this possible? How has use of phrasal and syntactic knowledge helped? This course will cover the basic theory, the major technical advances of the past few years, and known limitations. Topics will include the architecture of statistical MT systems, "phrase based" translation models, synchronous grammar models, n-gram language models their role, decoding (i.e. search for good translation hypotheses guided by a model), and formal evaluation of MT technology. A special emphasis of this course will be on the application of syntactic knowledge in the translation process.

• LSA.373 | 

  Introduction to Morphology

  Jim Blevins (M/TH 8-9:45 AM, Location: Hewlett 101)

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  This course presents the principal concepts underlying contemporary work in morphology. It emphasises realizational models, but the key ideas are important to all aspects of morphology and all types of morphological theory. We begin by investigating what is meant by "word", including the concept of the lexeme, its structure, and how lexemes are related to each other. We then turn to the kinds of inflectional systems found cross-linguistically, paying particular attention to the notion of syncretism. With this descriptive background, we look at paradigm-based approaches to inflectional morphology, starting with Stump's Paradigm Function Morphology, introducing the crucial notions "realization/exponence" and "default", and the important but controversial notion in such models of "stem." After a brief survey of clitic systems and their relation to inflectional morphology, we conclude by considering the implications of the issues raised for approaches to the morphology-syntax interface. Throughout we approach the conceptual and theoretical ideas by examining detailed data sets from a wide variety of language types, and students are expected to analyse such data sets between classes.

  Course Areas: Morphology/Syntax

  Prerequisites: Prerequisites: Basic level linguistics (some prior knowledge of elementary morphology will be helpful but not essential).

• LSA.374 | 

  Conversational Inference

  David Beaver, Christopher Potts, Robert van Rooij (M/TH 3:45-5:30 PM, Cordura 100)

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  This LSA institute falls in the 40th anniversary year of Grice's William James lectures, in which he (Grice, that is) revolutionized our understanding of conversational inference. He showed that inferences we draw from the raw compositional semantics of a sentence are supplemented, or even overridden, by strategic considerations based on our conversational goals and certain conventions of communicative behavior. Grice's model has dominated pragmatics ever since. Yet although there has been much excellent work in the area, it has proven difficult to develop Grice's account into a formally precise and predictive model. In this course we will look at some exciting recent developments in Game Theory, Decision Theory and Optimality Theory which for the first time offer the prospect of a formalization of Grice's account --- see e.g. Benz et al, Game Theory and Pragmatics, (2006). Our goal is to introduce this work, and to set Grice's work against a broader background of what constitutes conversational inference, including e.g. inferences triggered by considerations of politeness, inferences triggered by preconditions on speech acts, and accommodation triggered by presupposition.

  This course will be coordinated with LSA.312: Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse Particles and LSA.314: Dimensions of Meaning.

• LSA.375 | 

  Theoretical and Applied Issues in the Study of Pidgins and Creoles

  Marlyse Baptista, Hubert Devonish, Shelome Gooden, John McWhorter,Sarah Roberts, Ian E. Robertson, Suzanne Romaine, Jeff Siegel, Hazel Simmons-McDonald, Alicia Wassink (M/TH 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: 320-105)

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  On account of their complex social history, pidgin and creole (P/C) languages lie at the intersection of important questions in applied and theoretical linguistics, particularly those pertaining to the origin and development of linguistic structures as well as the implications of P/Cs for education and language policy. This course will bring together ten distinguished scholars from the study of P/Cs to present an overview of these issues and some of the latest research. The first half of the course will look at the subordinated status of P/Cs (in part through popular attitudes characterizing P/Cs as careless, corrupted, illogical speech) and examine how speakers are often disadvantaged in the legal and education systems. Issues that will be covered include the status of vernacular creole in West Indies schools, literacy and the use of the vernacular in Caribbean literature, inequalities faced by P/C speakers in the courts, accommodation in educational systems towards additive bilingualism or bidialectalism, the role of P/Cs in the linguistic construction of cultural and political identities, and efforts to alter public attitudes and policies towards P/Cs and other minority dialects. The second half of the course will next look at the structure and sociolinguistic origin of P/Cs with a focus on important theoretical debates in the field that concern the source(s) of P/C phonology and grammar, the linguistic processes under which these structures develop, and whether P/Cs can be defined in synchronic terms. Issues covered will include Jamaican Creole prosody and phonological variation, morphosyntactic similarities and dissimilarities between creoles of different lexifiers, the relationship between Caribbean Creole structures and those in West African languages, the P/C "lifecycle" and the contested role of pidginization in creole genesis, the bioprogram hypothesis of Derek Bickerton and creole formation in Hawai'i, and grammaticalization processes in Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin. The course will also have two associated workshops which will give students some hands-on experience in working through these issues.

  Course Areas: Sociolinguistics, pidgins, creoles

• LSA.376 | 

  Choosing a variant: Unfree variation

  Arnold Zwicky(M/TH 3:45-5:30 PM, Location: 240-108)

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  This course investigates several cases where two or more expressions serving as alternatives seem to be in free variation, differing at most in stylistic value. Illustrative examples include restrictive relativizers which and that, sentence-initial but and however, and complementizers if and whether. Usually these 'free variants' turn out to be subtly different along various dimensions, and they are in fact better characterized as 'unfree variants'. The course explores the semantic, discourse function, syntactic, prosodic, and processing factors that favor the choice of one variant over the other, and evaluates claims about the stylistic values of the variants. It focuses primarily on lexical variants, while LSA.341, Paraphrase and Usage, focuses primarily on alternative syntactic constructions.

  Course Areas: Language Variation, Morphology/Syntax, Semantics/Pragmatics

  Prerequisites: Basic level linguistics.

Presession (July 1-3)

* = class closed due to lab/seating limitations; location disclosed to preregistered participants only

• LSA.101P | 

  Experimental Design for Linguists

  Charles Clifton (7-9 PM, Location: 320-105)

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  We will discuss and evaluate tools for testing hypotheses about linguistic performance (with occasional forays into examining linguistic knowledge). The tools will range from simple questionnaire methods (including web-based questionnaires), through various ways of obtaining quantitative judgments of sentence acceptability, to technically-sophisticated ways of probing into real-time aspects of language processing. In each case, we will discuss how explicit experimental procedures can permit us to control for the effects of factors that could plausibly confound our experimental manipulations.

  Course Areas: Empirical Methods, Experimental Methods, Psycholinguistics

• LSA.102P | 

  Introduction to Construction Grammar

  Charles Fillmore, Paul Kay (1:30-3:30 PM, Location: 320-105)

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  This course will introduce a sign-based version of construction grammar. Topics will include (1) motivations for basing grammar on constructions, (2) the core vs. periphery distinction and idiomaticity as a gradient, (3) construction-based grammar and compositionality, (4) the issue of whether there are purely formal constructions, (5) how to recognize a construction when you see one, and (6) the limits of what is to be explained by grammar. The presentation will rely on detailed descriptions of specific constructions, illustrating how sign-based construction grammar works.

  Course Areas: Morphology/Syntax

• LSA.103P | 

  Introduction to ERP Studies of Language

  Robert Kluender (1:30-3:30 PM, Location: 550-550A)

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  This introductory lecture course will provide interested linguists with some of the tools and skills required for understanding the event-related brain potential (ERP) literature on language processing, for critically evaluating it, and for assessing its relevance for larger issues in linguistic and psycholinguistic theory. While not a hands-on course, it should equip participants to read the ERP language literature on their own with some measure of confidence, by building up a framework of background knowledge within which subsequently published work can be situated. Topics will include basic neuroanatomy/neurophysiology, the biological foundations of the electroencephalogram (EEG), how ERPs are computed from EEG, language-related ERP components and their functional significance, what to look for in the methods section of a study, how to decipher ERP plots and check them against what is reported in the results section, and how to assess the interpretation given to the results in the discussion section.

  Course Areas: Experimental Methods, Psycholinguistics

• LSA.104P | 

  Introduction to HPSG

  Stefan Müller, Ivan A. Sag (7-9 PM, Location: Herrin 175)

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  In this course we survey the basic aspects and results of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), a well-developed, mathematically precise, framework for grammatical analysis via simultaneous constraint satisfaction. Wherever possible, we include comparisons with competing approaches in other frameworks.

  Class 1: Feature structures, the linguistic sign, basic clause structures, phrasal projection, lexical regularities, the hierarchical organization of lexical and phrasal information.
  Class 2: Word order variation (within and across languages), order domains, auxiliaries, complex predicates via 'argument composition', 'clitics' and clitic 'climbing'.
  Class 3: The feature-based analysis of long distance dependencies (in cross-linguistic perspective), island constraints.

  Course Areas: Morphology/Syntax

• LSA.105P | 

  Introduction to LFG

  Mary Dalrymple (9:30-11:30 AM, Location: Herrin 175)

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  This course will provide an introduction to Lexical Functional Grammar, a constraint-based, lexicalist theory of grammar. LFG assumes that different aspects of linguistic structure are best analyzed in terms of linguistic representations which are related by functional correspondences and whose formal character faithfully reflects the nature of the data being represented. After an introduction to the formal architecture and basic concepts and tools of LFG, we will discuss the LFG treatment of a set of representative syntactic phenomena, including long-distance dependencies and raising/control.

  Course Areas: Morphology/Syntax

• LSA.106P | 

  Introduction to Minimalist Syntax

  James McCloskey (4:00-6:00 PM, Location: 320-105)

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  This course will attempt to provide an overview of the so-called minimalist program for syntax. It will focus on the framework which emerges from the bringing together of two papers by Chomsky: 'Minimalist Inquiries: the Framework' (2000) and 'Derivation by Phase' (2001), in which the key notions are that of the phase and other locality conditions on the probe-to-goal (roughly head-to-dependent) relationship. The workings of this system for the domain of argument realization and clausal architecture will be examined in some detail. The issue (open) of the extent to which the same principles and mechanisms extend to the system of apparently unbounded dependencies will also be considered.

• LSA.107P | 

  Introduction to Prosodic Labeling*

  Jennifer Venditti (9:30-11:30 AM)

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  This presession course is an introduction to prosodic labeling of English using the ToBI (Tones and Break Indices) framework, an intonation transcription system widely used in both speech technology and linguistics research. We will introduce the key components of a ToBI transcription, discussing the theoretical underpinnings of such an analysis, describing previous experimental research in support of the various phonological events, and providing tips on how to identify these events in practice. Students will use a computer interface to gain hands-on experience labeling both read and spontaneous speech.

  Course Areas: Phonetics/Phonology

• LSA.108P | 

  Logic for Linguists

  Christopher Potts (4:00-6:00 PM, Location: 550-550A)

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  This presession course will help students use logical tools in the analysis of linguistic meaning, and it will strive to illustrate the ways in which formal analysis can be linguistically enlightening. We will use simple formalisms (e.g., basic set theory, propositional logic) to get precise about complex ideas (e.g., quantification, intensionality). We will introduce the lambda calculus and use it to develop a theory of compositional interpretation. Since the pragmatics courses at the Institute are likely to be as formally oriented as the semantics ones, we will also cover an alternative view of propositions in terms of probability theory and discuss the information that this shift in perspective can provide.

• LSA.109P | 

  Mathematics Refresher for Computational Linguistics

  Fermín Moscoso del Prado Martín (7-9 PM, Location: 550-550A)

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  This course will provide an overview of the basic mathematical tools commonly used in computational linguistics. This will include an introduction to the elementary concepts in matrix algebra and differential calculus (functions, derivatives, integrals), as well as general notational issues which are usually unfamiliar to and/or intimidating for linguist. This will be followed by the basic elements of probability theory and information theory. These topics will be covered with an emphasis on their application on language problems. This course will provide the students with an understanding of the basic concepts and notational issues whose knowledge is generally assumed in computational linguistics courses.

• LSA.110P | 

  Python Programming for Linguists*

  Steven Bird, Ewan Klein (4:00-6:00 PM)

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  This course is an introduction to programming and algorithmic problem solving in the Python programming language. Python is well-suited to linguistic programming and is particularly easy for novice programmers to learn. Topics to be covered include: fundamental data types, control structures, functions, regular expressions, simple tokenization, arrays, dictionaries, files, and corpora. Laboratory sessions will give participants hands-on experience in writing simple Python programs.

  Course Areas: Computational Linguistics

• LSA.111P | 

  Statistics for Linguists A1*

  Phillip Wolff (1:00-2:20 PM)

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  This course will provide a basic introduction to the descriptive and inferential statistics commonly used in language research. Descriptive statistics include measures of central tendency, variability, and association. After studying the logic of statistical inference, the class will learn a few commonly used parametric and nonparametric statistics (t tests, ANOVA, Chi Square, Pearson r). The criteria for choosing appropriate statistical tests will be discussed. Students will gain experience conducting statistical analyses using the SPSS software package. The course will emphasize practical application over theory.

• LSA.111P | 

  Statistics for Linguists A2*

  Phillip Wolff (2:30-3:50 PM)

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  This course will provide a basic introduction to the descriptive and inferential statistics commonly used in language research. Descriptive statistics include measures of central tendency, variability, and association. After studying the logic of statistical inference, the class will learn a few commonly used parametric and nonparametric statistics (t tests, ANOVA, Chi Square, Pearson r). The criteria for choosing appropriate statistical tests will be discussed. Students will gain experience conducting statistical analyses using the SPSS software package. The course will emphasize practical application over theory.

• LSA.112P | 

  Statistics for Linguists B

  Susanne Gahl (4:00-6:00 PM)

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  This course builds upon the material covered in Statistics for Linguists A by introducing some statistical tools used to analyze data involving one or more independent variables. The course will emphasize when and how to perform factorial analysis of variance and multiple regression. It will also cover use of post hoc tests, repeated measures designs, and several common non-parametric test statistics. Students will gain hands-on experience in preparing and analyzing data with the SPSS software package. The course will emphasize practical application over theory.

• LSA.113P | 

  The Lexical Semantics of Verbs

  Beth Levin (9:30-11:30 AM, Location: 320-105)

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  This course reviews foundational topics in the lexical semantics of verbs, bringing together insights from a range of theoretical perspectives. Since verbs are predicates of events, a theory of the lexical semantics of verbs must be a theory of which cognitively salient facets of events are relevant to argument realization---the mapping from lexical semantics to syntax. The course reviews and assesses the two leading approaches to event conceptualization: one takes events to be conceptualized in terms of their causal structure, the other in terms of their aspectual structure. The course then considers the form of a lexical semantic representation which embodies these theories of event conceptualization; it surveys theoretical constructs such as semantic roles, predicate decompositions, proto-roles, and thematic hierarchies. The course aims to provide essential background for several regular courses and assumes no specific background in lexical semantics. It will take the form of three lectures.

  Course Areas: Semantics/Pragmatics

• LSA.114P | 

  Transcribing Spoken Interaction*

  Robert Englebretson (7-9 PM)

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  This pre-session course provides a hands-on introduction to transcribing spoken interaction. We will work with short data excerpts from naturally-occurring conversations and/or interviews--either contributed by the students or provided by the instructor. Our transcription practicum will lead to in-class discussions of: (1) the larger socio-cultural implications of representing speech in written form; (2) the kinds of choices which transcribers must make, either consciously or unconsciously, at every step in the process of recording, transcribing, and analyzing spoken language; and, (3) the relationship between transcription, theoretical orientation, and research goals. We will also briefly survey various transcription systems and available software tools.

• LSA.115P | 

  UNIX for Linguists/Using Corpora*

  Doug Roland (9:30-11:30 AM)

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  This class will provide a basic introduction to the use of corpus data in linguistics. Topics will include the uses of corpus data in linguistics, the types of corpus data and tools available, and some methodological considerations in the use of corpus data. Students will gain hands-on experience in the basic UNIX and corpus tool skills needed for working with corpus data. This class assumes no background in computers or corpus/computational linguistics.

• LSA.116P | 

  Using CHILDES

  William Snyder (9:30-11:30 AM)

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  This pre-session course will introduce the Child Language Data Exchange System, or CHILDES, which is maintained by Prof. Brian MacWhinney at Carnegie Mellon, and which is available over the internet to any researcher investigating child language acquisition. CHILDES includes acquisition data for a variety of languages, and data from children in a number of different situations: bilinguals as well as monolinguals, and children with a clinical diagnosis as well as normally developing children. In most cases the data take the form of typed transcripts of speech, most commonly the spontaneous speech observed between children and adults in a home setting. Some children are followed longitudinally, with samples collected every week or two for a period of several years. Other children are observed only once, in the context of a cross-sectional study on many children of the same age. CHILDES also includes a rich set of computer tools, the CLAN system, for analysis of the children's transcripts. This brief course addresses the following topics: Choosing appropriate data-sets for the testing of a given hypothesis; using the CLAN software to analyze large bodies of CHILDES data; and interpreting the children's data appropriately. Emphasis will be placed on using the CLAN tools effectively, and on avoiding some of the most common errors.

• LSA.117P | 

  Using Praat*

  Rebecca Scarborough (1:30-3:30 PM)

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  This course will be a practical, hands-on introduction to using Praat for acoustic analysis. We will begin with an overview of the structure of Praat and the most useful Praat object types and then cover topics including basic settings and parameters for standard phonetic measurements and basic Praat scripting (both short macro-type scripts and more complex scripts for batch processing, etc.). The goal of the course is to provide students with the requisite tools for exploring acoustic data both by hand and automatically. No prior experience with Praat will be assumed.

• LSA.118P | 

  Using TOOLBOX

  Albert Bickford (1:30-3:30 PM, Location: 460-021)

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  An introduction to SIL's Toolbox computer program, its use for lexical databases and annotation of interlinear texts in the documentation of lesser-studied languages, and general guiding principles for using computers in linguistic research. Classes will primarily consist of lectures and demonstrations of Toolbox's capabilities, with opportunities for student practice on standardized data sets during supervised lab times. Some practical assistance in setting up the software on students' own Windows NT/XP computers (or Macs which can run Windows XP) will be provided. Participants should each have their own USB memory drive with at least 30 MB of free storage space. A limited amount of individual consultation will also be available to help students use Toolbox with their own data.